Should you, without question, hire Farmhouse Creative to manage your marketing operations, no matter who you are, what your needs are, and what your preferences are?

Hmmm … sorry, it’s just not that simple. There are basically three ways to utilize a marketing agency. As you’ll see, depending on your business, it would be a lose-lose proposition to choose the wrong strategy.

1. Everything Outsourced.

This is the solution for you if you are a small business owner without the skills or time to manage marketing yourself, and without the budget to hire a marketing director (minimum expected salary not including benefits = $41,000). The marketing consultancy by contrast is essentially a contract employee you can pay, well, LOTS less than $40K.

This might not be the right solution if you have a core marketing competency that is central to your brand, maybe in social media, photography, graphic design, or web development. If you are a photographer, for example, you should produce your own work. You just might need help showcasing it, which brings us to Option 2.

2. Some Things Outsourced.

We’re talking here about ongoing needs that require specialized expertise that you don’t have on your team. According to Inc.com columnist Drew Hendricks, search engine optimization (SEO) is one of those time-consuming areas that even the most marketing savvy business might want to farm out. SEO goes hand-in-hand with content marketing, and an agency can handle both for you.

This may be the best option if you can’t afford to build a team for digital and/or print marketing in-house but you’re concerned about control over the finished product. Manage those items you’re best at yourself, ease into outsourcing the rest. The approval process on marketing materials is yours to dictate; you can approve the print pieces, edit the blog posts, etc., for a while and become more hands-off as your confidence in the work grows.

3. Projects Outsourced as Needed.

This is a popular option for companies with in-house marketing teams who simply get overloaded from time to time. There’s an event to promote, a website to launch, a new direct mail campaign to set into motion, and there just aren’t enough hands on deck to meet the deadline. It can be far more cost-effective to hire out on contract than it is to hire in temporarily to get things done.

If you have a big marketing department and you want to cut costs by hiring us in its place, hold on … that might not be best for your company. On the other hand, if you’re a small business owner pulling your hair out, getting no sleep because you’re trying to do it all yourself, you may find you will make more money hiring those tasks out and sticking to what you do best.

Maybe you’re somewhere in between. Let’s talk and figure out what your needs really are. Then we can make a plan so we’re there for you just as much as you need us to be.