Rheana Hersey, Author at Outsource Marketing Responsible results, Outsourced Marketing Tue, 22 Jul 2025 20:50:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/cropped-OM-site-icon-32x32.png Rheana Hersey, Author at Outsource Marketing 32 32 10 reasons you should consider marketing outsourcing https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/10-reasons-you-should-consider-marketing-outsourcing/ https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/10-reasons-you-should-consider-marketing-outsourcing/#respond Wed, 08 Feb 2023 17:20:39 +0000 https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/?p=21116 The post 10 reasons you should consider marketing outsourcing appeared first on Outsource Marketing.

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Remember when marketing was fun?

Moving beyond the pandemic, companies are increasing their marketing budgets significantly. And why wouldn’t they? It’s creative, it’s strategic, and it’s rewarding as sh*t.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the details that you no longer find it fun. Or maybe your marketing can’t gain traction due to staff turnover, a marketing person suffering from burnout, or just plain busyness. One thing is clear: you need some serious help.

Well, you’re in luck because marketing outsourcing is kind of our jam, and we’re here to tell you exactly why you need it. It’s time to put the fun back into marketing.

What the heck is marketing outsourcing anyway?

Marketing outsourcing takes place when you allow a single external resource or team to take on the responsibility of your marketing. This can include everything from research, analysis, and strategic planning, to the execution of creative content, PR, direct marketing, communications, digital tactics, and even print management.

Outsourcing offers access to an experienced team of marketing specialists that can be scaled to help you achieve your goals. Outsourced marketing firms can work in tandem with existing marketing staff, or with companies that have no marketing department.

Still not sure about it? Let’s break down the ten reasons why marketing outsourcing might be right for you.

1. You’re stretched too thin.

Picture this: it’s a brand new year, and the ideas are flowing. You’ve always wanted to grow your marketing platform, and now is the time. New year, new you, right? The months fly by, and “create a marketing plan” sinks deeper and deeper into that never-ending to-do list. Marketing ideas have never been the problem; you’ve just got sh*t to do!

Marketing outsourcing allows you to tap into an experienced team that can make your vision a reality while you stay focused on the nitty-gritty of growing your business.

2. You want an objective marketing partner.

Traditional marketing firms or specialized vendors are understandably biased toward their discipline. In contrast, marketing outsourcing companies put every channel on the table. Depending on your team’s capabilities and your business objectives, you may just want to outsource strategic planning and creative services and turn your focus on your internal strengths.

When you outsource your marketing, you gain access to an integrated team of experts who provide valuable outside perspectives to your business. And one thing’s for sure, a good outsourced marketing partner will identify the best strategies and tailor tactics for you based on your specific company goals.

3. Managing freelancers and agencies are hard.

Vetting, hiring, and overseeing freelance talent and agencies takes time and effort, which can hold up projects and bog you down in the minutiae. Along with this, trying to manage conflicting personalities who all have their own biases makes it almost impossible to keep everyone on the same page. All this back-and-forth often takes away from the bigger picture: helping your business grow.

Marketing outsourcing connects your entire team through one central point of contact. By working with one key contact, you’ll have more effective communication with your target audience which will save you time (and a big headache).

4. You have a marketing department of one (or zero).

Doing marketing well ain’t easy, and it’s difficult to consistently execute strategies when there are a million other things on your plate. If you’re trying to do it all by yourself, your marketing initiatives may have a hard time getting off the ground floor.

When you consider partnering with an integrated marketing team to plan and execute strategy, you open the door to fresh ideas that have the potential to expand your brand. Outsourcing any of your marketing is beneficial, but the more you outsource to one partner, the more efficient the process becomes. Imagine shared meetings across all projects, integrated campaigns instead of a’la carte projects, and everyone’s on the same page. Booyah.

5. Staff turnover has you playing catch-up.

Maintaining momentum is tough when you lose valued staff. Onboarding, training, and mentoring can set you back months. When you outsource your marketing, turnover is now their problem, not yours. Marketing outsourcing insulates your organization from all the time and costs associated with employee turnover.

