Content Writer
Let us ask you this: do you think your business could survive in today’s world with no external or internal marketing?
For a lot of businesses, the answer is most probably no. But why not?
Well, the main reason is the competition. Even though you have selected a niche market and have a well-developed UVP (unique value proposition), it’s likely that there are a handful of other businesses offering something similar to what you’re offering.
However, when it comes to marketing, there are a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration. And one of them is if you should further pursue internal marketing efforts or outsource them to specialized marketing agencies.
If you don’t know what to do, then we’re going to help you figure out what you need to do when it comes to your marketing department. But first, let’s define external and internal marketing!
Access our editable marketing calendar template to easily organize your strategy.
What Is Internal Marketing?
Internal marketing represents all the marketing processes that are done by your in-house marketing team.
Be it email marketing, social media marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), or any kind of internal marketing strategy, your marketing team will be in charge of a large pool of tasks in order to communicate the company’s mission and vision.
Some of the internal marketing examples of activities include:
- Coming up with a creative brief for internal communication
- Drafting an effective internal marketing strategy
- Designing the company’s brand image and choosing the tone of voice
- Setting goals for the internal marketing campaigns
- Conducting the internal marketing campaigns
- Collaborating with brand advocates and influencers
- Creating internal marketing materials such as content, copies, visuals, newsletters, etc., for each marketing channel in part
- Checking out the marketing metrics and KPIs
- Making any necessary changes to the internal marketing campaigns to ensure their success
Benefits of an Internal Marketing Strategy
Why is internal marketing important? The key to succeeding in your internal marketing goals is by having a strong team behind your company, so you can better build the company’s strategy for marketing activities and meet the customer expectations.
These are the main benefits of working with an internal marketing team:
- Better control over marketing activities
- Better understanding of the product or service
- Stronger company culture
1. Better Control Over Marketing Activities
Managing and keeping track of all your marketing projects becomes harder when it is in several hands.
Similarly, when you outsource marketing responsibilities to creative or influencer agencies, you lose control over the results. However, having an internal marketing team provides you more control over your advertising budget and marketing methods.
2. Better Understanding of the Product or Service
Another one of the benefits of internal marketing is the level of understanding internal marketing teams have over the key components of company’s vision or company’s products. It is hard to get an outsourcer understand the company’s product and brand messages in the same way.
Why? Because a company’s internal marketing employees engage more in the marketing activities and focus all of their efforts on a single goal. Yes, marketing firms are briefed about the company, product, and culture, but they must deal with several other external marketing campaigns at the same time.
3. Strong Company Culture
The marketing team is the one that designs the brand. And this is not only relevant for external stakeholders such as customers or suppliers, but to internal ones such as employees as well.
Employees will feel more connected to the company’s brand if they play an active role in the design of the marketing campaigns.
What Is External Marketing?
External marketing is the exact opposite of internal marketing. Instead of an in-house marketing department dealing with all the marketing processes, you will have to partner with a marketing agency.
There are two ways to outsource your marketing efforts:
- Completely: The marketing agency will be in charge of all your marketing work, from planning to monitoring results.
- Partially: The marketing agency will be responsible for certain marketing tasks that your team doesn’t have the time or knowledge for.
Benefits of an External Marketing Strategy
Outsourcing marketing tasks can prove to be very advantageous.
In truth, external marketing can be beneficial due to numerous reasons, such as:
- Better marketing campaigns
- More marketing diversity
- A more affortable alternative to internal marketing
1. Better Marketing Campaigns
There is nobody quite like a specialized marketing agency that can craft, develop, and oversee a marketing campaign. Not only will these marketers know how to make your business shine through brilliant marketing, but they will also bring forth new ideas and perspectives.
By taking your brand voice and image into consideration these new marketing experts will come up with new and innovative ways to promote and sell your products.
2. More Marketing Diversity
Now, even though your internal marketing team is doing a great job, the likelihood of your campaigns being limited diversity-wise is pretty high. What do we mean by that?
