10 Best Places to Outsource Marketing

For a lot of business owners, the thought of outsourcing something as important as marketing can fill them with concern.

They worry about the loss of control and what happens if something goes wrong, and it adversely affects their brand.

This is normal; after all, you have spent years and put your blood, sweat, and tears into building up your business. But if done right, outsourcing marketing can be a big success.

What is outsourced marketing?

Outsourced marketing is the process of contracting marketing tasks to an external provider. Some businesses choose to outsource specific marketing functions, such as PPC or content writing, while others choose to outsource all of their marketing needs. Marketing can be outsourced to freelancers or agencies. 

Why outsource marketing?

While hiring in-house for marketing is an option, it’s much less time-intensive to outsource marketing to a provider, as they have the tools, staff, and systems in place to provide marketing services in a “done for you” manner.

For example, few companies will have the necessary team of developers, UX designers, and web designers, to create a beautiful and functional website. In this case, it’s easier to outsource this task to a provider who can take care of it and deliver a final product.

The same idea applies to content writing. While you can hire content writers to write articles, if you need hundreds of articles for multiple clients, then it’s easier to have an outsourced marketing provider write all of the content for you and deliver it all promptly.

10 websites to outsource your marketing

There are many places where you can outsource marketing. Some providers can help with multiple aspects of marketing while others are specialized in certain areas. Here are 10 places to consider.

1. Writing Studio

Writing Studio is a content writing agency that writes various types of content such as articles, white papers, press releases, product descriptions, and more.

Written content is an important part of marketing. Choosing a company like Writing Studio to write content for you is a no-brainer for many businesses, especially agencies with multiple clients.

Writing Studio writes content for every industry imaginable, from fintech to medicine, and law. The company only hires subject matter experts (i.e PhDs, J.Ds) to write content. All content is optimized for SEO, CMS-formatted, and edited and proofread by in-house copy editors.

If you’re looking for a full-service marketing agency that can take care of everything from web design to PPC, then Writing Studio won’t be a good fit for you. If you need written content, then they’re a great choice.

2. WebFX

WebFX is a large digital marketing agency with clients around the world. They provide most digital marketing services businesses need, from SEO to website design, conversion optimization, and PPC. WebFX uses proprietary software backed by IBM’s Watson to help create data-driven strategies for your marketing initiatives.

If you’re looking to outsource a large portion of your marketing, then a marketing agency like WebFX is a good option to consider.

WebFX (as of Monday, October 7th, 2021) claim to have driven $2.46 billion in revenue for their clients. They have a great overall reputation and have provided their services to large enterprises such as Subway.

3. Upwork

Upwork is a freelance marketplace that connects businesses with freelancers and agencies around the world. You can find freelancers here with skills in all aspects of marketing, ranging from web design to copywriting, lead generation, PPC, and everything in between.

With a pool of millions of freelancers, of all skill levels and hourly rates, there’s no shortage of talent to outsource your marketing to here. To get started, you post a job with your requirements and wait for freelancers to apply. You can also invite specific freelancers by using their search function.

The downside of Upwork is that it’s likely going to require more management and time from your end vetting freelancers, as opposed to working with an agency that takes care of everything for you.

4. Blue Corona

Blue Corona is a digital marketing agency that specializes in home services – i.e industires like electrical, flooring, construction, pest control, and plumbing. They offer a broad spectrum of marketing services, such as SEO, PPC, lead recovery, email marketing, and more.

Blue Corona is a great choice for home service-related businesses that simply want their marketing outsourced so that they can focus on what they’re best at – delivering their home services to customers.

The company has a solid reputation online and appears to be a provider you can trust with your marketing needs, especially if your business is related to home services.

5. Thrive Agency

Thrive Agency is an internet marketing agency offering a variety of digital marketing services. You can outsource SEO, PPC, social media, web design, and more to their team of marketing specialists. Whether you need technical SEO for your ecommerce website or help with Walmart marketplace, they’re able to help.

As a company with a large team of experts in different marketing fields, they can help with every aspect of your marketing, making them a great company to work with if you have a broad range of marketing campaigns you require help with.

Thrive Agency has a great reputation and has served thousands of clients. While their pricing is likely higher than smaller boutique marketing companies, you can expect to receive high-quality deliverables. 

6. SmartSites

SmartSites is a U.S based marketing agency operating since 2011. They offer multiple outsourced marketing services including web design, SEO, and PPC.

To work with SmartSites you need to contact them, describe your specific needs, and then they’ll put together a proposal for you to consider. The great thing about SmartSites is that they’re a full-service marketing agency and can help with all aspects of your marketing initiatives.

Overall SmartSites have great reviews and are a well-known and respected company that you can rely on for your marketing needs, especially for web design-related tasks.

7. Victorious SEO

Victorious SEO is a place where you can outsource SEO tasks to. They’re specifically focused on this aspect of marketing so they’re a great choice if you need specific help with SEO. They offer link building, SEO copywriting, SEO audits, and keyword research as part of their services.

They serve various verticals, including fashion, real estate, cannabis, law, and help companies of all sizes from small businesses to enterprises. They have some of the best reviews in the industry, have won multiple awards, and have testimonials to back up their claims of getting results.

If you’re looking for a place to outsource your SEO marketing to, then Victorious appears to be a great option.

8. Ignite Visibility

Ignite Visibility is a marketing company well known for its SEO services, though they offer many other marketing services, including, PPC, social media marketing, public relations, and conversion optimization. Ignite Visibility is a good choice whether you need to outsource one specific type of marketing or you need help with multiple marketing initiatives.