6. You’re an ideas person.

You love focusing on the big-picture, but you’re stuck in the weeds. We get it. Turning your ambitious ideas into a reality requires significant time and resources that you may not have.

So when it comes to the design and development of your new website, a total rebrand initiative, or whatever it is you need to ramp up your business goals, consider hiring an outsourced marketing agency. It frees you up to focus less on the day-to-day details and more on your next big idea.

7. You need access to specialized expertise.

Even if you have a high-functioning staff, there are likely gaps in their knowledge that might lead you to consider marketing outsourcing. If you ask someone to do something they don’t typically do, by definition, you’ll have an amateur doing that work. If you want to explore social media, paid search, SEO, or mobile development, you don’t want to spin your wheels. Whatever the need, having a team that fills all the gaps makes all the difference.

8. You want a more predictable budget.

If you’ve been doing your marketing in fits and starts due to cashflow constraints, consider that some outsourced marketing agencies can standardize costs. This can be accomplished by spreading invoices over the term of the engagement even if projects happen only in specific months. Or, if your problem is that you want marketing expertise but can’t afford to hire an in-house team, outsourcing can provide the talent without the HR costs.

We know that marketing efforts as a whole can be unpredictable. Running Google Ads and boosting social posts can start to feel like a waste of time and money when you’re not seeing quick results.

Change your mindset and put your outsourced team in a position to set you up for success. How? By viewing marketing as an investment in your company’s growth and not a pesky expense.

9. You want strategic horsepower.

A good marketing outsourcing firm brings a hell of a lot of experience. The best part is… it’s all about you and your business goals.

So pay attention to their client list and review all their work examples to see if they’ll be a good fit. If their portfolio doesn’t inspire you, there’s little chance their work will, either. The right match will sharpen your strategy, take your brand to the next level, and ensure best practices, regardless of your industry.

10. Marketing can (and should) be fun.

With all the moving parts required for an effective strategy and streamlined execution, marketing can start to feel like a drag. But once you prioritize marketing and give those strategies a little TLC, you’re off to the races. With the right outsourced marketing partner, you can rediscover the creativity, ease, and, yes, fun of good marketing.

Wanna make marketing fun again? Give us a ring, and we’ll talk you through the ins and outs of partnering with a marketing outsourcing firm. Contact us at (800) 803-3229 or click here to get in touch.

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]]> https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/10-reasons-you-should-consider-marketing-outsourcing/feed/ 0 How to harness the power of your ad copy https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/how-to-harness-the-power-of-your-ad-copy/ Wed, 27 Oct 2021 21:15:34 +0000 https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/?p=19045 The post How to harness the power of your ad copy appeared first on Outsource Marketing.

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Here at Outmark, we like our marketing to be fun. But our tagline isn’t “it’s fun.” Our tagline is “it’s fun to be good.” Marketing should be fun, of course, but it also has to come from a place of strategic excellence, which is why we want to talk to you today about best practices when it comes to writing effective ad copy.

Writing ad copy may seem like a simple process of drawing potential buyers to your website’s landing page, but the truth is that it’s actually much more intricate than that. Content not only affects your ranking in the paid search results but also the cost-per-click.

Small alterations in the copy itself can make the difference between an effective PPC campaign that drives leads or an unsuccessful campaign that wastes your advertising budget. So whether you’re drafting a CTA (call-to-action) or the headline, the ad copy needs to be clear, direct, and provoking.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Craft a thought-provoking headline

You have a short window of time to capture the attention of a potential buyer. One of the best ways to hold their attention is by addressing how you can solve one of their pain points. Create content that not only describes the problem but also provides an attainable solution.

Remember your call-to-action

Without a call to action, people won’t know what action to take after viewing the ad – it’s like planning a party without telling your guests the location. Think about your goal of the ad — do you want to drive traffic to your website? Collect leads? Enhance brand awareness? If you want to enhance brand awareness, use a soft CTA like “Learn more,” but if you’d like to drive sales, you’d use a more direct CTA like “Shop now.”

