The Ins and Outs of Outsourcing Your Media and Marketing Services

The Ins and Outs of Outsourcing Your Media and Marketing Services

By William A. Lederer, Chairman and CEO, iSOCRATES

Outsourcing is when company contracts with a vendor which provides its skills, expertise, technology, services and staff to perform functions the company has decided not to do in-house.

 

The vast majority of businesses outsource something, whether it’s their IT, software/app development, payroll, accounting or call center operations. And now, more and more companies are looking to outsource their digital marketing and advertising technologies (MADTech).

 

MADTech services, some of which didn’t even exist a decade or so ago, are now ripe for outsourcing. These include:

• Media Trading and Ad Operations
• Marketing Automation and Email
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Paid Search / Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Paid Social Media
• Creative Services
• CDP/DMP-as-a-Service
• Data Onboarding, Modeling and Activation
• Business Intelligence, Reporting and Analytics
• Data Science and Engineering
• Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Xandr, Amazon, Sisense, Trade Desk, and Zeta Global Practices
• Administrative Services

Domestic Outsourcing

Domestic (or onshore) outsourcing simply means hiring a company within your country to work for you. This can be a media or marketing agency or a specialty firm (such as a company that just does SEO). There’s also a vast and growing network of marketing and marketing technology professionals who freelance their specialty services.

 

There are many advantages to domestic outsourcing. Your data, for example, may be more secure if you keep it within your country; U.S. laws may offer you greater privacy protection than those of foreign governments – the same can be said of intellectual property and copyright laws.

 

There’s also the advantage of working with specialists who are located closer, allowing for face-to-face meetings, and also with those who natively speak your language. This can help reduce the chances of miscommunication.

Offshore Outsourcing

Offshore outsourcing hiring an overseas vendor, is often politicized, but it has nonetheless become an increasingly attractive option for US businesses for obvious cost-benefit reasons.

 

Besides the cost benefits, outsourcing can help businesses increase efficiencies and allow them to focus on their core competencies, innovation and creativity. It can also provide your company with technical and executional expertise and skill sets that might not otherwise be available.

 

Also, you can scale your workforce up and down more easily, without worrying about hiring and firing and operate with greater flexibility, transparency and accountability.

 

There are, of course, challenges to working with an overseas vendor. They can be less accessible than an on-shore agency; you likely won’t meet with your team in person. Different time zones can make scheduling calls a challenge. Plus, there can be communication issues if English is your overseas staff’s second language.

Onshore-Offshore Outsourcing

Some of these issues can be easily mitigated if you set up an onshore-offshore arrangement where a US-based firm manages your overseas operations for you. (Coincidentally, that’s what we do.) That way, you work with the onshore agency, and they handle everything with your offshore team.

 

Benefits to this model include access to a 24/7/365 workforce of experts both onshore and offshore who have developed proven processes for working together. This means better communication and oversight compared to dealing with an overseas vendor directly, as well as time and cost savings.

 

Last but not least, outsourcing functions that are not part of your business’ core competencies can allow you to better focus on the things you excel at.

 

For a more in-depth exploration of your sourcing options, download our whitepaper, The iSOCRATES Guide to MADTech Media and Marketing Services Sourcing.

 

Want to learn more about how outsourcing can benefit your business? Contact us.