Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a problematic approach SMB owners take to solve for marketing: hire a single marketing lead and hope they can drive more business. After you negotiate a $100,000-plus salary and cover the 20% overhead for insurance and benefits, your all-in investment is around $125,000 per year — and that doesn’t even include the time and money spent on recruiting, onboarding, and the plethora of subscriptions needed for various marketing tasks.
So, why doesn’t this approach work?
First, rarely is marketing a one-person job. Yes, there’s the occasional unicorn that’s had enough experience in their career to be a strategic marketer, a convincing writer, and have honed their experience with Adobe to be able to kick out a few brochures. I’ll tell you from years of recruiting for marketing positions — this is a rare find. And it’s definitely going to cost you on the higher end of the salary spectrum. The more common find is a marketing professional with experience grounded in a singular focus, such as design or social media, both of which are important components, but not enough to increase leads, drive prospects down-funnel, and close more deals.
At the end of the first year, they’ve likely turned out some collateral that your sales team approved, your website may be getting a facelift, and your social presence is more active than it’s been in years. But are the leads pouring in? Are the sales cycles getting shorter? Are your sales enablement materials more effective as the prospect flows into later stages of the pipeline? Do you see ROI for the $125,000 you’re spending? And now, chances are your marketing team of one, is feeling the burden of being the lone wolf — and bordering on burnout.
What’s the better alternative?
So what are SMB owners and operators to do with a limited budget, but a strong focus on revenue growth? One solution that might make sense: outsourcing your marketing. (Curious about the pros and cons of in-house vs. outsourced digital marketing? We’ve got some thoughts.) Plus, here’s what one of our clients had to say about this approach:
“For a company of our size, having an in-house marketing team doesn’t make sense. We don’t need a full-time writer or creative director—we need fractions of those people—which is why it works to work with Peer, we have access to those people, but only when we need them.”
– Lee Farabaugh, Core10
Why it’s better for SMBs to outsource marketing and sales support.
Outsourced marketing is not a new concept. These firms are experts and have deep talent in every facet of marketing, including:
- Web design
- Graphic design
- Copywriting
- Social media
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Videography
- Photography
- Funnel analysis
- CRM management
- Sales methodology
- Trade Shows
- PPC
- Branding
- Cadence and scripting
All of these talents play an integral role in the lead generation and sales acceleration process for growth-focused companies. Unfortunately, small and medium-sized businesses cannot afford to acquire these individuals and would likely miss the mark if trying to hire on their own. An attempt to hire the many roles it takes to successfully implement a marketing and sales strategy would be north of $600,000 per year!
Fortunately, firms like Peer employ some of the top talent in the industry, and you can leverage that talent for just a fraction of the cost. The key is that you are sharing that talent with other clients on the agency’s roster. (Check out this breakdown of the costs of outsourcing digital marketing.) You get access to specialists when you need them; like sales writers, bloggers, social media specialists, videographers, animators, sales coaches, creative directors, and more.
Instead of hiring that one marketing lead at $125,000 with little impact, or making a full investment in a complete team for $600,000, Peer provides an affordable $12,999/mo. solution that gives you the power of an enterprise marketing and sales support team for about the price of hiring a marketing director. Even better? There’s no ramp-up or onboarding with Peer — from the second you hire us, we’re ready to get started. All the reward, none of the risk (yep, you can cancel anytime), and our clients really see us as their own personal marketing team — a true partner and extension of the in-house team.
“We had, in the past, worked with another agency and it was a so-so experience. A lot of expense and not a lot of results. Meeting Peer was a breath of fresh air, they just felt like an extension of our team. They understood it was ultimately about sales — that we needed to close deals!”
– Lee Farabaugh, Core10
Wondering how our prices stack up? Download our price comparison of Peer vs. in-house vs. traditional agency — then give us a call and learn how Peer could help you get 10x leads and grow revenue by 200%.
