For most companies, the idea of outsourcing B2B marketing gives their CMOs and marketing leaders pause. CMOs often struggle with the decision to outsource because of the need to balance cost, time and quality. So it’s not always a clear-cut decision. However, successful CMOs realize that their current marketing capacity and expertise is a limiting factor as it cannot scale to match the growth objectives of the business.
According to the 2018 B2B Marketing Mix Report, nearly two-thirds of businesses outsource components of marketing. And those that utilize the marketing capability and capacity of an agency often see greater results than when managed in-house.
Consequently, Marketing as a Service (MaaS) emerged as a modern concept that fills the gap that companies are looking for in developing marketing strategies, running operations or executing campaigns. The truth is partnering with a B2B-focused MaaS firm is an extremely cost-effective option, and the best way to amplify your marketing – and to boost your ROI.
Here are the top five reasons why outsourcing B2B marketing to an offshore agency can be the best decision you’ll make this year:
1. Save costs and prove ROI
Numbers don’t lie. According to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Outsourcing Survey, 59 percent of businesses outsource to cut costs. And working with an offshore marketing firm generally means a more cost-effective option. With an offshore outsourced team, not only do you get professionals who can pull from their broad experience and knowledge to execute marketing plans, but you also save time and money on recruiting talent with the specialized skills you’re looking for.
Plus, outsourced marketing firms place immense importance on proving ROI because that’s how they retain happy clients. Because an offshore team works on executing campaigns and preparing marketing content and collateral needed to ensure a successful marketing campaign, they will be capable of measuring impact, productivity, and efficiency.
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2. Get instant access to a professional marketing team
Outsourcing B2B marketing gets you instant access to an entire team of experts. This means you’ll have a team of knowledgeable marketing professionals with years of experience executing the strategies and tools that fulfill your marketing needs. Whether you need to get blogs written and published, drive more traffic to your website, or set up your marketing automation platform and configure your lead routing, you can find all those specialties within one team.
For example, through a partnership with a Marketing as a Service firm, you’ll have a team of experienced and skillful marketing professionals in your back pocket, ready to provide guidance and advice or to execute your plans. Every individual for the engagement would be hand-picked based on required skills and expertise, be it – content writing, competitor intelligence, prospect research, data analytics, data engineering, SEO, graphic or web design, and marketing operations. In addition, selecting a marketing firm specialized in B2B brings deep knowledge and experience in the best practices and frameworks that B2B companies can rely on – they can speak your language of demand generation, content operations, pipeline acceleration, and revenue impact marketing.
3. Gain a dedicated focus on operations and optimization
Having an offshore team allows you to focus on driving strategic endeavors while leaving the tactical or marketing operations to your offshore partner. According to Gartner Research on Marketing Organizational Design and Strategy Survey 2016, 57 percent of the more technical B2B marketers outsource the operations of their marketing campaigns to enable focus on core business strategies.
With the help of an offshore agency, the time your marketing team usually loses on executing tasks like writing and designing the content, and getting the website up, can now be spent on strategic tasks such as implementing process improvements or evaluating new technology like AI-based assistants for lead nurturing, as well as strategizing new messaging. Leveraging an agency’s expertise to boost your marketing efforts is a smart way to focus on your strengths and get offshore help to execute other tasks where needed.
4. Leverage digital tools and established marketing practices
An offshore marketing agency usually has its own established best practices, processes, tools, and technology that your internal team can leverage. In fact, some of the most time-consuming and variable aspects of marketing are the technical areas, which require expert level users to implement them. Outsourcing B2B marketing not only gives you access to a team that has extensive experience but also certified marketers with expertise on tools and platforms like Marketo, Pardot, Hubspot, Salesforce, and Netsuite.
Also, having had experience working with several clients, the agency is well aware of how complex and frustrating it can be to establish sustainable marketing operations. A mature Marketing as a Service firm guides clients on their journey towards defining their marketing needs while navigating the pain points that clients often experience in achieving long-term marketing success. They are always looking at new ways to solve client challenges, as each client’s problems require a different strategy. Having a partner that can leverage best practices from different sectors or industries can add a competitive advantage to your organization.
5. Scaling future growth with a modern B2B concept
Today’s CMOs are under pressure to consistently deliver impressive results with the ultimate challenge – to do more, with less, and to impact the entire business. This is where the modern B2B marketing concept, MaaS, comes in. MaaS can scale your marketing at 50 percent budget, enabling an investment pool for other programs and giving your business the capacity to dream.
With rapidly changing market needs and evolving customer demands, businesses must embrace a lean, agile and effective model for delivering marketing to stay competitive. With MaaS, marketing leaders can confidently shift their in-house marketing efforts from execution to strategy, while getting the offshore agency to build an effective and scalable marketing support system to execute their strategy. This will have a definite impact on performance, scalability, and flexibility, providing organizations with the necessary room to innovate and grow.
Smart, cost-effective outsourcing
While your internal marketing team may know your brand well, getting outside expertise from an outsourced team allows you to leverage niche specialties in marketing operations and execution to ensure success. A pioneer in offshore B2B marketing with an international client base, 2X enables clients to adopt a global marketing model and reimagine their marketing strategy. With high impact marketing operations at a more scalable cost model, your organization can constantly stay on top of emerging trends and the ever-shifting digital landscape.
We believe in having a truly collaborative partnership with our clients where we are both mutually invested in ensuring long-term success and growth. To date, some of our clients have achieved 40-70 percent cost reduction, produced hundreds of new marketing qualified leads (MQL), successfully scaled account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns, set up a fully functional marketing command center within a short span of three months, and ultimately, realized a significant increase in their growth rate and profit margin.
If you have more questions about outsourcing your marketing, check out the 2X responses to top questions raised by CMOs of forward-thinking companies here.