When your marketing needs squash your ability to deliver, it’s time for professional help. For many small companies, marketing is less of a department and more of a (daunting) task and becoming more complex by the moment. With social media, search engine marketing, pay-per-click, analytics, email, direct mail, landing pages, and well, the list goes on, it is overwhelming. If you’re a small-business owner where the marketing falls to you — when and if you find the time — you know first hand the challenges of staying ahead of the technological curve and dreaming up creative messaging under pressure. Larger marketing departments are challenged too. With strict budgets, multiple stakeholders, teams to manage, and resource constraints, it’s amazing that projects get done at all. Large or small, meeting your marketing needs with available resources doesn’t have to be a choice between your in-house team and using freelancers or contractors; it’s about finding the right balance.

2. Your marketing has become the 800 lb. gorilla in
the room.
You wonder how outsourced services might work
with your current team and management.
You’ve thought about using an outsider to help
with marketing or creative services.
You wonder if an objective outsider might make a
difference in your campaign strategies.
Spider Trainers
Marketing automation has been shown to increase
qualified leads for businesses by as much as 451%.
As experts in drip and nurture marketing, Spider
Trainers is chosen by companies to amplify lead and
demand generation while setting standards for design,
development, and deployment.
Our publications are designed to help you get started,
and while we may be guilty of giving too much
information, we know that the empowered and
informed client is the successful client. We hope this
white paper does that for you.
We look forward to learning more about your needs.
Please contact us at 651 702 3793 or
cmeyer@spidertrainers.com.
YOU SHOULD READ THIS WHITE PAPER IF:
©2013 SPIDER TRAINERS