Use keywords

Always use keywords in the main body of your ad content. Think about words your target audience might use to search for your product or service. Creating content with specific keywords has to be balanced between readability and SEO. It’s like a PB&J sandwich: you want a little bit of both in each bite! The tone of the copy still needs to sound natural while integrating both general and targeted keywords.

But wait! We know what you’re thinking – the more keywords, the better. Actually, that’s far from true. Overusing keywords will cloud the message that’s being conveyed and make the ad look like, well, an ad. There’s little time to capture the audience’s attention, and too many words will result in a quick trip to bounce rate city.

A/B test your ads (Testing, testing…is this thing on?)

A/B testing your ad copy is the best way to identify which elements of your ad are performing well versus those that might contribute to a lower click rate. This testing allows you to compare the outcome of two ad copy variations with the same goal. Keep the value prop for each ad in mind and pay attention to the specific copy used in the body text and CTA. Run both ads simultaneously and analyze the results to determine which ad copy best resonates with your audience. Then, continue to optimize as needed.

Although PPC strategies and the digital marketing field as a whole continues to evolve, there’s one component that should remain top of mind regardless of the platform, software, or device — quality content that grabs the user’s attention.

Looking to upgrade your digital marketing approach? Discover the difference that killer content and calculated campaigns can make to your business with Outsource Marketing.

Photo by Firm Bee on Unsplash 

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]]> Understanding your digital marketing channels https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/digital-marketing-channels/ https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/digital-marketing-channels/#respond Tue, 16 Feb 2021 23:34:38 +0000 https://otmk.wpengine.com/?p=18037 The post Understanding your digital marketing channels appeared first on Outsource Marketing.

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You spend a lot of money on your digital marketing, but do you understand which funds are driving what traffic? This is the first step in understanding all of those acronyms like ROI and CPA.

One of the wonderful things about digital marketing is that it’s trackable at a level that traditional marketing can’t typically reach. With thorough review, correct implementation, and continued tracking, you should be able to assign a value to each of your digital channels. This effort will give you a good understanding of your cost per session, and eventually cost per conversion and acquisition.

There are a variety of ways to determine your end cost per acquisition (CPA). In this blog we’ll focus on some beneficial concepts for someone just beginning to decipher their digital channels.

Organic Traffic

  • Organic traffic comes from non-paid listings on search engine result pages.
  • Common sources: google, yahoo, bing, and duckduckgo
  • Paid or unpaid? Though you are not charged for organic traffic, you can still assign this traffic source a price-point in most cases. If you’re paying for someone to handle your SEO, you can assign that cost here. A portion of your blog production and other content creation costs as well as hosting charges can be assigned here as well.

Direct Traffic

  • Direct traffic comes from people directly (see what we did there) typing in your URL and traveling to your site. 
  • Common sources: n/a
    • This traffic does not pass go, does not collect $200—it goes directly to your site. 
  • Paid or unpaid? Direct traffic can’t be tied to one specific price-point because many paid (and some unpaid) branding and marketing efforts contribute to this type of traffic. Also, offline marketing from billboards to business cards to networking referrals can drive direct traffic.
    • Pro tip: Using dedicated URLs and/or checkout codes for specific types of offline media can help you track offline factors. QR codes can be helpful as well, but are not ideal for all media types. 
    • Exception: Links contained in emails can sometimes contribute to direct traffic if they do not contain UTM tracking (we’ll circle back in the Email section).  

Social Traffic

  • Social traffic is a specific type of referral traffic that comes from widely recognized social media platforms. Google categorizes referral traffic from social platforms into this channel automatically, and you can use UTM tracking to further distinguish between different types of campaigns and efforts across your platforms. 
  • Common sources: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest…even Reddit
  • Paid or unpaid? Social traffic can be either unpaid or paid. Social ad campaigns would fall into this category as would organic traffic from your non-promoted posts. Any costs associated with creating, managing or distributing content for your social media pages can be tied here, but when evaluating ROI keep in mind that follower growth is also a goal of social media spend. 
    • Side note: Accurate and active social media listings can also contribute to higher search rankings because they create additional location citations for search engines to confirm your existence and relevance.
    • Pro tip: We recommend using tools like Google’s Campaign URL Builder for further insight into how this traffic navigates to your site.

