Should More Brands Bring Marketing In-House?
Artificial intelligence and automation have made marketing management more accessible to even those who have no prior experience. Now, an increasing number of businesses are beginning to consider bringing more marketing operations under their own roof instead of sourcing the work to marketing or digital agencies.
Of course, a marketing agency holds a lot of value for a business. Agencies can invest more resources into content creation and analytics for a business who simply doesn’t have the manpower to accomplish this on its own. Agencies are also powerhouses with a lot of previous experience, making them an ideal fit for a business that needs a bit of guidance when it comes to marketing.
Now, though, most platforms have made the management and execution of campaigns easier and more accessible. A more intuitive, user-friendly platform can encourage brands to bring more marketing work in-house, choosing instead to have full control over creative and implementation.
While having marketing in-house may not always be a fit for every business, there are several advantages that are made possible by recent advancements within the industry.
Brands Can Own Their Marketing Process — and Their Data
Data privacy is a hotter topic now more than ever, and for good reason. Users are increasingly more aware of how their data is managed, and brands must tread carefully when handling user opt-ins so as not to violate practices such as GDPR.
By handling marketing in-house, brands can eliminate more potential clutter and have fewer eyes and hands on their customers’ information. In addition to customer data, businesses also want to safeguard their own proprietary information. Keeping the marketing and its resulting data under the same roof can help ward off any unwanted data breaches that may come from a third party.
Bringing Marketing In-House Saves Money
Every brand has a budget to stick by, and sadly there are many instances in which marketing budgets are cut in order to shift resources to other priorities. Bringing the marketing efforts, or at least a good amount of the work, in-house can often slice costs.
In an effort to save on budget space, relying on a marketing staff to complete tasks and gather information can be more cost-effective than spending the money on agency costs. However, it’s important to remember here that in some cases this can come at the intangible cost of quality of work.
If a business plans to bring its marketing in house, it must be prepared to have a capable staff ready to take on the additional work and handle the creative aspects of the job. Having a staff who will be overworked or otherwise rendered incapable of doing high quality work will ruin any benefits of bringing marketing in house.
For this reason, brands should not decide to make this change solely because of budget concerns. After all, there may be additional hiring needs that are brought about by this decision, and that will eat into the cost savings. But this is important in order for this strategy to succeed, otherwise, the brand may be better off leaving marketing in the hands of the experienced agency.
