How to Assess Your Need for External Expertise

Disclaimer: This blog was originally published on LinkedIn.

I’ve put together hundreds of marketing plans over the years. In doing so, I’ve learned that most B2B companies need at least nine specialists on their marketing team if they want to realize their growth potential in the market.

Building out these foundational specialties on an in-house marketing team can be hugely beneficial to middle-market companies, providing easy collaboration and greater control than partnering with outside experts.

But often times, the scale and complexity of transformational change exceed in-house expertise. Here’s when seeking external professionals is sensible:

• Filling expertise gaps: Should your change initiative demand specialized skills that your team lacks, external specialists can provide the necessary expertise.
• Accelerating implementation: When timely execution is essential to meet strategic objectives, leveraging outside resources can quicken the pace.
• Objective problem-solving: A fresh set of eyes can offer new perspectives, objectivity, and innovative solutions to persistent issues that have eluded resolution.
• Mitigating risks: Drawing on the experiences of those who’ve successfully navigated similar transitions can help minimize missteps and create efficiency.
• Specialized skill sets for advanced tactics: When new marketing strategies involve sophisticated techniques or platforms that your team isn’t well-versed in, such as predictive analytics, advanced PPC optimization, leveraging the Google Analytics platform, or advanced technical (versus on-page) SEO tactics, external experts can fill these skill gaps, ensuring your strategy is executed with the highest level of expertise while reducing marketing investment waste.
• Objective strategy assessment: An external viewpoint can be critical in assessing the effectiveness of your current strategy. Professionals outside your organization can conduct impartial audits and bring insights that might be overlooked internally due to inherent biases.
• Navigating complex integrations: If your marketing strategy requires integrating complex new systems or software that interact with multiple business functions, external experts can manage these integrations smoothly, ensuring systems work seamlessly together without disrupting existing operations.
• Accountability: Many leaders find it simpler to hold an external team accountable for guaranteed outcomes.

When bringing in external marketing experts, find the right fit for your team. A good marketing agency can fill in where your team is lacking, bring in new ideas, and help you get things done more quickly and effectively. They’ve been through this kind of change before and can guide you through it, reducing the chances of costly mistakes. So take a close look at what your organization aims to achieve and consider how an external team could support your goals. 

If you do decide to partner with an agency, check out the 12 Battles^TM Reader Hub for 20 questions to ask potential agency partners to ensure you’re getting your money’s worth.

By Lori Turner-Wilson, RedRover CEO/Founder, Internationally Best-Selling Author of The B2B Marketing Revolution^TM: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes

Taking Action

Knowing when to bring in outside help is one of hundreds of best practices found in The B2B Marketing Revolution^TM: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes — the playbook that middle-market B2B CEOs and marketing leaders lean on to scale. Backed by a groundbreaking research study, this book offers time-tested best practices, indispensable KPIs for benchmarking, insights on where your dollars are best spent, and, above all, the proven 12 Battles^TM Framework for generating guaranteed marketing outcomes. The B2B Marketing Revolution^TM is a battle-hardened approach to becoming an outcomes-first leader who’s ready to shake up the status quo, invest in high-payoff market research and optimization, and — yes — even torch what’s not serving your endgame. Download more than 50 templates, scripts and tools from the book on the Battle Reader Hub.

If you’d like to talk about how to build a marketing engine that delivers predictable results — whether you want to build it yourself or tag in our team to lead the way — we’d be delighted to help you get started.