You’ve created something great.
You’ve put in the sleepless nights. You’ve mapped out a sales plan. You’ve hired a team. But if the right customers don’t know you exist, how do you intend to keep scaling your business?
We get it: It’s hard to give up control of even the tiniest part of your business—let alone something as important as the branding, marketing tactics, and messaging of your company. But you can’t do it all, and trying to do it all leads to half-baked plans and choppy execution, or worse—inaction.
And inaction is what keeps your business from reaching that next level of success. That’s when outsourcing a B2B marketing team just makes sense.
There are four main reasons companies should consider outsourcing marketing teams or even hiring a virtual CMO—do you fall into any of these categories?
Related reading: Why Should B2Bs Consider a Virtual CMO?
1. You don’t have the time.
It’s understandable that you’re busy. But do you have the time to figure out your return on investment? Determining ROI on PR is never straightforward, and without the right tools and expertise, it’s nearly impossible.
Related reading: A 24-Point PR Checklist Proven to Maximize Your B2B Public Relations Strategy
Strategic public relations includes reporting tools like Cision and Meltwater to help determine the size of the audience, reach, and influence an outlet has, but we also stay laser-focused on broader analytics tools, like Google Analytics.
Here’s how it works.
Let’s say you got a piece of great press in Forbes, with a link to your website.
By looking at the traffic sources on your Google Analytics dashboard and clicking “Referral,” you can see whether that piece of press actually sent people to your site.
How much of that traffic was new? How much was qualified traffic? How high (or low) was the bounce rate? Are they visiting other pages on your site, downloading content, filling out an email capture form?
There’s tons of information you can get about how PR hits are affecting your overall ROI—it just takes a good deal of time and effort to find it. That’s why a B2B PR and marketing agency can be a huge help.
And beyond PR, a strong brand that converts requires a great website with engaging and informative copy and an eye-catching design, a strong SEO ranking that is bolstered by a regular blog cadence, an engaged social media audience, and more. If you don’t have time to write, edit, design, track, analyze, strategize, and more, then the odds of prospects engaging with your brand are low—and that’s costing you. Without all of the pieces in place, you’ll lose momentum.
2. You don’t have the resources.
You may have a Marketing professional or two on your team. They may have great backgrounds in marketing strategy, they may write good copy, and maybe they know the basics of B2B SEO. But CMO burnout is on the rise. Expecting a few people to handle design, development, strategy, data analysis, and more across your own website, several social media platforms, earned media, your email communications, digital campaigns, and more—and then get you great PR placements on top of that, is unrealistic. Do your internal team a favor and support them with outsourced marketing experts.
One of the biggest reasons to start working with a B2B PR and marketing agency and utilize their outsourced marketing services is because they can help you break into the top tier of press outlets: Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and more.
This is the barrier that many brands struggle to break through, and here at Zen Media, it’s the thing we hear most often from brands that decide to partner with us.
When you work with a full-service PR and Marketing agency, you have access to outsourced marketing professionals that specialize in everything from mapping out a campaign strategy, to creating engaging and strategic content, to monitoring metrics, to tracking ROI and SEO rankings, and then some. Basically, you’d have a one-stop-shop that handles the work you’d need quite a few in-house employees to handle.
While getting into a local newspaper or scheduling an interview on an industry blog may be achievable without a dedicated team, the reality is that getting into those major, top-tier publications, or targeting the most popular industry blogs and podcasts, does not.
This is where multifaceted outsourced marketing professionals can be a massive help. They know the outlets, they know which journalists cover which topics, and they have strong relationships with those journalists and other creators that help your pitch get seen.
Without working with a PR team, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to break that ceiling.
3. You’re not getting the desired results.
B2B PR and marketing is a long game, and it can be tough at times to know whether you’re slowly building momentum—or swinging and missing.
A holistic marketing and PR agency will not only be able to speed up the rate at which you get press attention, traction on your social media channels, and website visitors, but they’ll also be able to give you realistic expectations when it comes to how quickly you can expect results. The timeline will vary depending on your industry, niche, and current brand awareness levels, not to mention external factors like the time of year, news cycle, etc.
4. You’re Not Speaking in Social Media.
Many B2B businesses think that all they have to do to win the social media game is to create an account and post, but social media success is far from instant. Succeeding in B2B social media marketing takes time—likely, more time than you expect. Even if you see a huge increase in the number of followers you have, conversions don’t happen with consistent engagement—and that means a strong posting cadence, well-written and well-designed content, and community management that makes your followers feel heard.
A marketing agency that specializes in social media engagement will watch your analytics, stick to your goals, and pivot as needed. That’s why agencies that specialize not only in marketing and PR but also in social media strategy can help bridge the divide.
We know it’s scary. But with the right marketing team, it won’t feel like outsourcing. Your outsourced team will be an extension of your own team. Here at Zen, our goal is to get to the Bullet Points & Blessings point with all of our clients.
What’s that, exactly? The term was created by Shama Hyder, our CEO and founder. What it means: Give us a few bullet points on XYZ topic and your blessing to run with them, and we’ll get to work. We’ll do the heavy lifting of creating content, finding trends to comment on, and building momentum for your brand.
When we’re at the point that we know the brand, the industry, and the strategy well enough to operate on Bullet Points & Blessings, that’s when we can really drive success for our clients.
What should you look for when hiring a PR agency?
Simple: One that can do it all. Are you looking for an agency that can do it all? Let’s chat.