Let’s say that your internal marketing team is specialized in social media marketing, which is great because about 54% of social browsers use social media to research products.
But you can’t use just that strategy to market yourself when there are many ways to promote your business and form connections with your target audience. This is where external marketing can help by conducting more diverse marketing tactics.
So if you dabbled just in social media marketing until now, a marketing agency can do PPC, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, and much more.
Let’s take a look at the services offered by SocialBee:
- Social Media Content Creation – Starting at $129/ month
- Article Writing – Starting at $129/ month
- Copywriting – Starting at $129/ month
- Guide Creation – Starting at $499/ month
- IG Community Management – Starting at $129/ month
- LinkedIn Lead Generation – Starting at $129/ month
- Ads Management – Starting at $299/ month
3. A More Affordable Alternative to Internal Marketing
Hiring and having to support an entire marketing team is super expensive. Especially given that the marketing efforts are not the same throughout the whole year.
Externalizing your marketing efforts is more flexible, as you can work with multiple freelancers at the same time without going through the hiring process. At the same time, you can employ or deploy people way easier based on your current workload.
When Should You Opt For External Marketing?
You can outsource a marketing agency at any point in time. But if you’re struggling to know if you actually need external marketing, then let’s see what kind of situations require it.
Here are the reasons why you should choose external marketing services:
- You’re just starting out
- Your business field offers resources
- You’re not getting the results you want
1.You’re Just Starting Out
If you’re an entrepreneur that just started out, or if you have a small developing business, then outsourcing marketing is probably for the best.
Here are some of the issues that you might encounter if you try to do the marketing yourself:
- Resources are scarce and would be better invested in sales, product development and improvement, and customer service
- Developing marketing campaigns from scratch requires a lot of time and knowledge and tracking marketing metrics is oftentimes confusing
- As a small business owner, you won’t have time to do everything on your own, while hiring employees can become too expensive
You might be asking yourself if it’s wise to spend your money on a marketing agency. The answer is yes!
Not only is it going to be cheaper in the long run, but you will also get professionally developed marketing campaigns. Your brand image will also be established and will not suffer changes throughout the marketing process.
2.Your Business Field Offers Resources
The truth is, it’s much easier to market things that are commonly known than to market something that is a bit more obscure.
Let’s take a look at two business examples to better understand this point:
- E-commerce businesses: It’s easy to find information for this kind of business – with an e-commerce valuation, for example. After all, online market platforms are a constant in everyone’s lives.
- Medical businesses: While most individuals use medical services, the terminology can be quite difficult to grasp for those that have no actual background in the field.
In case your field is more technical, then the best option would be internal marketing. That way your company, which is already an expert in the field, can make specific and catchy content and even explain concepts and terms to potential customers.
But outsourcing your marketing strategies can work if you are ready to provide plenty of materials and resources to the marketing agency. In case you have a complex business, you should also have meetings with your marketing agents to make sure that they fully understand what you do and what you offer.
3. You’re Not Getting the Results You Want
If you tried everything you could and your internal marketing campaigns still aren’t taking off, then you need to drop internal marketing and go for external marketing instead.
As mentioned above, getting an agency to work on your external marketing strategies is going to give a fresh perspective on how things should be done. Not only that but you will be working alongside marketing experts that already have an array of marketing tools and know how to bring your marketing campaigns from the dead.
External or Internal Marketing Efforts?
Internal marketing can be done well if you invest plenty of resources into it, but if you don’t have those resources then outsourcing your marketing activities is the best solution. Not only will you get skillfully crafted marketing campaigns out of external marketing, but you will also be able to save up on cash that can be invested in other departments.
To make the most out of your marketing efforts, you also have to start thinking about the right tools to streamline your workflow.. With SocialBee, you can schedule, edit, and post on all social media platforms from one single dashboard. Try our 14-day trial now!
