Overcoming Misconceptions About Outsourced Marketing
If you’re a homeowner, you know that yard upkeep can be a significant investment—not just of your time but also of your money. Maintaining a well-manicured lawn and weed-free garden beds requires purchasing lawn and garden equipment, fertilizers and treatments, mulch, and not to mention space to store it all. By the end of the day, many homeowners find it worthwhile to hire a professional. Not only do the costs often balance out, but a local lawn and landscape professional will likely achieve better results because they have the tools, mastery, and experience needed to tackle the job.
If you’re a small business owner, this same principle applies to your marketing efforts. You could assemble an in-house team—Content Director, Digital Strategist, Graphic Designer, Marketing Analyst, etc.—and manage everything yourself. Or, like a homeowner who hires a landscape expert, you could outsource to a marketing professional who can deliver superior results, often within the same budget (or for even less).
Your choice for your business—going with an in-house team or outsourced experts—could mean the difference between rough patches with endless maintenance and fruitful growth.
“It’s not always easy to admit, but while every small business needs marketing to grow, not every business needs a full-fledged marketing department to get there. Fractional marketing—like the services offered by JXM—bridges this gap, providing the marketing expertise and results that small businesses need without an entire in-house team’s worth of overhead and management requirements.”
Not Everyone Needs a Marketing Department
Let’s address a common truth: Very few small businesses (<$250m) genuinely need a full in-house marketing department. Can they afford it? Yes. Will it produce results? Sure. But can a fractional team achieve the same results, often more efficiently? Likely. Yet, when it comes time to market and advertise, small businesses often default to hiring in-house without considering the benefits of outsourcing. Why? As a firm specializing in fractional marketing, we’ve encountered several justifications rooted in misconceptions:
“An outside firm isn’t familiar with our business or our brand.”
“We don’t want to pay for marketing services that we’re just not going to use.”
“We need the data transparency that comes with handling marketing in-house.”
“Our budget isn’t structured to deal with variable costs month-over-month.”
These concerns, while common, are often based on misunderstandings about what it means to engage with an outside marketing firm.
“The reality is, that when you partner with an outsourced marketing team, you remain in control. You’re not relinquishing ownership of your marketing; instead, you’re tapping into the expertise of a ready-made team that can handle it in a results-driven capacity.”
In other words, it’s still your house; you’re just hiring a lawn care expert and crew to make your landscape the envy of the neighborhood.
The Capacity to Market More Efficiently
Working with a fractional marketing team gives small businesses the capacity to tailor their growth trajectory. Beyond delegating time-consuming marketing tasks, partnering with a firm like JXM means getting insights into the marketing activities that actually provide value—and the strategies that might not be worth your investment. This level of hands-on oversight has far-reaching benefits, from bottom-line cost savings to better exposure across more lucrative channels.
Outsourced marketing teams also have a key advantage over in-house marketing departments: objectivity. Approaching the brand and its efforts from an external perspective puts the onus on fractional teams to learn the most effective ways to reach target audiences. There’s no “usual” or “general” approach. There’s no data bias. There’s no reliance on assumptions that may (or may not) prove true.
At JXM, we’re compelled to provide and prove our value, which means taking the time to fully understand our partners—their business, brand, goals, audience, and marketing efforts. This comprehensive understanding allows us to craft marketing strategies that are efficient and deeply aligned with your specific business objectives. By combining an external perspective with in-depth knowledge, we can approach your marketing with the precision and care it deserves. There’s no need to research the best fertilizer blend for your business; you can call an expert to come out, assess it, and ensure it gets the nourishment it needs.
Augmenting In-House Expertise
Maybe you already have an in-house Digital Strategist or a Content Director who knows their stuff. Given the choice to build a staff around them or outsource, take a moment to consider how to best help them. Do you want them to delegate or collaborate?
Building a marketing department also means creating a leadership hierarchy into the mix. Who manages whom, and in what capacity? Regardless of the structure, this takes time away from your in-house experts. If they’re delegating, they’re not collaborating. However, if you give them a partner who doesn’t need supervision and oversight, you’re putting your staff in a position to do what they do best.
Remember, fractional teams are elastic. Already have in-house SEO expertise? Leverage that into the content strategy developed by a partner firm. Have in-house designers and copywriters? Let them create collateral while your partner handles orchestration and execution. Outsourcing should be synonymous with augmenting. Let the lawn care expert handle your grass while you apply your green thumb to a picturesque flower garden. The results will complement each other perfectly.
Marketing Partner > Marketing Department
Some homeowners love waking up early on Saturday mornings, firing up the mower, and spending hours perfecting their lawn. But if you’re like us, sometimes you’d much rather sleep in, watch some cartoons, and relax—knowing that a professional is handling it for you, likely with better results. In the same way, small business owners can achieve peace of mind by trusting their marketing to an outsourced partner.
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