Having an outsourced marketing team can help you grow your small marketing business, especially with outsourced digital marketing.
Outsourcing your business’ marketing campaign helps you reduce costs and takes a lot off your plate. You can focus on other aspects of your business while digital marketing experts generate your leads and improve your brand awareness to grow your business.
According to Zippia, 66% of businesses in the United States outsource at least one department.
In addition, (59%) reported that cost reduction is the main drive for outsourcing.
Those are among the many benefits of outsourcing your marketing team.
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Outsourcing
That said, you still have to put in a considerable amount of work to make sure your marketing campaign is successful. It’s not enough to farm out that aspect of your business to an outsourced marketing agency or freelancers.
Despite their experience, you know your business best and what you want to achieve. You have to understand how to manage team workload and delegate properly if you’re hiring a team of freelancers.
If you’re using an outsourced online marketing agency, you should know how to pick the right firm and collaborate with them.
This article covers tips on managing digital marketing professionals, whether you’re using an agency or freelancers to outsource digital marketing. These freelancers will help build your online marketing digital strategy.
How to manage your outsourced marketing team.
Tips On Managing Your Outsourced Marketing Team
Managing your outsourced digital marketers starts from the hiring process. First, you must do your due diligence to ensure you’re using the right people. Each marketer must fit in with your marketing strategy.
Evaluate everything—from your marketing budget to what you want to achieve for your product or service.
Looking for freelancers, look at their portfolios and client testimonials. Ask others in your niche who they have used successfully to help market their businesses online.
It would also be a good idea to test their knowledge of different aspects of your online marketing before you bring them in fully. Choose outsourced marketing professionals who are conversant with the channels and leads you’re targeting.
Also, knowledge about your project management and communication resources are advantages you should not ignore.
When considering a marketing agency, look at their client portfolio to ensure they’re the right fit. Sometimes, a huge agency will mean your work will be handled generically, and you might not get results.
Ask about their lead generation tactics as well as content creation and influencer marketing strategies for your business.
Next, watch out for firms with high turnovers, so you’re not hung out to dry in the middle of your project. You do not want your online marketing strategies to go out the window in a flash.
Create Defined Goals: Outline Clear Objectives
The first step in successfully managing your remote team is laying out what you want them to achieve in clear terms. Everyone has to understand where the project is headed and what’s required to get there.
From team goals to individual goals, you must ensure each remote worker knows precisely what they have to do. It would be best to set the team objectives before assigning tasks to individual workers.
Next, make sure the objectives are measurable. That means creating milestones and metrics. This way, you’re able to understand each person’s input and how far the team has gone at any given point.
It’s not enough to say you need to increase your leads and boost traffic—let them know by how much. Use specific numbers, KPIs, and metrics for your outsourced marketing team.
Will they be using email marketing or social media marketing? How will they reach your target audience?
If you’re onboarding a marketing agency, you can iron out the fine details in the contract. Then, cooperate with them to identify and set achievable goals. It doesn’t end there. Stamp a timeframe on those goals and be clear about when you want things to happen – and how fast.
This way, you can easily schedule check-ins and project briefs to get updates and assurances that the objective will be achieved in time and provide ROI.
Define Roles: Ensure There’s Adequate Synergy
One of the beauties of outsourcing is that you get to determine how you integrate your outsourced team into your business.
Keeping sensitive areas of your business closed off for security reasons is understandable. That said, you don’t want to hurt your marketing campaign as your team needs essential business data to make things work.
So, the first thing you should consider when defining roles is defining your team’s access. Who will track conversion rates for your team? What about search engine optimization?
Next, assign roles according to each team member’s strengths. It’s easy to know areas where freelancers excel. That’s because most of them are specialists, and their portfolios will give you insights into their skills.
It’s easier when you outsource digital marketing to an agency. All you have to do is lay out your objectives and collaborate with them.
However, make sure there’s a healthy level of synergy between the agency and your in-house team in this case.
You can ask a team member to liaise with them regularly. Make sure there’s a primary point of contact in the firm that you can always reach out to.
Draw A Hard Line On Micromanagement
One of the reasons you’re outsourcing your marketing campaign is to reduce your workload. Micromanaging your remote team defeats that purpose.
Not only does it cause stress, but it also breeds mistrust among your workers and hinders their capacity to perform.
Make sure you’re not hung up on continuous check-ins that disrupt their workflow.
This is one of the reasons you have to hire the right professionals for the job. And when you do, trust them to execute it.
