Outsourcing Benefits
Advantages of Outsourcing for Agencies
Outsourcing some components of Internet marketing tactical implementation provides a number for benefits to agencies, including the following:
Reduced Costs
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of outsourcing is that it reduces labor costs. There is no requirement to hire, train and maintain staff for peak periods or for projects that are peripheral to the most profitable core of your business. The flexibility of outsourcing converts what would be fixed costs to variable costs, avoiding large fixed costs during challenging economic times.
Increased Profits
Successful agencies have strong brand, contacts, and customer relationships. They also excel at a strategic level and a huge value-add is to integrate tactics at that level. Ground level tactical implementation can be done at lower costs by outsourced partners.
Increased External Market Opportunities
The ability to offer best of breed digital marketing services expands the conversation that you can have with potential accounts. For example, you can begin a new relationship by pitching a relatively inexpensively priced (though profitable) SEO site audit. You would be amazed at how many large companies have significantly under-performing websites and how much they can benefit from basic best practices SEO work.
Increased Internal Market Opportunities
The ability to offer best of breed digital marketing services also expands your ability to vertically integrate and cross-sell. And outsourcing allows you to offer those services without adding expense and risk.
Increased Return on Capital
Outsourcing allows capital to be invested in areas of your company’s most valuable core competencies.
Reduced Risk
Risk is always present in business. The rate of change of markets, economic conditions, technologies and regulations continues to accelerate. Successful outsourcing specialists are successful because they are doing a good job of adapting to the rapid change in their area of expertise. Outsourcing to them enables you to spread the risk, thus reducing it at your level.
High Quality
You select outsourcing partners on a competitive basis after evaluating their knowledge, experience, expertise and quality of deliverables. They continue to earn your business with each project which assures you of continuing quality.
Reduced Training Costs
Internet marketing evolves rapidly and continuously. Areas such as SEO change especially fast and outsourcing to a specialists eliminates the need for continual training of internal staff. Demand is so high for specialists in areas such as SEO that employee retention can become an expensive challenge. The time and money that you spend training someone is often to a competitors benefit when employees jump ship.
Increased Competitiveness
It’s often a challenge for smaller firms to offer as full a suite of services as their larger competitors. Outsourcing allows the smaller company compete by giving them the ability to produce first-class deliverables outside of their core areas.
Increased Efficiency
Focus as high as possible on your value curve, which maximizes profitability. Vertical integration is a great model when economies of scale are reached. Otherwise, it’s more efficient to take advantage of the economies that others have achieved by focusing on their specialized area. A relationship with a trusted outsourcing partner enables new projects to be started – and completed – quickly.
Added Control
This one is not as intuitive as some of the others. The following is from an article in CA Magazine:
In an Accenture survey of more than 800 health, manufacturing, retail and travel executives in the US and Europe, 86% said outsourcing gives them more control over business results in a variety of critical areas, the most important being the ability to plan. While cost-cutting is among these key areas, the executives also reported equal levels of control in reliability, cost variability improvements and effective implementation of ideas.
Furthermore, 55% of respondents said outsourcing allows their companies to implement strategies and change at a faster and more controlled rate. And more than half (57%) the executives surveyed said they experience control gains within the first eight months of an outsourcing agreement.
Summary
Outsourcing makes good business sense. And the more challenging the business environment the more sense it makes. Let’s talk about it - give us a call: Toll-Free (U.S. & Canada): 866.824.7265 ext 3, International: +1.541.647.1640 ext 3 or use this contact form.
