In more challenging economic times, businesses often cut marketing teams and budgets. A survey of CMOs concluded that on average, their company boards demanded an 8 percent cost reduction in marketing compared to the previous year. MarTech further announced that two-thirds of marketers cut budgets by 5-10% (or more) in 2023.
This, coupled with a post-COVID desire for more fractional, flexible and remote teams has contributed to a growing need for external digital marketing teams or digital marketing agencies. Outsourcing some – or all – digital marketing efforts to an external team or agency gives companies access to a full suite of marketers, each with their own specialism, without paying full-time salaries.
Hiring an external digital marketing team, like 1UP Digital Marketing, gives your company access to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Paid Advertising), Tracking & Analytics, and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) professionals. They seamlessly integrate into business operations without the hassle of recruitment, retention and daily resource management. However, both parties need to commit to the relationship for digital marketing success.
Ensuring Successful Integration of Your External Marketing Team
A common concern around appointing an external digital marketing team is “they don’t know my brand/product/industry well enough.” However, with the right onboarding and integration processes, and a couple of initial meetings, your external marketing team can be well on their way to understanding your business better.
Here are some tips for ensuring that integrating a digital marketing team into your business goes well:
- Get all of the right people in the room (or on the screen): if key members of staff are missing, on either side, vital information and opinions can be missed. It can also hinder the initial relationship building. Choose kick-off meeting times that work for all the relevant team members.
- Ensure the external marketing team documents & records the initial kick-off and immersion sessions: these will be great resources for the external digital marketing team to come back to.
- Share relevant collateral, brand guidelines, customer profiles etc: these are crucial for the external marketing team to fully understand your business, brand & industry.
- Establishing effective communication: It’s essential for the two teams to communicate effectively. This means having frequent meetings to go over how things are moving along, giving feedback on the work that’s done, and quickly handling any problems that pop up.
Building a Cohesive External Digital Marketing Team
Getting the initial kick-off and team integration right isn’t enough to ensure a cohesive, collaborative team for the rest of the year. Both parties need to commit to the development of the team, regardless of it being partly external.
1UP Digital Marketing does this by:
- Setting a regular meeting/check-in cadence – external marketing teams should be meeting with companies regularly to stay connected.
- Clearly defining roles and scope of work – digital marketing encompasses a lot of services and it can be easy for the lines to get blurry over who is responsible for what aspect of marketing.
- Communicating, collaborating & knowledge sharing within the external team, ensuring that each appointed digital marketer within the external team isn’t siloed.
Setting Goals & KPIs with an External Marketing Team
Be clear about your goals, objectives and expectations for the relationship. At 1UP Digital Marketing, we provide KPI dashboards and reports so that companies can visually keep track of performance every month, and this helps hold everyone to account. These dashboards include updates on all goals and KPIs so our clients know exactly how things are going.
Outside of the core marketing KPIs, an important factor in choosing an external digital marketing team is innovation and thought-leadership from marketing specialists. Look for an external marketing team that is proactive and innovative, and isn’t going to offer you a passive, one-sided relationship.
Ongoing Performance Monitoring of Digital Marketing
Ongoing performance monitoring of external digital marketing teams is crucial for continued success and growth. Regular reviews and data analysis enable both parties to make informed decisions, optimize strategies, and make necessary adjustments to annual plans and forecasts.
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind:
- Don’t keep things too rigid: if goals or strategies for the year need to be adjusted based on external or unforeseen circumstances, discuss them together and be flexible.
- Evaluate each other: Senior leadership members on both sides should connect every 6 months to evaluate performance and the working relationship. This feedback should be shared amongst the teams.
Case Studies and Success Stories
Want to see more of what a successful partnership between an external digital marketing team and a company looks like? Take a look at our digital marketing success stories.
Ready to take the next step? Schedule a chat with our marketing team today.