The Benefits of Outsourced Marketing Part 2

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Part 2: The Black Arts of Marketing

This is the second in a multipart post on the benefits of outsourcing. In the first post, I cited cost as a primary reason to think first about whether you can outsource something before deciding to do it in-house.

I was talking with a good friend and marketing guru, Greg Wlkinson, founder of the marketing firm GrowthPoint. I mentioned that I had engaged a company to help us with Search Engine Optimization. Greg nodded his head and said, “…one of the black arts of marketing.”

That sums it up for me!

There are some marketing disciplines that require the specialists. Search Engine Optimization is a great example. There are so many nuances to it that the firm I work with has multiple experts each contributing according to their own specialty. For example, one person helps us select our key words based on our target market and message. Another team of copywriters will work on building those words into copy. Another group keeps up on how the search engines measure your web site and determine whether it shows up in ay given search. There are probably even more people behind the scenes.

Not only does each of these areas call for specialization, the rules behind the game are always changing. Search engines develop new technologies and new ways of determining who shows up in the search.

Search Engine Optimization is not for the dabbler.

Given our knowledge of our business we can’t relinquish complete responsibility to the SEO vendor – although they probably wish we would. By working with the vendor, the team is learning a great deal in this project. This knowledge will help us stay sharp and allow us to contribute better quality work. This is critical since search engine optimization is never “done”.

There are many black arts of marketing. What you define as a black art depends on your team’s particular skills sets and focus. Public relations, branding, advertising, and web design might all fit into that category as they each require a great deal of expertise. The trick is to know when you need to call in the experts.