Your team will do better when you give them decision-making powers regarding their jobs. This way, you’ll cut through the red tape of always signing off on minor procedures, making things run smoothly.
You can arrange well-defined actionable schedules for project briefs and task updates. But make sure you respect those meeting arrangements.
If you’re worried about no-call no-show excuses, employ employee monitoring solutions. For example, introduce them to your time-tracking application if you’re going to be paying them hourly.
Also, ensure they understand the consequences of skirting their responsibilities.
It would also be a great idea to take regular feedback to understand how your team feels about your management. Making the process anonymous will allow them to express themselves without fear of retaliation.
Communicate With Your Outsourced Marketing Team
A virtual workplace comes with communication challenges that can break synergy and collaboration. The principles of communicating in a traditional work environment might not all apply here.
So, you have to respect the reality of your arrangement when handling your outsourced marketing team.
Make sure you use the right communication tools and make them available to your workers. Keep those lines open, assuring them they can reach you anytime.
What’s more, diversifying your communication channels removes the tedium that comes with monotony. For example, Zoom fatigue is common when workers are inundated with constant video calls.
So, encourage them to use other channels like text and emails. Or try the old fashion phone call, I love hearing from people on the old phone!
Provide Resources To Outsource Digital Marketing
Freelancers are known to be independent and equipped with all the tools they need to get any job done. This is one of the reasons why outsourced marketing tools are a great idea.
You can save on providing basic resources such as laptop computers, data, and other allowances.
However, you still want to make sure your outsourced marketing team is set up to excel. For example, if you use certain in-house tools, such as data analytics and project management solutions, make sure they are available to your outsourced digital marketing team.
You should also train your remote workers to use these programs if they’re yet to learn the ropes.
Most online marketing agencies already have every tool they need. All they’ll require from you is data. For example, a marketing campaign could include telling behind-the-scenes stories about your firm and conducting interviews with staff and customers.
Your job is to make sure the materials and data to put these together are available to your outsourced marketing team. They will need these materials to help generate potential customers for your business.
Pay Them Well And On Time
With the ever-changing labor market today, you will find yourself in need of a well-compensated and timely outsourced digital marketing team.
I know that when clients pay me early or before their deadline they’re pleased with my work so it only makes sense for them and me to stick around!
Therefore, if you want to keep your outsourcing partners happy and on time, then pay them well. It’s that simple!
Keep On Winning With Outsourced Digital Marketing
How you manage your marketing team also determines your campaign’s success. Use the tips above to create a winning management formula and keep improving it.
Remember to plan for the worst and keep contingencies in place so the project doesn’t stop for any reason. Members of your team may get sick, move or move on to new opportunities, as the great “reset” in labor is upon us.
Be ready to have others in your pipeline if needed!
Have you outsourced marketing for your blog or business? I’d love to hear about your experience with it here in the comments below.
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 12 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
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Hey Lisa,
Excellent and well-written post. You have shared an awesome content providing great tips to manage an outsourced team perfectly. I really appreciate the way you have explained and presented each tips that are so true to understand.
Yes having a defined goal is important but having a proper plan is also essential. Planning is a great key and we can’t be able to achieve any goal without a proper plan. Communicate with an outsourced marketing team is also good idea and will provide good understanding. Communication is one of a great team management tips and helps creating good relationship, boost productivity level. Your each listed tips are essential and must be considered, considering your tips will surely provide good advantages. You have provided an excellent guide regarding team management tips.
After reading this complete guide i gain ideas and am sure that this post will surely helps reader & peoples. lastly i would like to say that you are definitely providing good understanding to your readers.
Very useful and keep sharing more similar post.
Thanks,
-Aadarsh
Hi Aadarsh, Thank you. You must have a plan to reach a goal. Otherwise, it’s like working in the dark. Communication is key to having a team work well together. I appreciate your coming by on this one and make it a great day!
Hi Lisa,
These are excellent team management tips, and I like that you mentioned communication as one of the ways of better management. Several marketers and service providers lose more clients due to the lack of adequate communication. Nonetheless, I also want to add that building positive work relations with your team, acknowledging their efforts, and setting good examples are remarkable ways to manage a team and encourage productivity.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you Moss. Communication is the key to management and in family units as well. So many things happen when people do not communicate and only assume. (Not good things, I may add!) Being able to communicate effectively can make a huge difference for teams. You are most welcome and have a great week Moss.