Every year companies go to hell and back to answer this highly debatable — and often debilitating — question. You’ll find that many businesses claim to hire their own internal marketing team operating under the assumption that updates happen faster, output is more streamlined, and a greater sense of reliability when you have an in-house team. There’s less time and space to communicate across channels, and a firm sense of accountability, so it must be better, right?

Not necessarily! If we pay even a little bit of attention to what’s behind the marketing curtain of larger tech enterprises like Google, Apple, and Facebook (Meta), we understand the wizards are — you guessed it — all outsourced!

Faced with this decision—to hire or to outsource—conversations can feel like an unending loop. It can become frustrating when there are so many options, on both sides. So, why not choose both?

The Hybrid Approach

That’s right it’s your world, and in this sector of marketing, you don’t need to choose one or the other — you blend, blend, blend. The answer is to hire certain resources internally and build on outsourced elements where they’re required. Let’s unpack that:

Someone On The Inside

In the world of technology, things change daily at a rapid pace—communicating effectively to an outsourced team will be unnecessarily delayed and unfortunately, less detailed. It will be time-consuming to be constantly communicating your needs and desires to someone who is not actually there in person. To really understand what’s happening internally, you’ll need a marketing team, or individual, on the inside to have the correct knowledge, resources and wherewithal to deal with the constant and unpredictable situations that arise. Your internal team, or marketing manager, can be the one to effectively funnel this information to another team of designers, etc. An internal marketing hire will also have a more keen vision of the goals in mind and be able to communicate between marketing and sales when needed.

Outside the Box

Trust the professionals! The capacity for an outsourced team is acutely aware of the kind of support you need in a specific area where you need it. Between website development, updates and maintenance, along with logos and branding, designers, blogs, and social media—it is way too much for one person to handle! Strategically hiring all of those people on the inside is costly and time-consuming. A team, or department, can and should be hired to take on the digital marketing burdens.

Another consideration is that when you’re building a marketing department, there are usually people higher up in the company that have their own idea of what they’d like to see—which is great! The problem is that they often have no idea what it takes to actually manifest those ideas, and furthermore, cannot discern a good marketing practice from a bad one. There is a tendency for them to set unreasonable expectations for their internal marketing teams, and may not understand how marketing metrics work, or what graphic design makes an ad perform well.

To put it bluntly: leaders without extensive experience in marketing are likely to make mistakes—mistakes that cost money. Those are the organization leaders that founded their tech business in the first place…let them focus on what they do best.

Hybrid Model in Practice

Your funds allocated toward marketing will be best spent when you conduct a specified internal hire—someone who can digest and create a cohesive plan based on the understanding of your needs, and in turn communicate them to an outsourced marketing department. This combination hybrid approach to marketing will save your company both time and money.

Take into mind that when you’re launching a start-up, you should know that outsourcing is going to be your best bet. There is too much to handle and manage at once.

There are plenty of pros and cons, but it’s clear the tables are turning for every business thinking about their marketing strategy.

Explore More Marketing Options

Whether you’re thinking about rebranding, focusing solely on audience engagement through social media, or considering a new website overhaul, the hybrid method will work wonders for saving time and money. Curious to learn more about the process? Contact me for a consultation to get the ball rolling.