New UK research has revealed that many UK companies are choosing to outsource marketing to external media agencies or freelancers rather than run marketing in-house.
A survey of over a thousand workers carried out by digital marketing agency, Marketingsignals revealed that more than 42% of UK organisations don’t handle their marketing in-house.
For most companies, it’s a dept that they’d prefer to outsource due to the difficulties in finding the right people for these types of roles – with 1 in 3 saying they can’t find someone qualified for the marketing role and 35% saying they don’t have the resource to handle it internally or dont think marketing is strategically important.
Moreover, almost one in three (32%) confessed that they prefer to outsource this to benefit from the expertise of external marketers. In addition to this, more than 1 in 4 (22%) said outsourcing their marketing activity offers them cost savings in the longer term.
The marketing sub-category least likely to be handled in house was found to be digital marketing (63%), with social media marketing (59%) close behind.
The third most common outsourced marketing category was email marketing (44%), followed by Public Relations (36%) and finally, direct marketing (29%).
Gareth Hoyle, CEO at Marketingsignals, comments: “The research shows how company leaders are relying on other means to handle their marketing, rather than opting to handle this activity in-house.
“This appears to mostly be happening within the subcategory of the digital marketing sector. This is understandable, as industry best practices are regularly updated, and it can be challenging for organisations to keep up to date with the very latest best practices in digital marketing. Having a dedicated external marketing team that are expert in their field and have access to all the latest tools will help to manage and streamline the process.