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In-house digital expert or outsourced digital marketing?

Recruiters are increasingly looking for digital marketing experts. Lately, I have seen several recruitment ads for marketers where companies are looking for experts in content marketing, marketing automation and even programmatic buying.

I have personally recruited digital experts for years and know how challenging the task is. There is still a need for professionals, especially experienced ones. True technical know-how and, more specifically, being digitally oriented — fearless of new things and having a burning desire to constantly learn new things — is often hard to validate during a recruitment process.

Sometimes even the recruiting organization may have difficulties defining exactly what kind of expertise is needed, even when looking only 1–2 years ahead.

 

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Digital marketing partnership models

Each marketer will surely benefit from a skilled digital marketing partner in some way. Typically, especially within purchased advertising (SEM, conversion oriented FB ads, programmatic buying), a specialized partner who uses and optimizes many campaigns daily will reach better results.

Even if a company decides to keep digital marketing mainly internal, it’s likely to be beneficial to use partners, for example, once a year, to audit your actions and to receive recommendations for measures or to develop your skills with different types of trainings.

Outsourcing digital marketing can at its lightest mean using an agency, for example, to run channel specific advertising. At a deeper level, it can be a model where a collaboration partner carries out digital marketing within agreed boundaries—independently and without the marketer’s constant guiding—reporting directly to the business/marketing management.

Examples of outsourced operating methods

Avidly Finland has been a market leader in outsourced marketing, and we have good practices for successful outsourcing. In digital marketing, we are able to offer our customers an agile team that includes expertise in, for example inbound-marketing, websites, marketing automation, content production and media, based on the current needs.

Central factors in outsourcing:

Measuring success:

An outsourcing partner must be able to report positive development for the jointly agreed key performance indicators. The indicators must be set for all levels that relate to the collaboration (e.g. tactical advertising / content marketing / SEO) and the original level must be carefully documented.

A transparent operating model:

Full transparency to the current measures and their progress is offered to the outsourcing customer through online platforms. Tasks are prioritized at the agreed pace together with the outsourcer to stay on schedule and on budget. Everyone has the same, real time information of where things are at.

Understanding the big picture (Being tomorrowbound :))

Even if the focus of the work is very tactical, it’s important to ensure already at the initial phases of the collaboration that both parties have a joint vision that looks far enough to the future and knows what the goal is. This helps target the small everyday choices just right.

  • In outsourced digital marketing, we have reached e.g. the following successes:
  • decreasing administrative work that does not create any additional value (e.g. cost estimates and worktime reports, constant briefings);
  • the parties’ understanding of the marketing entirety increases and prioritization improves;
  • getting rid of unnecessary meanders;
  • improved results as KPI indicators guide operations more clearly than before. 

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