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Why It's Time to Outsource All Your Marketing
53 Plays4 years ago
In the wake of COVID-19, it was easy for B2B companies to shrink marketing budgets and get rid of marketers. After all, marketing is a luxury, not a necessity, right? (well, not really).
But as the economies recover in many countries, companies are beginning to spend more on marketing.
The question is whether companies will rebuild marketing teams or look for ways to outsource marketing by using agencies, contractors, and freelancers.
Jamie Stenhouse, an Australian digital marketer, says outsourcing is an increasingly popular way to drive tactical execution.
Jamie outsources a lot of his agency's work and sells a program to many companies on how they outsource their marketing.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello, my name is Mark Evans and I'd like to welcome you to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers small doses of insight, tools and tips from marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches.
00:00:14
Speaker
By small doses, it's conversations that are 15 minutes or less.
Guest Introduction: Jamie Stenhouse
00:00:19
Speaker
On today's show, I'm talking with Jamie Stenhouse, an Australian digital marketer who has embraced a unique approach to sales used by his own agency, as well as agencies around the world.
Connection via LinkedIn
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome to Marketing Spark, Jamie. Maybe we should start by explaining how we met each other. I'm a Canadian marketer. I'm based in Toronto. You're Australian. So how does an Australian and a Canadian get to know each other during the middle of a global pandemic?
00:00:43
Speaker
So essentially from what I recall, I believe my team connected us up on LinkedIn and we just got talking from there if I recall correctly.
00:00:55
Speaker
That's it. Exactly. And it really does exemplify the power of LinkedIn to drive new connections over the last three months. I've met an amazing number of people around the world simply by engaging on LinkedIn, by commenting on people's posts, by writing content.
Outsourcing Marketing Trends
00:01:09
Speaker
Today, Jamie and I are going to talk about outsourcing marketing. Given how many organizations have slimmed down their marketing departments, do you see an increase in marketing being outsourced to third parties?
00:01:21
Speaker
Great question. So I do see it being outsourced more and I've seen that.
00:01:26
Speaker
growth in my own agency, in my friends who own their own agencies as well. Alongside with just other agencies in general, there has been a huge growth spike since the COVID thing actually hit. That is a very clear indication that larger corporations and larger companies are comfortable and beginning to and are almost required to begin outsourcing.
00:01:53
Speaker
Do you see this as a short term reaction like a lot of companies are trying to control expenses and maybe it makes more sense to get third parties to do their marketing on an if and when basis. Do you think that things will snap back whenever we get to whatever normal will be or do you think this is this is the way the business is going to operate.
00:02:15
Speaker
I think it depends on each company and on the results they achieve through outsourcing or through hiring a third party company. For example, if a company was doing okay before the COVID drama hit and then they had to let that portion of the team go and they've now begun to outsource and things have improved from a sales perspective
00:02:38
Speaker
then of course they will keep outsourcing as things return to normal. However, if things have not really improved and I've gone slightly harder and things haven't been easier for outsourcing, then I think they will return in-house when they can. So I think it's purely situational, but if I had to give you a certain answer, if things were doing okay,
00:03:02
Speaker
before and companies begin to outsource a lot of their campaigning and a lot of their promotion, I see it very hard for companies to hire in-house again. Just purely because of the costs and the drama and the politics and the schedules, it can really slow down the growth of a company if your marketing team is in-house.
Strategies for Effective Outsourcing
00:03:24
Speaker
If you're a company that has looked at what's going on within the marketing landscape and you've recognized the fact that you can get top-notch talent but not have to hire them full-time, then what is your advice for companies that want to get started with outsourcing, whether they're hiring contractors or agencies or freelancers? And the second part of that question would be, can they outsource strategy and tactics
00:03:48
Speaker
I would say begin outsourcing the tactical execution first and foremost. That would be the most easiest thing to outsource because you know the outcome, you know the thing you like to achieve, so just begin to outsource that to someone else would be quite easy. Now moving forward beyond that, ideally a company should know their audience and what platforms they're on and
00:04:13
Speaker
what angles they should hit on and what communication hooks should draw that audience in. However, if they do not know that, then of course you can outsource that as well. But I do always strongly suggest beginning to outsource the thing you know first and foremost, because that will not only free up time for you to discover the next thing or to look for someone else to help you achieve that, it will also get you rewarded quicker as well.