Referral Traffic

  • Referral traffic comes from websites other than social media. Think of this as the online equivalent of a person-to-person referral. 
  • Common sources: directory websites, links established through your content marketing, and other affiliates 
  • Paid or unpaid? Referral traffic is another mixed bag when it comes to paid and unpaid sources. Directory listings, content partnerships, and influencers are all common sources of referral traffic.
    • Pro tip: Did we mention UTM parameters yet?

Email Traffic

  • Email traffic comes from your email campaigns but only if you first include UTM parameters in your linking. Remember we told you we’d circle back? Well, now is the time. 
    • Links contained in an email are not automatically tracked as such, and need UTM tracking in order to be sorted into a channel other than Direct Traffic. UTM parameters can add additional insight into any channel of traffic, but without UTM parameters there is no email traffic channel. 
  • Common sources: YOU! Or your marketing crew. Okay, that’s not what it will say in Google Analytics—it will be more like ‘MailChimp’ or ‘ConstantContact.’
    • Some marketing automation platforms like MailChimp and HubSpot can be set up to automatically add UTM parameters to your email links (once manual action is taken), but others require manual action per-link. 
  • Paid or unpaid? One way or another, email traffic can always be associated with a cost.  That being said, there are still paid and organic email marketing sources. The structure of your email traffic will reflect your unique email marketing strategy and should be measured against costs associated with your email marketing—content creation, distribution platform expenses, etc. 

Paid Search Traffic

  • Paid search traffic is traffic that comes from your paid search campaigns. I know: duh. The caveat to this – the medium must not equal ‘display’ (again, yay UTMs). 
  • Common sources: Google, Bing 
  • Paid or unpaid? You guessed it: it’s paid. Anything spent on your non-display paid campaigns across search networks can be assigned here. 
    • Pro tip: link your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts for automatic detailed parameter tracking. Automated UTM parameters can be applied through merge fields in other ads systems as well. 

Display Traffic

  • Display traffic comes from your paid display campaigns where the medium equals ‘display.’
  • Common sources: Google, Bing
  • Paid or unpaid? Paid. Anything spent on your paid display campaigns across search networks can be assigned here.

Other Traffic

  • Traffic that doesn’t fall under any of the above channels will be filed under Other Traffic. 
  • Common sources: sources vary and can be established through, you guessed it, UTM parameters. 
  • This is typically the smallest percentage of traffic (assuming you haven’t set up custom channels). Hopefully, by the time you get this far, you’ve assigned most of your marketing budget. However, if there still seems to be a lot of unassigned funds to match this smallest traffic channel, that’s a good sign that you need to take a closer look at your spending. 

How much are you spending on each of your main digital marketing channels?

If you want to establish a cost per session for your website now, you’re all set! All that’s left to do is the math (total spend on the channel/total traffic from the channel). Though not the end-all-be-all of understanding your digital marketing ROI, it’s a good place to start. This should give you a rough idea of your marketing investment for your digital marketing mix. 

Keep in mind that nothing happens in a vacuum. Someone who first came to your site through a search might return through a direct visit.  People who originally came from a referral and received your remarketing tag might travel back through a display campaign. How can you account for this crossover spending? 

Google Analytics is continually developing tools to help better understand multi-channel and even multi-device traffic. We recommend establishing conversions and using the multi-channel conversion tracking in Google Analytics to get insight into how each of your channels drives leads or other significant interactions on your site. 

Want to learn more about Outmark® and our services? Schedule a free consultation today — or just review our approach to digital marketing outsourcing.

