Why Outsourcing Digital Marketing Overseas Can Damage Your Brand
Every business experiences difficulties when balancing its resources. This can make it a tempting prospect to outsource your time-consuming tasks to overseas workers.
Outsourcing can smoothen out the processes in some parts of your business – but leave your digital marketing out of it. Outsourcing marketing services overseas is almost certain to cause more problems than solve them.
It doesn’t make sense to outsource digital advertising or social media marketing, if the upfront savings won’t translate for the finished product.
You want to be running your business, not dealing with poor communication and low-quality outputs. Keeping digital marketing operations within Australia is often the best approach. First Page is an Melbourne-based digital marketing agency, and we understand the Australian digital landscape and are better equipped to help businesses succeed in this market.
If you’re stuck wondering whether it’s worth the risk or not, look over the following considerations.
Language and Cultural Barriers
It goes without saying, the key driver to outsource digital marketing overseas is the prospect of saving cash. Yes, Australians do cost more than others.
But digital marketing is all about communicating effectively. Setting yourself up to face a language barrier isn’t going to be your smartest decision.
An overseas team might have the technical skills you need, but if they don’t fully understand your company’s objectives, the results are bound to be underwhelming.
Which would you rather choose: Battling through endless phone calls and email chains, or working alongside a local organisation that gets you?
Low-Quality Content
No matter what kind of product or service your business offers, there’s one constant – always maintain the highest standards in all your content creation.
If you outsource your marketing overseas, do you really expect to receive the same level of work? Look at what the leaders in your industry put out – do you think that’s from outsourced work?
Unless you happen to have zero competitors, digital advertising, content marketing and social media marketing are vital to business growth. Compromising on quality won’t get you very far.
Every company wants to stand out in their space, but you definitely don’t want to capture the attention of your target market for all the wrong reasons.
Lack of Local Context
The problem with outsourcing digital marketing overseas isn’t simply about some minor typos appearing in your online advertising or landing page copy – although that certainly won’t help.
It’s about failing to understand who your customers are and the issues they face. If you’re trying to appeal to your target market effectively, you can’t expect someone living half the world away to fully appreciate the nuances of your customer base.
By partnering with a local team that deals with customers like yours every day, they have a far greater chance of creating digital marketing content that hits the mark.
Outdated Methods
The digital marketing industry is constantly evolving. Both the technology platforms and consumer habits shift constantly and rapidly.
As the most talented in the industry strive to remain on the cutting-edge – or even predict where things are headed – finding an overseas team with the same kind of foresight is fraught with challenges.
In terms of damaging your brand, some outsourced marketing services use “black hat” tactics to get your business ranking on search engines like Google. These will cause problems for you in the long term.
The search engine giant is known to de-index companies who attempt to cheat the system. Putting your faith in an overseas workforce might prove to be a costly mistake!
Hidden Costs
There’s nothing wrong with identifying ways to reduce your company’s expenses. But the low-cost appeal of working with overseas digital marketers doesn’t always work out that way.
For example, you might end up paying extra if multiple revisions are required to get the content up to standard.
If the quality of work is consistently lacklustre, you’ll have to fork out your supposed savings to hire someone else to fix it, anyway. Or you could ask an employee to spend time fixing mistakes, meaning that their regular tasks are compromised.
Plus, any work that isn’t detailed in the original contract might blow out your budget larger than expected.
Excessive Oversight
Managing a business is already tricky enough, without constantly worrying about what your overseas digital marketing team is doing.
Although this cost is harder to track, there’s definitely a price to pay in wasting countless hours sending emails, instant messaging and getting on the phone.
Rather than micromanaging your digital marketing campaign to ensure that it ends up achieving your objectives, working with a local agency avoids many of these issues from the very beginning.
Sometimes it’s better to spend a little more upfront than to get caught up in a world of organisational pain.
Less Focus on the Client
When you outsource an important digital marketing project to an offshore company, you want to be sure they can deliver the goods.
If they’re based overseas, it’s hard to gauge just how much time an outsourced advertising team will spend on your campaign when it’s so much more difficult to communicate.
By working with a local digital marketing operation, you can meet up with your account manager or even visit the agency’s office to scope out how everything works.
With internationally outsourced marketing services, trusting your partner to hold up their end of the bargain isn’t quite so simple.
Security and Legal Concerns
No business wants to end up in a legal battle with its digital marketing partner. But at least there are legal remedies when the organisation operates in the same country as you.
If you end up in the unfortunate situation of wanting to take someone to court, chasing up a business based overseas is rarely going to be worth the effort.
Corporate security and confidentiality is another major concern that companies have to take seriously.
If you choose to use outsourced marketing services based overseas, you risk having your private business information compromised.
Damaged Employee Morale
Management might view outsourcing overseas as a great way to free up company resources. However, your everyday employees might not see things the same way as you.
With digital marketing so important to how a business succeeds in today’s competitive landscape, your team might view your decision as threatening their role in the company.
Some workers see outsourcing as a quick way for a business to make them redundant, so know that your decision could cause a downturn in employee morale.
The impact of this won’t always be immediately clear. But don’t be surprised to see good employees walk out the door.
Loss of Corporate Culture
Developing a strong corporate culture is hugely important when it comes to operating a successful business.
But if much of your team is based offshore, kickstarting a dynamic workplace atmosphere will always be a struggle.
Think about it – if your employees have to manage their colleagues from the other side of the globe, they probably won’t feel as driven to establish rewarding relationships.
If they spend their days simply communicating through instant messaging or email, these kinds of bonds won’t be as strong as the ones they might form with an in-person team.
Partner with the Experts
If your business is looking for a leading digital marketing agency for its campaigns, don’t consider anyone but First Page Australia.
We work closely with our clients to fully understand their business objectives. There’s no-one better to outsource your digital advertising, social media marketing and content creation projects.
Don’t let your brand be damaged by a poorly conceived digital marketing strategy.
Get in touch today to find out how our talented team can free up your company’s resources and help you achieve your long-term goals. Also, this article might be helpful How to Choose A Digital Marketing Agency.
