Where do you begin to determine if it makes greater financial sense to tackle marketing communications projects internally or to tap the services of an outside consultant? Evaluating the cost of a product may be straightforward – adding up the expenses of research, development, raw materials, manufacture, and packaging, for example. Evaluating the cost of services takes a more roundabout route requiring qualitative, rather than quantitative, assessment. If you’re considering hiring creative support from outside your organization, the following ideas may help you determine whether the move will represent true value.

Contract with specialists.

As marketing options simultaneously expand with today’s technological advances and narrow with new safety concerns, it’s challenging for all but the largest organizations to employ a full team of talented specialists in design, copywriting, photography, programming, illustration, and animation. One approach to curbing costs while keeping your competitive edge is through utilizing staff managers who are free to engage supplemental outside creative or contract marketing consultants who pull in team members as needed. In that way, your organization can leverage high-quality resources while staying lean and nimble.

Consider the actual money spent.

Contracting with outside creative talent can actually be less expensive than handling the same work internally when considering the actual cost of internal labor. According to Creative Business: “Most commonly, internal department cross-charges only accommodate actual payroll expenses with a small factor thrown in for overhead expenses. When all costs—salaries, benefits, and overhead—are included, studies have shown that charges for outside creative vendors actually average about 5% less than the same work done internally.” What’s more, creative fees often account for only a fraction of total costs of any marketing effort. Consider, for example, the cost of copywriting and design for an advertising campaign compared with the costs of the media space buy (paying for placement in online and print publications).

Do you have the in-house talent?

Some marketing communications projects require special know-how, some don’t. When it’s important to your business, the scales may tip in favor of engaging an outside resource. Many can attest to the experience of using available, well-meaning internal staff that winds up being an expensive choice in terms of failing to meet marketing objectives and missing opportunities. It also deflects internal staff from the jobs they’ve been hired to perform. “When effectiveness is critically important, hiring an outside specialist is always the least expensive and most productive alternative,” according to Creative Business.

Can in-house staff perform well under the extra strain?

Consider disruption, deflection, and squirrel chasing. When staff is already working at or near capacity, even a small assignment can clog the machine. We’ve seen situations in which the overworked employee simply gives the project her least attention and effort; she resents the imposition. We’ve also seen more enthusiastic responses in which the overworked employee drops her routine duties in favor of the special project, gumming up the works of the department. Unless your staff has excess capacity, think about bringing in an outside resource.

Do you want to retain more control?

Years of reports from many clients reveal that it’s just tougher to control marketing projects internally because management faces obstacles assigning tough deadlines or giving critical feedback to team members who have taken on special projects outside of their usual duties – forget navigating through office politics and disagreement around ultimate responsibility. “When you absolutely, positively have to have it done, your way, and on schedule, hire an outside vendor.”

Do you need a little objectivity?

If you’re looking for someone to stroll into the middle of your challenges and throw open the window to let in the sunshine, it may be hard to find that kind of perspective within your team. Working very closely with a product or organization over time may create blinders that you and your team no longer sense. An outside creative partner can help bring much-needed objectivity to your marketing communications and create fresh brand language that resonates with your target audiences.

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Where could you use help?

Advertising
Logo creation
Website design
Email and social media marketing
White papers and blog content
Marketing and sales materials
Press release writing and submission
Training and education materials and courses
Product and services literature
Telling your story well

Assignment:

Create an identity for a newly formed community for professional coaches, which reflects the core benefits of membership and the supportive nature of the experience.

Process:

Stone’s Throw met with the community founder to develop a communications strategy and creative brief for naming the organization and designing its brand identity. By identifying strategic mileposts, we were able to provide name options with rationales and suggestions for each option’s branding potential.

Results:

Through the process of naming, a brand concept began to resonate, spurring the creation of “Coach Springs”: a brand, a community, a destination for professional coaches.

We enjoyed working with the community’s founder to capture the essence of her idea: to redefine continued learning, growth networking, and support in the coaching universe. As we began to explore names for this new venture, we realized we were engaged in world-building. Welcome to Coach Springs – a brand, a community, and a destination for professional coaches.

How do you know where you are and if what you’re doing is in alignment with what you’re trying to achieve? We recommend an audit – not a financial audit – but an audit of your current marketing practices. Some think they don’t have marketing practices to audit, but they do. (See “I don’t do marketing”.)

When we’re called into a prospective new client, we typically see one of three different circumstances. The first, and most common is a scenario in which the firm owner or company leadership sees the need for better marketing and doesn’t know where to start – or restart – or doesn’t have the internal resources to sustain the effort necessary to create forward momentum. The company may even have exhausted its internal team already and cracks in performance are beginning to show, either because the internal resource is crying uncle or opportunities are being missed.

A scenario we encounter less often is when the company owner believes that better marketing will help grow her business and to that end she’s been marketing the firm herself. She doesn’t want to invest more money in marketing, or any money in marketing, but she believes she’s willing to invest her own time in the process.

A third common scenario is when the company leadership does not believe that they need to improve their marketing efforts, but internal forces (sales people, business development folks) are demanding some kind of action or support.

In all of these situations, we ask the same questions in order to quickly audit the company’s marketing status. We ask questions that inform our internal assessor and judge. But before we can do that, we ask them to show or tell us what they’re currently doing to market the organization. Let’s list what we’re talking about so you know what to put out on the table in front of you.

• Your company name
• Your logo
• Your tagline, if you have one, or any often-used “brand” language
• Website
• Social media accounts – profiles and posts, including curated (or reposted) content
• Advertisements
• Email marketing
• Letters and communication to clients and colleagues
• White papers or blog posts
• Capabilities package
• Sales materials
• Proposals and qualifications packages
• Videos
• Etc.

All of this should be collected and put out in front of you in some way.

Now, ask the following questions:

What do you do?

What markets do you serve?

Who is your ideal client or customer? Describe her workstyle, education, type of business or industry, etc.

Why does that client prefer to work with you?

What makes your relationship work?

As we ask these foundation business questions, we look and read the current marketing materials against the answers. Do the answers to your questions appear in your marketing materials either explicitly or in images, tone, and style? If you only had your marketing materials as reference, could you answer these questions>

Ask further: What feedback have these materials garnered? Do prospective customers respond to any of your marketing tools? How? How are you measuring the success of your marketing materials?

Right away you may be able to see where there’s accord and traction, and where there’s a disconnect. That should begin to give you insight into your next steps.

This is something that any business can do for itself, whether you’re a solopreneur or run a fully staffed team: audit your marketing.

Pro tip: Be honest with your audit answers. When approached with an open mind, the process can yield stronger, more resonant marketing communications that move your audience closer to your organization.