Should You Be Outsourcing Your Association's Marketing?

Sometimes hiring a dedicated marketing employee or team just isn’t in the cards. Management, budgets, and resources can be major constraints on an association. For any organization, growth is one of the most important factors that lead to success. Especially with smaller associations, leaders often find themselves playing multiple roles in their organization and not being able to focus on important aspects of managing and overseeing the association and its members. When this begins to occur, it may be time to consider outsourcing your marketing. Below are some important cues that may lead you to believe outsourcing is the best option.

Memberships are declining or at a standstill. If no matter what you’re doing, your membership levels aren’t increasing, it may be time to consider looking at other options. Believe it or not, marketing can be easy to measure, if you’re working with people who know what they’re doing. If you outsource to efficient marketers, they will be able to link their efforts with marketing campaigns and see how membership levels are being affected, and have the statistics to report back to you on.
You are falling behind. As a leader, it’s expected that you will have a busy workload. However, if you find yourself always trying to play catch-up, then it may be wise to consider outsourcing. Not only will it eliminate the amount of unnecessary and irrelevant (to your position) work you have to do, but it will also allow professional marketers to spend dedicated time and produce better content.
Disappointed with results. One of the worst things that you can experience is being disappointed with the results of the work being produced. If you aren’t happy with the quality and content you are creating, then it might be best to put the job in a professional’s hands.

If your organization is experiencing any of these difficulties with marketing campaigns, outsourcing may be a great choice to look into. While outsourcing does require for you to give up some of your authority of marketing, it does have many benefits. An outsourced team will:

Write a detailed and comprehensive marketing plan for your association, and then move into execution for you. This is important because every organization needs a marketing plan; it will cut down time spent on marketing campaigns in the long run and increase membership levels.
Hire experienced professionals to exclusively market your association, without you needing to hire additional resources or do any of the work. These professionals will handle your everyday tasks that would otherwise be a burden. They will execute creative and purposeful content and track it to measure results.
Provide the hired marketers with marketing resources, including software, to allow them to get everything done efficiently. By providing them with resources, they will be able to create and track all of your organization’s marketing efforts, finding what works and reviewing areas to improve on.
Complete the planning, execution, and management of your association’s marketing efforts, based off of the plan written prior. They will also be sure to take any input you may have and create content that will be specific to your organization and your members.
Report to you on a regular basis for updates. Though you may be taken off the job for executing the marketing, you won’t be forgotten. This is still your association and outsourced marketers will make sure to include you as much as they can.

If your finding it tough to create, execute, measure, and manage your association, its members, and its marketing efforts, it might be time to consider outsourcing. It will relieve pressure off of you and only further the success of your association and help to directly increase membership levels.

Is your association in need of marketing help? I’m here to help! Contact me at JohnF@GrowSocially.com to discuss your association’s future and learn more about outsourced marketing services for your organization.