Outsourcing non-core business functions such as accounting, bookkeeping, or human resources management is gaining momentum in Jordan as more and more companies are relying on professional service providers that perform these functions better and at a significantly lower cost.

Outsourcing is particularly beneficial for small and medium sized companies who can’t really afford to hire all the necessary skills in-house. But even large companies benefit from outsourcing non-core functions so they can focus their resources on their primary business activities.

Outsourcing legal, auditing, and accounting procedures has pretty much become the norm. But what about outsourcing part of your marketing functions, or even all of them? Should you entrust a third-party with your marketing/ communication activities, and more importantly, your brand?

The answer is a definite yes. But there are precautions you need to take. For one,you must make sure the company that will be handling your marketing is experienced, reputable, and trustworthy. Mistakes can of course always happen,but the more experience they have, the less likely errors will occur. You also want to make sure they have clear policies and procedures that regulate how they communicate on behalf of your brand. And what’s equally critical is the fact that you’ll be entrusting them with a lot of confidential information,including but not limited to your customers’ contact details. So you want to be absolutely sure that this information will be used solely and only for your account.

Once you’ve got this all squared away and found a service provider with whom you feel totally comfortable, you will benefit a great deal because:

• You suddenly have access to a considerable pool of resources. Your own marketing department—unless you’re a mega corporation that can afford otherwise—will typically consist of one experienced marketing manager and perhaps an assistant or two. Anything more than that is not feasible. But when you outsource your marketing department, you have access to researchers, analysts, strategic planners, media experts, copywriters, social media experts, tactical planners, production experts, and a small army of people that sees to it that your marketing activities are executed as planned.You can only imagine the overhead it will take to hire all of these necessary resources in-house. Plus, you’ll never have enough work that keeps all these people busy to justify the investment.

• Your outsourced marketing army comes with a wealth of experience and expertise that can only be accumulated by working with multiple brands in various industries for a long time. No need tore-invent the wheel all the time; they know what worked in the past and under which circumstances, and consequently can replicate successful campaigns swiftly.

• Your marketing team is probably working with multiple clients, so they are well positioned to link their clients by recommending joint campaigns that benefit both brands without creating a conflict.Say for example one of their clients is a hotel that needs to build out its brand-recall. Another client sells electronic gadgets and wants to launch a competition to increase traffic to their Facebook page. The marketing team can design a competition whereby, for example, the top three up-loaders of relevant content win a free weekend for a couple at the hotel. Both brands get the results they want.

• They know what’s hot. Today it’s social media marketing, but nobody knows what will come before the year is over. It takes people a lot of time in keeping up with new trends in technology and marketing. Time they don’t have and can’t afford to waste. The marketing team in turn has people that specialize in monitoring upcoming trends and figuring out how those can be applied to marketing. For example, have you given QR Codes(Quick Response Codes) much thought? Probably not, although there are several great applications for this trend that may very likely benefit your brand. Your marketing team will know exactly what to do with such trends, and design a campaign that not only gets your message out, but also demonstrates that you’re on top of things and ahead of the competition.

One word of advice though: When you consider outsourcing your marketing function, don’t squeeze the potential service provider unreasonably. You definitely want to make sure they don’t place your account at the bottom of their priority list, and are always more than happy to allocate the time and resources that are necessary to deliver great campaigns.

About the Author

Pinnacle Business & Marketing Consulting is a results-driven boutique consulting firm that specializes in providing clients with practical and pragmatic solutions to their business and marketing challenges.

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