Should You Do Your Own Inbound Marketing or Hire Experts?

By Jacob Hanson

Isn’t that the $64,000 question? Inbound marketing takes just about everything we have learned as marketers and turned it on its head. Rather than asking a buyer to meet us where we are, inbound marketing attracts people to your content, your website, and ultimately to your company and solutions.

The goal is not to make a transaction but to make a connection, to educate your audience, earn their trust, and empower them to carry your message and your brand forward as advocates for your solutions. Tactics of inbound marketing vary, but may include a combination of blogging, emails, social media, a wide variety of content types, and much, much more!

Inbound marketing campaigns require a thorough understanding of:

• Who your customer is;
• Why they are seeking a solution; and
• The tools and processes you need to effectively and consistently execute high-quality work based on hands-on experience and information collected during past inbound marketing campaigns.

The Pros and Cons of Using Your Internal Team to Run Inbound Campaigns

There are many advantages in having an internal marketing team. The opportunity to use subject matter experts within your company may be the most obvious. Other advantages of having an internal inbound marketing team include the following:

• Complete control over the process;
• Oversight of all steps;
• (Potentially) quicker decisions; and
• The ability to pivot more efficiently round out the primary advantages.

Disadvantages are as varied as advantages. Obviously, acquiring and sustaining the specific skill sets required for an inbound marketing team can be challenging.

A full team may include a director to provide leadership and overall campaign strategy and coordination, an inbound marketing manager, a content manager, a social media marketing manager, a graphic designer, and a website developer. These people have specialized skills sets that play pivotal roles throughout your campaigns and can be expensive or difficult to hire in many locations.

The actual inbound marketing campaigns themselves are quite complex. The time necessary to create and execute effectively is significant and can potentially pull staff from other aspects of your business. With a smaller team, the challenges are exacerbated. Wearing multiple hats often translates to too much to do in too little time and potentially puts you at a greater risk if one member of your team decides to move on.

Sustaining leadership and maintaining priorities in a small team can be challenging as well. Finally, the necessary specialized training to build and improve upon inbound marketing campaigns is ongoing and puts regular demands on your team’s potentially stretched bandwidth.

The Pros and Cons of Hiring an External Team of Experts

There are many advantages to hiring an inbound marketing agency.

• You only pay for what you need to accomplish your marketing goals. The overhead of salaries and related benefits are eliminated, even though you are using a team of inbound marketing experts.
• You have instant access to all of the necessary skills sets.
• You have access to their tools and proven processes rather than building them yourself.
• Campaigns can be set up and run faster (more people = a quicker campaign), and rapid deployment allows you to delegate rather than execute.
• The freedom to work on other business priorities is priceless.

The disadvantages include the fact that a strong inbound marketing agency may mean a significant monthly expense. Further, you are putting the voice of your company into the hands of an agency who may not be experts in your field. You also risk losing some control of your campaigns, depending on how the relationship is structured. Finally, there’s always the risk of the relationship not working out, which can cost both money and time to resolve.

Prior to engaging with any external agency, do your best to ensure a solid cultural fit. While they are an external team, they will ultimately become part of your internal team—see below for more.

Questions to Ask About an Inbound Agency

While identifying and selecting an inbound marketing agency for your company, consider the following questions:

• Does the agency understand your business, market niche, and unique market position?
• Does the agency have a clear, transparent process with clients that is easily measurable by you?
• Does the agency use a collaborative approach, with your role and theirs clearly articulated?
• Is the agency willing to transfer its expertise to your internal team, acting as educators and mentors over the course of your partnership?

Through the proper vetting and selection of an inbound marketing agency, by going all-in on hiring a team, or finding a combination of the two that works for you, you can reap the rewards of investments made in inbound marketing and continue to grow your business.