3. WHEN YOUR MARKETING NEEDS
SQUASH YOUR ABILITY TO DELIVER,
IT’S TIME FOR PROFESSIONAL HELP.
For many small companies, marketing is less of a
department and more of a (daunting) task and
becoming more complex by the moment. With social
media, search engine marketing, pay-per-click,
analytics, email, direct mail, landing pages, and well,
the list goes on, it is overwhelming.
If you’re a small-business owner where the marketing
falls to you — when and if you find the time — you
know first hand the challenges of staying ahead of the
technological curve and dreaming up creative
messaging under pressure. Larger marketing
departments are challenged too. With strict budgets,
multiple stakeholders, teams to manage, and resource
constraints, it’s amazing that projects get done at all.
Large or small, meeting your marketing needs with
available resources doesn’t have to be a choice
between your in-house team and using freelancers or
contractors; it’s about finding the right balance.
Many companies choose to only outsource activities
that are not core to their business. In that case,
determining what, when, and how much you should
consider for outside help means close inspection of a
number of factors — company size, cost of
outsourcing, available internal skill set, tacit industry
knowledge, and talent available beyond the front
door.
While it can be a difficult decision for owners, CMOs,
marketing managers, and directors alike, according to
a Harvard Business Review article, 53% of
surveyed marketing executives plan to use
external resources to help with their marketing.
If you’ve made the decision to augment your
in-house team, it becomes a matter of finding the right
blend for the business and marketing department.
There are two types of marketing resources:
Managed services. The vendor uses your
company’s marketing applications to execute
services. For instance, if you have an email-
automation application and you hire a contractor
to send emails through that system, you are using
managed services.
Business-process outsourcing. Assign the
management of a particular function to a third
party. For instance, hiring a search-engine
marketing company to create Google AdWords on
your behalf.
BENEFITING FROM THE RELATIONSHIP
Many companies believe that it’s a more-efficient use
of budget and team members to keep all marketing
internal. You might think that this arrangement
ensures you are not competing with other clients for
priority; and while this might be true, your internal
team is likely called upon to wear many hats, making
them generalists rather than the specialists.
When you contract all or some of your creative
services and marketing tasks, you can build a
partnership that strengthens and supports your
internal department. A relationship that can bring a
quick influx of expertise that your team may be
lacking. Managed well, it’s not a competitive
relationship, it’s the sharing of ideas that capitalize on
the depth of knowledge about your company or
product that lays within your internal team.
TAMING THE BEAST
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4. A stable of external resources that includes
freelancers, contractors, and perhaps specialty
agencies can add some heft to your efforts and fill in
the gaps when you:
Are lacking in a specific or domain expertise or
specialization.
Have insufficient bandwidth.
Have inadequate technology.
Are required to manage more costs as variable
expenses.
Are attempting to benchmark your department
against industry best practices.
Are undergoing rapid growth.
Have an unforeseen workload increase.
Have unplanned business expansion.
Are in need of faster delivery.
Do not have the time required to ramp up new
employees.
Are seeking an influx of new ideas and creativity.
Are developing a new brand.
As this list illustrates, effective marketing requires that
your team and the marketing manager have expertise
in many disciplines. This is a tall order for any team; no
matter how large. Successful partnerships are those
that are developed with suppliers that become
integral contributors to the marketing team.
Developing and fostering this type of relationship will
ensure your vendors feel as though they have a long-
term stake in the project’s success, and they’ll be much
more likely to go the extra mile.
GOOD VIBRATIONS
While your company may promote and encourage
employees to further their education while
employed, not all companies do. This can result in
your team’s skill set showing signs of attrition over
time. With a steady investment in training, your staff
can assume new duties and integrate new ideas and
technology in order to deliver professional results on
time and without compromising their existing
workload. However, if your staff is finding it
increasingly difficult to make time for training, or if
your budget doesn't allow it, turning to an outside
specialist can help.
An external creative-services provider is motivated to
stay on top of technology and industry trends by
sheer economics. Only profitable when they can
deliver projects on time and if they deliver on ROI,
outsourced talent must stay current with
advancements in order to reduce overhead and to
stay competitive, or suffer the consequences, such as
losing a customer or racking up unbillable hours.
INFUSION OF NEW CREATIVE JUICES
Marketing and branding is how your company is
presented to the public — be that in social media or
outbound or inbound marketing. Your in-house team
may be too close to the company to be objective
about what is needed in these public arenas.
Specialists will have an expertise that you may be
lacking and will save you from taking the time to
recruit. With an objective outsider you’ll also benefit
because when there is a bit of distance from the
business. External teams tend to focus on the
company’s core competencies and proven best
practices — rather than what the competitors are
doing. Your internal team can build upon this
infusion of new ideas while they manage the
immediate and critical business needs.
BROADEN YOUR FOCUS
When you get help for resource-intensive projects, the
morale of your department is lifted because you have
removed the pressures of an excessive workload. An
independent freelancer is more likely to be
influenced by a broad spectrum of disciplines, client
types, target audiences, and industries and this
brings a broader perspective to your approach.
BUDGET BENEFITS
Between payroll taxes, workers compensation,
insurance, paid holidays, sick time and vacations,
professional memberships, licenses, and other
benefits, the decision to add another person to your
in-house team will impact your business, both
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©2013 SPIDERTRAINERS

5. positively and not-so positively. Some costs, such as
hardware and software, training, office space, and so
on, can get very expensive very quickly and are the
costs that do not show up as a line item on your
budget, but still represent a drain on resources.
With outside help you will:
Benefit from an external team’s investment and
extensive resources.
Start each project with a unlimited experience
spectrum from which to choose.
Access expertise and fast turnaround when your
team is not able or is not trained in a particular
discipline.
Book the costs as a marketing-expense
deduction.
FREE YOUR TEAM
When your internal team is consumed with a work
overload, you should probably also consider the lost-
opportunity costs. With your team unavailable to take
on mission-critical projects or to deliver on time, a
freelancer will ensure that you do not:
Miss a deadline, product launch, or the release of
a new website.
Exceed your budget.
Fail to deliver on a pet project of management or
the C-suite.
WHY SPIDER TRAINERS
As this white paper illustrates, there are many benefits
to using outside marketing and creative services to
tame your 800 lb. marketing gorilla. If you’re ready for
help, turn to Spider Trainers.
We provide creative services to marketing
departments of 0 to 100. That’s not a typo. We
recognize that many companies have no marketing
department, per se, but that they still have a need for
marketing.
Spider Trainers is a network of more than 80 experts in
email development, web development, search-engine
optimization, analytics, graphic design, ad creation,
multimedia creation, social media postings, writing,
and editing. We can help you.
We look forward to learning more about your needs.
Please contact us at 651 702 3793 or
cmeyer@spidertrainers.com.
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©2013 SPIDERTRAINERS