In-house Marketing: What’s the Catch?
The Marketplace for Marketing
Having an ingenious product/service that provides ordinary shoppers with simple solutions to all-too-common problems is the enterprising first step toward a prosperous future.
But there still exists an insurmountable valley that impedes your advancement towards it; brand awareness. As its namesake indicates, brand awareness ascertains your company’s recognisability and its ease of recollection amongst your ideal shoppers.
Australian businesses of all stripes would cease to exist without captivating marketing. A distinct absence in brand awareness is a dearth of prospective customers lining up to purchase your product/service; the coup-de-grace for any business.
Marketing is the symbolic bridge across that cavernous trench, inching your brand closer to its target audience. In fact, 46% of U.S consumers cite an increased willingness to pay more for brands they recognise.
Therefore, the intrinsic value that marketing delivers to fledgling companies is immeasurable. And as a Brisbane brand agency, we couldn’t agree more!
But with that, emerges an existential dilemma: should you assemble an in-house marketing department for the trials and tribulations ahead?
Long story short, there is no definitive answer! But before you start reaching your own conclusions, let’s take a brief gander at the pros and cons of in-house marketing.
In-house Marketing in a nutshell
In-house marketing involves the employment of a marketing department dedicated to the planning and actioning of your company’s branding strategies and campaigns.
Typically, each member has a definitive purpose, every functioning cog serving a purpose beyond him/her (copywriting, digital marketing, SEO specialist etc.). On occasion, some teammates may have multi-disciplinary backgrounds, with interchangeable responsibilities.
Regardless, the ownership of a private, marketing team raises some intriguing benefits.
The Upsides:
- Know Thyself
Businesses have a holistic outlook not just for the future, but their present economic, marketing and political circumstances. Such intangible knowledge is tacit, and can only be consciously grasped by internal stakeholders with first-hand experience nurturing the business.
Initially, a newly-established marketing department may suffer from a lack of consistent exposure within the organisation. But over time, the company’s inner workings soon reveal themselves, with back-end linkages between both parties strengthening through frequent collaboration. Once enough time has elapsed, the department is proficient enough to maximise its marketing effectiveness.
While the same can be achieved with an external brand agency, their effectiveness is hindered by the touch-and-go dynamic of their interactions and their chronic unfamiliarity
However, there are several noteworthy caveats that outweigh the benefits of employing an in-house marketing team.
The Flipsides:
- Distraction derailment
As a business owner, your primary responsibility is to steer your company towards fiscal success by illuminating the pathway towards success. A visionary’s job is to iron out that vision, and allow your departments to translate it into a resounding success.
In reality, there are many moving parts (departments) to be overseen in every business. In such dire circumstances, business owners are exhausting themselves in their attempts to nudge each department in the same direction. In the unfortunate case of start-up companies, this is almost always the case.
Adding a marketing department into the mix is an unnecessary worry for every business owner to wrestle with. - Cost, cost, and costs
In an ideal world, we’d want our profit-and-loss statements to showcase more of the former, and less of the latter. In reality, it’s a lot more irregular than that!
Hiring an active team of marketing professionals is a monthly cost centre that accrues debt over time. Hubspot defines a cost centre as a department that does not directly generate any revenue or income for the business.
That’s not to say that marketing plays no bearing in growing your business! It’s just objectively difficult to quantify.
Given the subjective nature of the marketing profession, any efforts may take months, or even years to bear observable fruit. Consequently, a 50-50 possibility of brand-awareness failure from low-quality marketing is too costly a risk for small businesses to bear.
Moreover, having to remunerate the entire department on a full-time basis deepens the loss sinkhole.
In short, it’s a ticking time bomb for potential financial devastation.
A Brisbane Brand Agency that goes the extra mile
As a Brisbane brand agency, Vesanique’s mission is to offer our branding expertise to help transition businesses into a sustainable future. Our tech-focused approach to branding comprises an arsenal of traditional and digital tools, each designed to solve any problems you might have like a glove!
And I know what you’re thinking; why would you besmirch the good name of external creative agencies like yourself during your in-house marketing spiel?
Here’s the Vesanique difference; we’re the exception to that proverbial rule:
- We can hear you, loud and clear
We’re not just your run-of-the-mill Brisbane brand agency; we’re a team! Vesanique adopts an “in-house” approach toward outsourced marketing. Thus, our collaborative approach emulates the strengths of an in-house marketing team, free of its shortcomings.
Each brand awareness/ideation meeting affords us an unobstructed view of your brand’s mission, its values and its private operations. Every client interaction provides us with an opportunity to educate ourselves on the unique nature of your business. Therefore, only through recurrent interaction can we competently fill the shoes of an internal marketing department. - Cost-effectiveness
The financial upkeep to maintain an internal marketing department is a surefire way to stall your company’s progress. At Vesanique, our proposed quotes provide a stringent breakdown of every cost the project will (or likely) incur.
They are reasonably priced to reflect our steadfast dedication to delivering outstanding value to our clients. All we require is a one-off payment to cover the duration of the project. - Reinvest your time and effort
As established earlier, time and effort are alternative resources that experience more scarcity than money.
Being a Brisbane brand agency with an illustrious career spanning 10 years, Vesanique is 100% self-reliant and requires little-to-no oversight after the ideation phase. Our proven track record of client case studies is a testament to our resolute dedication to branding exceptionalism.
By handing Vesanique the keys to the marketing machine, you’re freeing up those faculties to be reinvested in more urgent areas of the business (meetings with key stakeholders, negotiating with clients etc.).
These are but mere glimpses into what Vesanique can help raise your brand awareness to unforeseen heights. Above all, every project is not a one-off transaction that’s just done and dusted. Rather, we nurture life-long partnerships and meaningful friendships with our clients.
And that’s a wrap, folks!
Time waits for no one, and it’s high time that we traversed the branding landscape together. Let’s mould your company into the “go-to” brand in the hearts and minds of your target audience!
But as always! We’d like to learn more about you and your business over a hot cup of coffee. Besides, no great project has ever begun without a shot of caffeine, don’t you agree?
Let’s talk, don’t be a stranger.