Heather Steed
Graphic Design & Marketing
Five Signs It’s Time to Outsource Part of Your Marketing
Growth is usually a good problem to have—until your marketing team becomes the bottleneck. Campaign ideas sit in the backlog, sales requests keep piling up, and the same few people are asked to handle everything from strategy to execution. Hiring more employees may seem like the obvious answer, but it isn’t always the most practical one. Sometimes the smarter move is to bring in outside support for the work your team doesn’t have the time, capacity, or specialized expertise to manage.
Outsourcing part of your marketing means recognizing where extra support could help your internal team focus, move faster, and do its best work.
So, how do you know when it’s time to outsource part of your marketing? Consider outside support when important work is repeatedly delayed, too much responsibility rests with one employee, or you need specialized expertise. Other reasons to bring in outside help include problems with production requests crowding out strategy, or a major initiative that exceeds your team’s normal capacity.
Sign 1: Important projects keep getting pushed back
Remember that marketing campaign your team was planning a month or two ago? Has it stalled under the pressure of requests from sales or other departments? Your team may be full of creative plans but constantly asked to pivot to other, equally important tasks.
What was once an efficient operation producing campaigns, sales materials, and customer communications may now be struggling to keep up. When growth increases the pressure on marketing, work can become rushed or even be released before it meets the team’s standards. In the meantime, important projects keep falling behind. This is often one of the first signs that your team could use some overflow marketing support.
Sign 2: You’re relying too heavily on one person
Initially, your company may have done well with its small but mighty marketing force of one. But lately, demand has started to outpace capacity.
When one person handles strategy, writing, design, email, web, and project management, the whole engine can stop when they’re pulled into another priority. It also hapeens when they take a vacation or sick leave. Important processes and ideas may live only with that individual, putting valuable knowledge at risk if they move on or become unavailable. That person is also more vulnerable to burnout, which can affect both the pace and quality of the work. Even the most capable and brilliant employee isn’t exempt from these risks.
Sign 3: You need expertise that doesn’t justify a full-time hire
Perhaps your department effectively handles your everyday marketing strategy, design, and email but needs help with web development, video, or another specialized area. It’s not a 40-hour-a-week shortfall, and it may not make sense to hire a full-time employee for work you only need periodically.
In other cases, your team may spot a larger opportunity that would require an entirely new set of skills—and hiring and training a new team could take long enough for that opportunity to pass. In either situation, an outside partner can provide the expertise you need without requiring you to build a permanent team before the work can begin.
Sign 4: Your in-house marketing team is becoming a production department
In this scenario, your marketing team finds itself spending nearly all its time responding to urgent requests and one-off projects. The work needs to be done, but it also pulls the team away from planning, evaluating what’s working, and thinking about what should come next.
When asset requests fill the schedule, there’s little room left for the work that helps the business grow. And when the priority becomes producing more rather than producing work with a clear purpose, the brand and its messaging can become inconsistent.
Sign 5: A major initiative is stretching the team too thin
Sometimes marketing teams become overwhelmed because there is simply too much good work to do. Maybe you’re launching a new product, hosting a major event, or bringing a newly acquired company and its products into the fold. Or perhaps one campaign is simply too large or labor-intensive for your current team to handle alongside everything else.
A six-month push may require more capacity—or different expertise—than you normally need. It’s a good problem to have, but still a tricky one to solve. If your team can only take it on by putting everyday marketing on hold or working at an unsustainable pace, bringing in outside help can give everyone a little more breathing room.
Give Your Team the Support It Needs
Recognizing one of these signs in your team doesn’t necessarily mean you need to replace your current approach or hand your entire marketing operation to an agency. You may simply need marketing support that can step in during a demanding season.
The right outside marketing partner should make your internal team stronger, help important work move forward, and adapt to the way your business already works.
Would we be a good fit?
We work best with teams that need thoughtful, flexible support without a lot of unnecessary process. Sometimes that means helping shape an idea from the beginning. Other times, it means taking a well-defined project and getting it across the finish line.
We can provide specialized expertise, extra capacity, or simply more hands when the work starts piling up. And we do it all while learning your brand and working as an extension of your team.
If that sounds like the kind of help you need, let’s talk.