Working with an outsourced marketing agency is a great option when you want to augment your existing team’s capabilities with additional resource, extra skills, or a new perspective. Whether you’ve got a small team who needs support, or a large project on the horizon that requires specialist skills. 

In this blog, we discuss how your in-house marketing team can best work with an agency to build a great relationship, and great results. 

Where can an agency add the most value to your team?

The main benefits of outsourced marketing services are:

• Fast and high-quality delivery
• Strategic thinking with an unbiased, outsider’s perspective
• Tried and tested best practices for producing results
• Cost effective compared to hiring in-house

But, where an agency can add the most value for you really depends on what your business goals are, what marketing activity you need to achieve them, and where your gaps lie accordingly.

RELATED: The complete guide to outsourced marketing – what, why, when, how, and who?

Here are the 3 main ways an outsourced marketing agency can add value, depending on your motivations for seeking one out:

1. If you have a skills gap

If you have a skills gap, a marketing agency can provide specialist expertise. Agencies have specifically trained teams for everything from content marketing to social media management to paid advertising.

Therefore, they can provide a focused service to support an upcoming project, or on an ongoing basis. For example, many startups and SMEs don’t have a permanent graphic design team because it’s such a niche and expensive skill.

Social media execs likely have some Canva or AI skills that get them through your everyday design needs, but they wouldn’t be comfortable with bigger projects or ones that require specialist tools to complete. For example, a rebrand, video production, or product design. In these cases, you may want to consider outsourced design services.

2. If you need additional resource

Do you want to ramp up your blogging, or launch omnichannel marketing campaigns? Or, is your team so swamped that there’s no time to plan, just react? A full-service marketing team is an ideal solution.

Not only can they flexibly fill resource gaps across your marketing team, but they can also help you establish a long-term plan that focuses your team’s resource, and processes that streamline operations.

This should improve your marketing ROI by saving you time and increasing your output.

3. If you aren’t getting results

Maybe you’ve been actioning a plan, but it just isn’t getting the results you expected. Outsourcing can help you overcome this in two ways.

• First, an agency can offer a new, strategic perspective. They should perform an analysis of your existing activity and results when they join you to identify what’s going wrong, what’s working well, and what opportunities you aren’t taking advantage of. Then, they can help you create a marketing strategy to improve results.
• Secondly, an outsourced agency has the experience to know what works and what doesn’t. They can help you implement best practices to improve results, and even knowledge share to upskill your team.

A customer example – enhancing their internal team

After being acquired in 2024, Planet Mark was experiencing business growth and wanted to augment their marketing team’s resource. We provided a blended service, including our CEO acting as a fractional CMO and giving Planet Mark access to a full-service delivery team that integrated very closely with their own.

You may also be interested in: Do I need a fractional CMO or an outsourced marketing agency?

Tips for working with an outsourced agency

Define and share responsibilities

Clearly define who will be responsible for what and what the processes will be, upfront.

For example, you may be paying a company to manage your social media, but who will review and approve things? Who will post on your channels? Will you plan together, or is this solely the agency’s responsibility?

It’s also helpful for you to have a primary contact who liaises with your agency’s account manager. Here are the main benefits:

• You have complete oversight of what’s going on both internally and externally
• Both teams remain coordinated and aligned
• Individuals are working only on their agreed responsibilities
• Tasks aren’t being duplicated or missed
• Any ad hoc requests from your team are filtered through your point of contact

Make sure you choose the best digital marketing agency for you with this blog.

Collaborate and contribute your expertise

What you can’t outsource is your knowledge. No marketing agency (however good) can replace your industry experience.

That’s why, the more your company’s experts can contribute to your marketing, the more insightful and unique it will become. In the world of AI-generated content, the more genuine opinions and perspectives you can share the better.

So, get your team to attend ideation sessions, planning workshops and interviews whenever they can.

Treat them like a trusted team member

There’s definitely a balance to strike when it comes to trust.

Some clients take the attitude of, ‘just get on with it’. And it’s certainly more efficient to give an agency total autonomy. But without your input, an agency can’t align their work with your commercial goals. What they produce likely won’t generate the best results, and it won’t be as authentic to your brand as it could be.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t create too short a leash. Some clients find it hard to relinquish control and can over-manage their agency’s outputs. As a result, work takes much longer to produce and may end up reflecting your client’s preferences rather than proven best practices.

The best relationships are characterised by a mutual trust, where each party is able to take the lead where their expertise lies.

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