To work with them, you get in touch by providing them with basic information about your company. Then they’ll get in touch with you to discuss your marketing needs and give you a quote and terms to consider.

Ignite Visibility has a solid reputation with great reviews on multiple third-party review websites such as Clutch.

9. Brafton

Brafton is a content marketing agency that specializes in creating content, such as written content (articles, white papers, ebooks), videos, infographics, and they also provide paid advertising and email advertising as part of their services.

Brafton’s a great choice if you need outsourced marketing that heavily focuses on the content side of things as opposed to having everything taken care of – such as web design.

Overall they have good reviews and have been around for a while, meaning you can count on them to deliver. Their pricing isn’t fixed, so it appears they customize their offerings based on a client’s specific needs.

10. Straight North

Straight North is a full-service internet marketing firm where you can outsource most multiple aspects of marketing. Their team can help with SEO, PPC management, web design, graphic design, display advertising, email marketing, and more.

They provide their services for pretty much every industry imaginable from aviation to sports and finance and have many great case studies and portfolio pieces to validate the quality of their services.

Overall, they seem like a solid choice to count on for outsourcing marketing, especially for SEO, PPC, and web design which seem to be their focus points.

Tips for outsourcing marketing

While outsourcing marketing can work well, there’s a right and wrong way to approach things. Here are some key tips to ensure you make a good decision when choosing an outsourced marketing provider.

1. Create a plan

Before you can even think about looking for companies to outsource your marketing to, you need to create a marketing plan so that you know what your marketing needs are. Your marketing plan can cover everything from your marketing strategies to the specific tactics that you are going to use.

When you have a plan, you can start to work out what parts of the plan you can do in-house and which parts you want or need to outsource.

If you skip this step, then you are much more likely to overspend and hire freelance marketers and companies without knowing what it is you need from them.

For example, if content writing is a large part of your content strategy, then you will need to determine if you have employees who can research, write, and publish high-quality articles, blog posts, e-books, and other content types. If not, then you can start to look for freelance writers to outsource this task to.

2. Choose the right partner

Once you know what parts of your marketing you want to outsource, you have to decide if you want to work with an agency or hire freelancers. 

A freelancer or team of freelancers are individuals who you can employ on a per-job basis to carry out tasks such as writing blog posts, writing and issuing press releases, writing product descriptions, managing your social media accounts, writing newsletters, or managing your Google Ads, for example.

An agency, on the other hand, is a company that will be able to manage all or part of your marketing needs and will hire freelancers themselves if they don’t have the necessary skills in-house.

Freelancers are great if you want to build up a long-term relationship with them, and you only have very specific parts of your marketing plan that you want to outsource or have ghost-written.

You can manage the relationship with them yourself, and in many ways, they become like an employee – but without the costs.

An agency is a better option if you want to outsource lots of marketing tasks and have them manage all of the different staff it takes to carry out the work or require specific marketing tasks at scale. 

It will cost you more money to work with an agency, but it will be less stressful, and you will be able to take advantage of the services from a larger pool of talent.

3. Communication is key

Once you have decided who to partner with to outsource your marketing, it is then really important to develop open and clear communication lines.

It is important so that you can give clear instructions for the work that you want to be done. If you can give your partners clear and concise instructions, then you will avoid having to go back and forth, making revisions.

But just remember this can take time, so be patient and try and ensure you and your partners are perfecting the process as time goes on.

You also need to have a dedicated person within your company whose job it is to be the point-person with your freelancers or marketing agency. 

This ensures everyone involved knows who is in charge and who they need to contact when there are problems. Utilizing technology platforms like Slack, Zoom, Google Hangouts, and email is a great way to enhance communication.

Overall, remember that it is much better to have open communications so that questions can be asked and answered early so that you don’t have to spend lots of time fixing errors later.

4. Subject-matter expertise is important

It is really important to maintain your authenticity in your marketing materials when outsourcing marketing tasks to outsiders. 

You spend years building up a unique voice and style for your brand, so to protect this, it is a good idea to provide your partners with a detailed style guide for them to follow and provide lots of past examples of your marketing for them to use as a guide.

Try to hire freelancers and agencies that have a lot of domain knowledge about your industry; this will help keep your marketing efforts authentic, unique, and engaging.

For example, if you require content to be written about medical topics, then it is best to hire healthcare writers with experience and credentials in this particular field.

5. Develop systems

If you develop a great workflow system, then you can avoid all sorts of problems, especially when it comes to quality control. Having a well-planned and communicated workflow will ensure that your outsourcing partners can stick to the same schedule.

The internet has made it a lot easier to develop systems so that everybody is on the same page. Tools like Google Docs, Trello, and others are relatively inexpensive and provide a great central point of contact.

For example, you can use Google Docs for your freelancers to upload completed blog posts and then add editing notes so that they can make revisions. This way, everybody knows what is happening with each piece of content.

Finally, it is important to develop a good feedback loop so that over time you and your freelancers or agency can learn and improve.

The bottom line

Outsourcing your marketing can be something that comes with risks but also has many rewards.

To make it work, it all starts with creating a plan, then carefully choosing your partners, having great communication, maintaining authenticity across your marketing materials, and finally having great systems in place.

If you can do all of these things, then you will avoid problems and will receive all of the benefits, including access to a greater pool of marketing talent, increased conversations, and reduced costs.