Outsourcing Chief Marketing Officer

Outsourcing has seen a lot of press over the years. Some look to outsourcing as the saviour of their company, while others see outsourcing as an evil, job-killing management tactic. Before you start to evaluate if an outsourcing strategy is right for your company, you need to understand what it is and what it is not.

Outsourcing is the contracting out of any task, operation, job or process that was originally performed by employees within your company to a third party for a significant period of time. These outsourced functions can be performed by the third party on-site or off-site. Hiring a temporary employee while your secretary is on maternity leave is not outsourcing.

What/Who is CMO?

A chief marketing officer (CMO) is a corporate executive responsible for marketing activities in an organization. The CMO leads brand management, marketing communications (including advertising, promotions and public relations), market research, sales management, product development, distribution channel management, pricing, and customer service.

The CMO is a member of the C-suite and typically reports to the chief executive officer. A number of senior vice presidents, vice presidents, directors, and other senior marketing managers responsible for various parts of the marketing strategy may report directly to the CMO.

1. Lower operational and labor costs are among the primary reasons why companies choose to outsource.
2. Companies also choose to outsource so that they may continue focusing on their core business processes while delegating mundane time-consuming processes to external agencies.
3. Outsourcing and offshoring also enable companies to tap in to and leverage a global knowledge base, having access to world class capabilities.
4. Freeing up internal resources that could be put in to effective use for other purposes is also one of the primary benefits realized when companies outsource.
5. By delegating responsibilities to external agencies companies can wash their hands-off functions that are difficult to manage and control while still realizing their benefits.

Benefits of outsourcing CMO

1 – Outsourcing Reduces Overall Marketing Costs

Businesses generally spend less when they outsource their marketing. First, look at the costs of paying full-time employees. There’s the hourly pay, along with benefits and taxes. The business also needs to deal with occasional call-offs and other employee issues. The payroll costs increase if you have a CMO position or another executive in charge of the marketing department.

2 – Outsourcing Can Help Save Time

Time saving is also a factor for small businesses. Small business owners tend to want to do everything on their own. This can be helpful at times. But, more often, it’s a disadvantage.

A small business owner should learn his or her limitations and realize when it’s beneficial to receive help. Instead of wasting energy on marketing, the business owner could be devoting their attention to another aspect of their business.

3 – Marketing Firms Can Handle Major Campaigns

Outsourcing your marketing is not just for basic graphic design or a quick ad campaign. They can take care of detailed marketing strategies that take months to implement.You can hire a marketing firm to take care of your complete marketing and advertising strategy. Many of these firms also offer SEO services, allowing you to combine all of your online marketing needs into a single service.

4 – Marketing Firms Can Offer a Long-term Solution

Outsourcing doesn’t need to be a one-time deal. You can establish a positive working relationship with a marketing firm for their continued support over the years. This is another reason that some businesses are hesitant to work with a marketing firm. They worry that once the job is done, the firm moves on they’ll be left hanging. This generally isn’t the case.

Like businesses, marketing companies rely heavily on repeat business. A marketing firm benefits from continuing to work with the same company for a longer period. At the same time, this simplifies your marketing solutions.

When you continue working with the same team, they’ll start to learn more about your specific goals. They’ll know the style you like to use in your marketing and how best to reflect your business in marketing materials.

5 – Outsourcing Brings Marketing Expertise

The final advantage of outsourcing a CMO is the expertise that a marketing firm will bring to the table. An internal marketing department has only one person to answer to – their boss. A marketing firm will have a wide range of clients, often covering multiple industries. This helps increase their overall effectiveness and ability to get results. They bring a vast amount of expertise that you would take years to develop and nurture internally.

When does an outsourced CMO make sense?

1. You have a strong tactical marketing team; however, you do not have a marketing person sitting at the table where company decisions are made about the vision, mission, strategy, tactics and growth plans for the next 3-5 years.
2. You lack a marketing strategy or plan.
3. You desperately need a sustainable marketing engine that can deliver predictable results.
4. You spend money on marketing, though you see little ROI or do not have the capabilities to track budgets, measure performance or forecast results.
5. You need better competitive analysis and market research to know if you are talking to the right people and delivering the right products and services.
6. You need a comprehensive assessment of marketing tactics, team members and capabilities to ensure you are built for long-term success.
7. You know digital transformation can greatly improve your business, yet you lack the expertise that can represent marketing’s role in that process.
8. You want to implement advanced tactics or implement marketing technologies to help the organization best utilize their data and assets to improve the customer experience.
9. You need an expert that can help you improve brand loyalty, reduce churn and supports the business development team to achieve their growth targets.
10. You are dissatisfied with results of marketing and the impact on revenue and know that you are missing out on existing market opportunities.

Conclusion

Overall, outsourcing seems to be an important trend. There are some cons to outsourcing, but I believe that it has helped us grow and compete in a healthy way. Outsourcing has increased globalization, and everyone gains when it comes to expanding in to more markets. It also helps create jobs and compete given a competitive advantage. If it helps cut costs to outsource jobs to a country where the wages are cheaper, then that will help any company grow and eventually create more jobs.

About the Author:

Devashish Dey

I help Clients boost their Business by at least 78% through 'RoI focussed Online Campaigns'

A Principal Consultant @ Growthpixel, I also help Digital Brain as their Chief Content Brainiac in designing their Digital Marketing Course and helping their training team.