00:04:39
Speaker
So essentially the sooner you. Is there low hanging fruit for outsourcing marketing? For example, if you've got a part of your marketing activity that isn't performing particularly well, would that be a candidate for outsourcing? Something I tell a lot to our clients inside our dream team intensive program is to only outsource things you understand first and foremost.
00:05:05
Speaker
If we are talking about campaigning and promotions, and this could be cold email, late dem prospecting.
00:05:13
Speaker
postbook prospecting, Instagram prospecting, right? Like you want to outsource the things you understand first and foremost, because they will be easier to build processes around, and you can track them easier. And they're probably quicker for say you to outsource as well. And then moving beyond that, you want to begin looking at outsourcing things that
00:05:37
Speaker
come up twice. So if that be certain replies to prospect's questions or be able to schedule times of potential clients as well. You want to begin outsourcing the things you know and then from there begin outsourcing the things that happen two or three times.
00:05:55
Speaker
The other thing about outsourcing is that someone's got to manage it, whether it's the director of marketing or the VP marketing, you've got to have a quarterback because you can't let freelancers and agencies and contractors, you know, do their own thing.
Managing Outsourced Teams
00:06:08
Speaker
At some point, someone's got to oversee the operations. So how should you manage third party marketers?
00:06:14
Speaker
as important how should their performances be assessed to use the regular metrics that you use internally or are there other. Benchmarks that you should be using to make sure that your agencies and your freelancers are performing as expected.
00:06:30
Speaker
Good question. So you can get very complicated very quickly. So essentially you want to make it easy for them to actually complete tasks for you and you want to make it easy for yourself to track those tasks as well. So if we're talking specifically about a certain agency that then maybe you're outsourcing to,
00:06:52
Speaker
Having them deliver you a report every single Tuesday or Thursday makes sense. A lot of agencies will give their clients a report every four weeks. That's too late. I would strongly urge companies to get their agencies to give them a report every single seven day period. This allows for change in actual review a lot quicker. That's the first thing. In terms of being able to track their actual
00:07:20
Speaker
task and the actual progress. If you're outsourcing to a freelancer or to a contractor, you should have them inside a team portal. If that be a Sana, Trello, or for example, Basecamp as well. You want to have them be out of cross-soft tasks, ask questions, track the actual progress of certain tasks and certain processes and certain procedures. You need some way to track that if you're hiring a freelancer or a contractor.
Cost Comparison: In-House vs Outsourcing
00:07:50
Speaker
Final question about outsourcing before we get to talk about your system. Does it make sense for companies not to outsource any of their marketing at all? Or would it be, I don't want to call it economic suicide, but would it be a bad move economically to keep everything in house? Depends on your profit margins because obviously if you are hiring in house, the actual cost is a lot higher. Like not only do you have the actual employees, but you've got, you know, that sort of,
00:08:19
Speaker
There's insurance and the actual property itself and the hardware and the electricity and all of that. So if you've got unbelievably huge profit margins and then you're happy to throw cash at something which doesn't have to cost a lot, then yeah, sure. But I think for a lot of companies moving forward, it would be very hard to get a strong return from something that costs so much. Not to say that it's not impossible,
00:08:46
Speaker
But, you know, you could get a free to one return hiring in house, or you could get a 12 to one return hiring from overseas or hiring from another country as well.
Jamie's Scalable System for Sales Outsourcing
00:09:00
Speaker
So that's great. We've talked about outsourcing. We talked about the benefits of outsourcing and what I'm really interested in talking about the reason I had you on the podcast is this system that you've come up with to outsource sales. There's a lot of people out there who don't like to sell and selling is hard. I know from running my own business, it's a lot more fun doing the work than having to sell.
00:09:19
Speaker
So explain to me your system, how it came about, how you apply it to your own business and how you're starting to allow other companies around the world, including many agencies to use it to drive their own businesses forward. Sure. So in short, we have a team of 17 people for our agency. 16 of those are on client delivery and a single person is on cold outreach and they do cold outreach on
00:09:50
Speaker
Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, a little bit of YouTube as well, alongside cold email, online forums, and also community groups. And their role is essentially to connect myself up with our show
00:10:07
Speaker
potential prospects and they would talk on behalf of me using our scripts and protocols and triggers and all of that and they would move that prospect closer to then scheduling a call and then at the right time they then would schedule a call with that prospect on my behalf.
