In the world of startups that exemplifies constant motion, there is an ugly reality that every founder eventually discovers: making something great is only a part of the journey. The second half, which is perhaps the harder half, is to get people to care about it.
You might be in the middle of deploying a next-gen SaaS idea or an eCommerce destination that will steal the show, yet without a dependable way of getting it before the right audience, fast and efficiently, then you can bet someone will soon be out there with it. And that is when the savviest founders are turning to a strategy that is lean, efficient, and ever more inevitable—outsourcing of marketing.
Specifically, startups are turning to professional marketing outsourcing services as a way to avoid the growing pains of hiring and onboarding an in-house marketing team. The startups can have access to a ready-made marketing engine, inclusive of strategists, creatives, analysts, and technologists, without the time and financial burden of developing one internally. In other words, straightforwardly, they help founders concentrate on product and growth, and specialists deal with visibility, acquisitions, and brand building.
The Harsh Reality: Why Startups Find it Hard to Market Themselves
Startups are cash-strapped by design. They’re operating lean teams, juggling investor expectations, MVP-testing, and pivoting in real-time. Marketing in these conditions is seldom consistent, never mind data-driven.
A full-time CMO could be out of budget. Junior marketers are often hired, but the results are inconsistent. And founders operating Facebook ads at 2 a.m. tend to result in frustration, not conversions.
Consider Basecamp, for instance. When it was not yet a household name in project management, it relied exceedingly on professional marketing outsourcing services such as content creation and outreach to tap into tech-savvy audiences. They did not invest in a conventional marketing team until they had a decent growth record, because they outsourced early.
Why Outsourcing Marketing Is More Than a Cost-Saving Move
Most people think outsourcing is all about cutting costs. That’s so last century. Modern professional marketing outsourcing firms are strategic growth allies. Here are a few reasons why they’re an unstoppable force for startups:
1. Access to Cross-Functional Expertise in a Plug-and-Play Fashion
It would be costly to hire a full-time SEO specialist, a content strategy lead, a social media administrator, a performance marketer, a graphic designer, and an analytics leader. So just imagine being able to access all those skills on demand, without six-month-long hiring collectives and exploding payroll.
Outsourcing gives just that.
Take the example of Trello when it was just starting out. Trello did not have to create a whole internal marketing department; they outsourced SEO agencies and content creators to disseminate their thought leadership articles to gain more organic traffic and presence in the communities of startups and productivity. The outcome? The astronomical user acquisition that could be achieved with minimal internal marketing investments.
2. Accelerated Time-to-Market
Startups are all about speed. Whether it is a beta release, a new feature testing, or just going on a trend, it has to be done fast. They are organized teams in which the workflow, tools, and frameworks are already known, so that you can avoid going through the learning curve.
This is being done by professional agencies hundreds of times. They are not experimenting with strategies; they are implementing tried and tested strategies that give them results in a short period of time.
The case of Canva—before they were the unicorn, they collaborated with third-party PR agencies and outreach consultants so that they could develop their initial presence. Their growth was not an accidental process; it was fast and calculated due to the presence of the skilled partners.
3. Scalable and Budget-Friendly by Design
Startups require adaptability. You may want full-funnel marketing in one quarter and just SEO the next. Outsourcing lets you turn service up or down without the angst of hiring or firing.
To hire a five-person in-house team (which can run upwards of $300,000/year) versus an outsourced configuration could save you a third of that, while generating better outcomes.
Actually, Dropbox, in its time of development, relied on third-party video producers to create the viral explainer that reached more than 10 million views and resulted in a 10% conversion. It was much cheaper than an in-house content team and provided exponential ROI.
4. Founders Can Work on the Bigger Picture
The more time a founder spends micromanaging email processes or calendars on blogs, the less time available to create the product, interact with buyers, or raise capital. When you buy out the marketing, you do not just save money; you are paying to gain back time.
With a trusted marketing partner that is working behind the scenes, you are able to focus on strategy, culture, investor relations, and growth, whereby your brand goes faster on autopilot.
How Do You Know When It Is Time to Outsource?
It does not have to be about the stage, but readiness. The signs that present the need to think about marketing outsourcing are the following:
- You spend more time learning how to market than marketing.
- Your current campaigns only earn you zero on investment.
- You do not know how to scale lead generation even above referrals.
- There is a product-market fit, and it is not possible to increase visibility.
- Your internal team does not have enough time to be consistent.
Other startups like Calendly and Notion began outsourcing in critical moments when their innovations were doubtlessly confirmed but not yet adopted widely by the population. They did not believe that internal teams could ramp up fast enough and thus partnered with agencies and freelancers to extend their reach so that they could eventually bring all marketing in-house.
The Best Way to Choose a Marketing Outsourcing Partner
All outsourcing relationships do not resemble each other. A quality partner can become an addition to your innermost team; a bad partner may prove to work as a costly bottleneck.
This is what you should look for:
- Demonstrated success in your industry or business model (SaaS, DTC, etc.)
- Unambiguity in the areas of KPIs, reporting, and expectations.
- Cultural fit—are they up to the speed and pace of the ambiguity of startups?
- Agility—can they fit in and move with you as your needs vary?
And here is what should be avoided:
- Companies that exaggerate on deliverables within impossible frames.
- Partners who tie you with unchangeable long-term contracts.
- Teams that refer to industry jargon and do not associate marketing with revenue.
