Study Notes
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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
Commonly outsourced skills
In terms of digital marketing outsourcing, the most commonly outsourced skills include:
- Website management
- Social media management
- SEO
- PPC advertising
- Content marketing
- Brand management and PR
- Digital design
There are a number of reasons why companies outsource. Outsourcing can offer you:
- Expertise
- Flexibility
- Savings
- Accountability
- Cross-industry knowledge
- Objectivity
- Speed to market
In-house versus third-party capabilities
The benefits of nurturing capabilities in-house are:
- Faster communication: It is much easier to communicate changes to strategy with people positioned internally within the organization.
- Closer control: Can review progress at any time.
- Savings: Don’t have the expense of outsourcing to an agency.
- Company knowledge: Have a great understanding of the company and business goals.
- Marketing synergy: Aligns activities with marketing strategy as a whole.
The benefits of using third-party expertise are:
- Save time: Can use third-parties to provide expertise quickly as opposed to extensive research.
- Professional expertise: Have a technical understanding of the task at hand.
- Outside perspective: Can provide a broader and often more objective view point of strategy.
- Access to specialized technology: Third-parties will often have access to expensive software that it isn’t feasible for the company to have access to.
Assessing third-parties
You should use benchmarks to assess the suitability of third-party providers. Typical benchmarks include:
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): System for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that convert into customers, or more generally, take any desired action on a webpage
- Brand character: A set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name
- Processes: A series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end
- Team personalities: Overarching personality of a group of individuals working together
- Sense of urgency: Clear desire and motivation to move with speed
- Commitment: The state or quality of being dedicated to a cause
- Technology: Machinery and devices developed from scientific knowledge
Questions to ask agencies
Ask any agency you consider using the following questions, to assess their suitability:
- Which methods do you use to communicate reports?
- Do you have evidence of past successes?
- What is your billing structure in terms of recurring fees?
- What will you do to get to know our business, industry, market, and customers?
- How do you plan to execute digital marketing differently to our current approach?
- What is your digital marketing process?
- How do you plan to do things differently, given our industry?
Digital Marketing Resources:
Satarupa Banerjee
Satarupa Banerjee holds an MBA from Cranfield University and an MSc from University College of Science and Technology. She has extensive experience across numerous industries including insurance, retail, healthcare and banking. Currently, she heads Direct Marketing Products in Direct Line Group where she has delivered several CRM campaigns. In the past she has also held roles as Customer Value Strategies Manager, Change Manager, and Sales Performance Manager.
Data protection regulations affect almost all aspects of digital marketing. Therefore, DMI has produced a short course on GDPR for all of our students. If you wish to learn more about GDPR, you can do so here:
The following pieces of content from the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library have been chosen to offer additional material that you might find interesting or insightful.
You can find more information and content like this on the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library
- Article: 7 Key Ingredients of a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy
- Article: Building an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy
- Presentation: Best Practices for Working with a Digital Agency
- Article: The Metrics to Focus on for Your Digital Marketing Campaign
You will not be assessed on this content in your final exam.
