For many small businesses, managing all of the daily or routine tasks that are required to be successful can feel like an endless game of wack-a-mole. You only have so many hours in the day. Likewise, even if you’re well-funded, you have a finite number of staff that need to be allocated across a variety of activities. In particular, to be successful, you need to leverage marketing initiatives to attract new clients or customers, and maintain visibility.
A common dilemma many businesses have is deciding whether to keep all marketing activities in-house or to outsource. The truth is, every business is different and the challenges facing each entity are unique.
However, if your operations already feel like you’re wearing too many hats and barely managing all necessary in-house activities, the case can be made that outsourcing might be the smarter choice. Before you focus solely on initial dollars and cents, perform the following analysis.
Objectively Review Your Operations
In business, two acronyms often dominate conversations about performance and results — KPIs and USPs.
- USP: Unique Selling Proposition refers to the factor that sets your business apart from the competition.
- KPI: Key Performance Indicator points to how effective your efforts are in building your bottom line and creating profit gains. Both USP and KPI will directly affect where you allocate marketing budgets, and which activities you prioritize.
For example, if you own a security agency, you might know that marketing is a critical component of attracting new clients. But, your USP isn’t focused on marketing efforts like managing a blog. Instead, your priority is on building a superior security product that protects clients from physical or virtual breaches.
This also means that you probably didn’t launch your business with an in-house copywriter. As a result, your priority usually centers around offering a better product than your competitors, be that through functionality or price.
Although you might understand that marketing initiatives are critical, if you don’t have a dedicated in-house marketing department, hiring a stand-alone copywriter to craft and post content to your blog might not seem like a mission-critical need. Likewise, other questions pop up such as, who does your copywriter report to and is there enough work to justify hiring someone for a monthly W2 wage?
Rethink Sunk Labor Costs
As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to weigh long-term costs. Having an in-house copywriter can seem convenient. After all, you have a dedicated person down the hall from you that can draft fresh copy whenever you need it. But, there are sunk costs associated with onboarding and training new staff. There are real costs associated with training new staff, and those costs go up if you don’t have an existing team that can oversee a particular skill set. While the cost might not seem immediately apparent, it comes in the form of lost productivity.
While this might not seem like a lot of money, consider that marketing initiatives can ebb and flow. This means that when you’re in an ebb period, you’re paying for someone who’s not always working. In this scenario, that’s not a smart investment of your funds. Instead, you would be better served to outsource or contract a copywriting agency when you need them.
Do You Have the Bandwidth for In-House Content Creation?
Long story short, you need to ask yourself if your business has the bandwidth to completely manage in-house content creation. This question has less to do with cost and more to do with capabilities. Again, if you haven’t hired marketers as part of your core staff, then who is providing clear oversight regularly?
Second, a copywriter, an editor, and an SEO optimizer are not the same things. While some copywriters are capable of self-editing the content they create, this isn’t always the norm. Likewise, someone well-trained in SEO optimization can help you boost your page rank for that blog post. But not all copywriters or editors know how to do that. So, again the question becomes “Who’s reviewing this copy to make sure that it’s grammatically sound and optimized for SEO before you post it to your blog?”
By contrast, working with a content agency means that fully fleshed out and edited content that’s optimized with carefully researched keywords is delivered to you. While revisions might be required, your internal staff aren’t being significantly pulled from key revenue-driving activities to manage content creation. More importantly, you spend less money in the long run since copywriting, editing, and SEO optimization are built-in labor costs for a content agency.
Does In-House Creation Take Your Eye Off the Ball?
Every business faces unique challenges but has unique capabilities. Some companies can effectively manage content creation in-house. But for many, this is not a realistic strategy. While saving money might be the core goal, employees and managers realize that they’re now stretched thin — becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none.
Ultimately, money isn’t saved as core activities aren’t being addressed, deadlines fall behind, and staff suffers from burnout. For these companies, outsourcing content creation to a dedicated copy agency is the smarter investment. Internal deadlines are maintained, essential USPs aren’t neglected, marketing initiatives are supported, and customer satisfaction is protected.
