To Insource or Outsource Marketing?

November’s Communitech Strategic Marketing P2P, To Insource or Outsource Marketing, featured Ryan Burgio of Stryve Digital Marketing. In his very brief introduction, Ryan described Stryve’s purpose as “to provide clients with super tech-savvy marketers for the modern world”.

There were four reasons why I was particularly excited for Ryan’s presentation:

1. I’ve been reading and hearing more and more about the evolving role of Chief Marketing Technology Officer (CMTO), which is distinct from a traditional CMO; I’m curious about the skills required for this career path
2. While I’ve been exposed to marketing agencies before, I haven’t worked directly with one, so any additional insights I can gain will be useful when it comes time to do so
3. I believe there’s at least a non-zero possibility that I’ll start a marketing agency some day
4. I like learning about stuff

Ryan began by saying that “to insource or outsource is not the question.” What he meant is that marketing must be a core competency, and companies should only outsource niche, specialized components. I like this idea, because it treats marketing with the same importance as engineering, QA, etc. Companies that outsource their core competencies tend to regret it a short time later.

Marketing must be a core competency, and companies should only outsource niche, specialized components.

So, to help companies decide which niche aspects of their marketing they should outsource, he broke his presentation into three chunks. Since Ryan went through so much material, I’ve broken my notes up into separate posts.

• The Modern Marketer
• Building a Modern Marketing Team
• Vetting a Marketing Agency

In summary: Only when you understand what you need and what you already have can you assess your gaps. From there, you can determine if you’re going to coach/develop the missing skills, or if it’s more prudent to work with an agency. Then, if you decide to go the agency route for some of your marketing, to get the best results you must be prepared to ask the right questions.

After the presentation, Ryan fielded questions from the audience:

• “Have you done any comparison of Google Adwords and LinkedIn?”
  • When someone is using LinkedIn, they’re typically in browsing mode, so your content is at the top of the discovery funnel.
  • With LinkedIn, though, you can go hyper-targeted, so if you have the right message then it’s a good medium through which to deliver it.
  • With Google AdWords, you’re finding people when they are actively seeking solutions (recall the concept of “frame-of-mind awareness”), so they’re seeing your ad when they’re a little bit further down the funnel and your content should align with that stage.
• “Have you noticed any differences between your Canadian and US clients?”
  • Canadian clients are very conservative; the US clients are more aggressive, they adopt new approaches and technologies earlier, and they have larger budgets.

And that’s it! Thanks to Ryan for a great session, and as always thanks also to Communitech for hosting these great P2P groups!

About Lee Brooks

Lee Brooks is the founder of Cromulent Marketing, a boutique marketing agency specializing in crafting messaging, creating content, and managing public relations for B2B technology companies.