At the core of every business is the continual need to attract leads and acquire new customers. As a business leader or manager, it’s the underlying goal that’s always on your mind, and you’ll know just how important marketing is to getting there.

But how do you know what kind of marketing you need, and who the best people for the job really are?

As a business grows and turnover increases, the role for good marketing becomes increasingly vital. Not only can it bring more customers to you, it can protect your brand reputation in the event of a PR crisis ― and that’s essential for any business aiming to boost its public presence. Therefore, the decision between hiring in-house marketing expertise or employing outsourced professionals can be key to business success.

There’s no right or wrong answer here; whether you use in-house or outsourced marketing staff will depend on the status and structure of your business as it sits today. It’s also something that may change over time as business activities expand. So let’s look at some of the points you need to consider before hiring an in-house marketing team or engaging an outsourced agency, and work out which is best for your business.

Is it time to engage an expert?

Marketing is not a one-off event. It’s ongoing and it’s scalable ― so no matter what stage your business is at, there’s no excuse for neglecting it. Ultimately that means that yes, it’s always time to engage an expert.

It makes perfect sense really; why wait until business is booming to hire specialist marketing help, when you want to understand and build on your leads today (not tomorrow)?

Now, it’s safe to assume your business has been built through no strange coincidence. You probably have an understanding of where your leads are sourced, and what channels are most lucrative and relevant already. You might have even worked with an agency or consultant along the way ― and learnt what you liked/didn’t like about the experience.

This information is what you need to think about when choosing how you’ll push forward and reinvest revenue for the next stage of growth. Think about the skillsets, workload and resources that were required to get to this point; pare back those things that didn’t work, and amp up the things which did. Therefore, beware the allure of hiring a 'Unicorn' aka 'jack of all trades' because genuine inbound marketing will require multiple well versed skillsets and talent. 

Results-driven decisions

By analysing your major communication channels, you can draw out an enormous amount of information about the people who interact with your business, how they prefer to do so and how frequently. A marketer will set up a series of metrics to do this. Using the results, you can inform other aspects of your business offering to better cater to potential customers.

Here’s an example: you might already know that your best leads are sourced via organic search engine traffic. To capitalise on this, you’d want to hire someone with a strong understanding of SEO (search engine optimisation), who can use this to your advantage and capture even more leads.

Alternatively, you may have a prosperous, well developed community on social media. In this instance you’d be wise to hire a Social Media strategist (or even a small team) who knows how to use these leads to drive future sales, and maintain strong relationships with the customers you already have.

So before you decide what kind of marketer you’d like to employ, think first about the kind of metrics that would be valuable to your business. These data might include:

• Quality of leads produced from internet search vs. social media
• Impact of paid online advertising vs. offline marketing
• CPL (cost per lead) for individual marketing channels
• CPA (cost per acquisition) relevant to your marketing investment
• Top sources of online traffic (ie. where do your visitors or leads find you?)  
• Most popular content on your website, blog or social media accounts.

Considering what types of metric results you’d like to have in your hands will give you a better idea of how big a marketing budget you’ll need. Once you’ve got an idea of that, the decision to hire in-house or outsourced experts should be much clearer.

What skillsets would you require?

To gain a better understanding on the skills you desire in a marketer, start by listing the current activities of your business, alongside those things you’d like to undertake in future. Here’s an example team I created using a Trello board ― feel free to adapt it for your own purposes.

It’s important to realise that not all marketers think or act the same. With the rise of digital media, the marketing industry has really begun to branch out into different styles (ranging from the more traditional cold-calling, to digital content and inbound).

Furthermore, some marketers will have their own signature pet plays or strategies, and different levels of  experience with certain channels, industries or business models. Your challenge is to find the right mix to work for your business. Here's a table that's an easy way to break it down:

The power of inbound marketing

Inbound marketing isn’t new, but it’s becoming increasingly adopted by savvy businesses worldwide. Inbound marketing is no quick fix; it involves time, energy, resources and a dash of patience. But once you make that investment, the rewards can be significant.

Thinking back to the skillsets you desire in a marketer, what might your business need in order to deliver a successful inbound marketing campaign?

Website development skills

Your website is the alpha and the omega of your inbound strategy. You’ll need someone who can guide you through creating a website which is agile, user friendly and equipped to deliver results. Asking the right questions around platform experience and level of knowledge when it comes to web design and development very advantageous.

Search engine savvy

An inbound marketer should be able to research and uncover new opportunities using the latest search engine and analytic tools, to give direction to the overarching content strategy.

Data nerds

Your marketer should understand which metrics are relevant to your business, how to collect data and how to interpret the results.

Social media expertise

A social media expert is not just a person with a lot of Facebook friends or Twitter followers. They should know how social media can work for a business, and the preferred platforms of your leads. They should also be able to create and manage your social media content and reflect the voice of your business.

Overarching strategy

Your marketer should have a big picture in mind, and plan the roadmap to get you there.

An inbound team

Unfortunately, the skills above are unlikely to all be rolled into the one individual ― so you’re going to need a team to cover all bases. While not all businesses can afford an entire marketing team working for them in house, an outsourced agency can provide access to the following experts all under the one umbrella:

• Account (Campaign Manager ― ensures client needs are married tightly with the strategy; oversees the consistent delivery of campaign activity; offers direction on client requests.

• Inbound Marketer ― has a keen understanding SEO, PPC, Website Optimisation and Marketing Automation. Their time is spent reviewing and setting in place key activities to achieve the desired result for the client; constantly assessing ROI and refining the inbound strategy.
• Content Strategist  ―creating great content comes with experience. Whatever form your digital content takes, it’s got to engage your customers. Sadly only 42% marketers believe their content is effective.
• Writer ― creates content perfectly suited the objectives and brief. Has vast experience with writing for the web and maintains a close eye on target personas and driving a result.
• Community Manager (aka Social Media Type) ― understands the overall strategy and how social media can complement and add to. Savvy with optimising various social media profiles and can benchmark and review quickly.
• SEO Specialist ― ensures your content and website is growing in traffic through increased organic visibility. It’s all about relevant or quality traffic.
• Paid Media Specialist ― responsible for driving a result from paid media specifically Search and Social Ads.
• Outreach ― online networkers who build beneficial online relationships for your business. This would pay dividends with SEO, Awareness and referrals.
• Designer ― someone with an eye for creating designs that engage and convert prospects.
• Web Developer ― able to make updates, customisations and improvements to your website above and beyond the normal functionality.

It can be a long process trialling and testing different styles of marketing and different in-house or outsourced experts until you find a fit that works for your business. Ideally, we’d all have large teams working for us 24/7 ― but unless you’re Richard Branson, that’s unlikely. For everyone else, my advice is to start out by hiring an intelligent in-house marketing coordinator, then supplementing that with an outsourced agency to provide support. This can offer the winning combination of skillsets you’ll need to achieve the results your business wants.

Happy hiring!