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]]> https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/digital-marketing-channels/feed/ 0 What is branding? Explaining brand, brand identity, and logos https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/what-is-branding/ https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/what-is-branding/#respond Fri, 06 Nov 2020 00:12:51 +0000 https://otmk.wpengine.com/?p=17529 The post What is branding? Explaining brand, brand identity, and logos appeared first on Outsource Marketing.

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Your brand is your logo. Right? No, no, your brand is just part of your corporate identity? Hold the phone. Let’s take a vote…

a) Your brand is your logo
b) Your brand is part of your corporate identity

If you answered c) none of the above, you’re the big winner. And much like the answer to that question, your brand is what you can’t see. (More on that later.)

Confused? You’re not alone.

The words logo, identity, and brand get tossed around in the creative world like confetti. And they’re often used interchangeably, forming one big brandlogoidentity conundrum. What is a brand identity? How is it different from your logo? And what is branding anyway? 

Your brand

Your brand is something you can’t see. It’s there, it’s real, but it’s intangible. Your brand is not your logo. It’s not your business card, nor your website or social media accounts. 

Your brand is the relationship formed between your company and the world experiencing your company. How do people perceive your company based on their indirect and direct experiences with you? What are their reactions? It all comes down to the “gut feeling” your company evokes in your audience. 

You can’t completely control your brand. You can do your best to tell your story, dress the part, and do the right things, but at the end of the day it’s up to your audience to decide how they feel about you. Your challenge then becomes acknowledging these perceptions and responding accordingly.

Your brand identity

Your brand identity is what you can see. It’s the colors, fonts, messaging and voice your company uses. It is all the unique visual aspects your company uses to tell your story. Things like:

  • Logo
  • Website
  • Print collateral
  • Business papers
  • Packaging 
  • Messaging

You want these visual devices to be coherent and memorable, so consistency is key. Every time your audience comes in contact with your brand, these identity pieces should help them recognize you.

Your logo

Your logo is just one piece of the brand identity pie. At its simplest form, a logo is a graphic, a typographic mark, or a combination of the two that is used to identify your company. But it’s far more than just a pretty font, and much more than just a cool design. 

The meaning behind your logo should be harmonious with the feelings people have about your brand. Your logo takes your brand identity and brand, ties them together in a pretty little bow, and presents them to the world. That tiny little mark does a ton of heavy lifting. 

Your branding

If your brand is the set of perceptions your audience has about your company, then what is branding? What happens when you add the “-ing”? Well a lot, actually. Branding your business is all the actions you take to nourish and protect that brand, to cultivate that gut feeling. 

Branding is when you create an email campaign. It’s when you write a blog post or design a poster. It’s all the little and big things executed with the greater intention of building an impactful and lasting brand.  

“Branding is the process of connecting good strategy with good creativity”

Marty Neumeier

Interested in learning more about Outsource Marketing’s branding services? Discover our approach, or schedule a free consultation.

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]]> https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/what-is-branding/feed/ 0 Heidi vs. Howard: Double standards wrapped up in 60 seconds https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/heidi-vs-howard-double-standards-wrapped-up-in-60-seconds-2/ https://www.outsourcemarketing.com/blog/heidi-vs-howard-double-standards-wrapped-up-in-60-seconds-2/#comments Mon, 06 Jan 2014 18:15:54 +0000 https://otmk.wpengine.com/?p=5631 In a Harvard Business School case study, students were given an assignment based on a...

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]]> In a Harvard Business School case study, students were given an assignment based on a successful entrepreneur. The class was randomly split in half and handed the same reading. The content was identical except for one minor variance; the name of the entrepreneur was different. Half the class read about Heidi while the other half read the same story about Howard. Afterwards, the students were surveyed and found the two entrepreneurs equally knowledgeable and experienced. Without knowing they had all read the same story, the students ultimately concluded that Howard was much more likable.

Why was Howard more likable? This Philippine’s Pantene commercial breaks down the double standards in a powerful way:

So, do you love it or hate it? Does the video effectively represent the gender bias found in the workplace? Or is it just begging to be disputed?

 

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