00:10:27
Speaker
And that's all just created using scripts and processes and trackers and natural triggers and natural procedures. It's not anything hard. It's just a lot of small living parts. And what's great about this is that we're not using any apps or any automations or any Chrome extensions, right? So our company owns the actual procedures. So not only do we have actual
00:10:54
Speaker
influence on the speed and on the targeting and on the actual quality of the actual processes. We're also not going against any platform terms of service because we're not using automation. We're just using a team or in this case, a single person to actually prospect for me. And the results have been tremendous over the last few years.
00:11:17
Speaker
So a couple of questions. One, are these full-time employees or do you outsource these activities? And this is low cost labor. I mean, this is not, this is labor that's fairly inexpensive. There's really good margins to be had by hiring a bunch of people who can generate some pretty high margin business. So in terms of about full time, they're doing, well, he is doing about four hours for me each day, seven,
00:11:44
Speaker
seven or so has a week and about five USD per hour. So it costs me anywhere between 20,
00:11:53
Speaker
QSC to 25 USD per hour and the end result usually like clockwork every single day. I usually end up with about six calls scheduled each day and that's a lot cheaper than ads and a lot cheaper than hiring a certain agency, right? So that's how we approach it and over the last few years a lot of other agencies and consultants and coaches and trainers have
00:12:17
Speaker
heard about this process and heard about how we address it and I think the actual attractiveness in it is the fact that it is so low cost and that it is so scalable as well because you're essentially trying to itemize every little interaction point on that platform if it be viewing a story or commenting on a certain article or endorsing prospects or for example if let's say a certain prospect endorses you then how
00:12:45
Speaker
then it's actually how your team treat that notification and use that to then schedule a call alongside that prospect. It works well, it is cheaper than doing ads and doing content, and it is a lot quicker to get cool scheduled free code outreach than really any other platform that I've found over the last nine or so years.
00:13:09
Speaker
So for companies that are using your system, are they outsourcing sales and marketing? Are they outsourcing some of their tactical work? What exactly are you showing them how to do? And once they learn the system, are they responsible for sourcing all these people? If we are talking about cold outreach specifically, they only need to hire a single person to actually drive in 20 to 40 sales calls.
00:13:35
Speaker
per week dependent on how many clients they need each month. So they essentially hire their own team member. Now, obviously we show them how to actually hire, how to write an actual job ad, how to then, how to then essentially screen for that and get the right person on board. And then that company will own those actual processes and they will have their own
00:13:57
Speaker
person handling that as well. And that really covers the whole spectrum of call outreach. Obviously from connecting, inboxing, scheduling calls, answering questions before calls, engaging on content, sharing inside groups if need be, commenting on certain articles, viewing profiles, endorsing profiles. Every little interaction notification on every single platform should be used to push a call forward. And that's
00:14:27
Speaker
what we essentially train companies on is essentially how do you create processes around a full-time employee who then is their sole responsibility is then to get called scheduled for that company every day.
Closing and Contact Information
00:14:46
Speaker
Excellent. Now, people want to learn about your system. Where would they go?
00:14:49
Speaker
The best place to go is to probably jamesthenhouse.com. In there I show pretty much a whole system. I show all of our actual protocols and trackers. So I'm a pretty approachable person, as you know, Mark. So I'm sort of more than happy to show this sort of inner workings of our processes for that.
00:15:11
Speaker
Well, thanks for being on the show, Jamie, and I'm really interested in how people react to your system. I think it's very intriguing the ability to drive conversations through very low cost methods is something a lot of people should be interested in. Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you've enjoyed the conversation, please give a review as well as subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app.
00:15:36
Speaker
For show notes of today's conversation, visit markevans.ca slash blog. If you have questions, feedback, or would like to suggest a guest, send an email to mark at markevans.ca. To learn more about how I help B2B companies as a CMO for hire, consultant and coach, visit markevans.ca. Talk to you next time.