Today, companies are starting to see the benefits that search marketing can have for their businesses, and are starting to push more of their efforts towards marketing on the internet.

The question is, should they handle their search marketing efforts in-house, or outsource it?

There are obviously pros and cons of both, but we argue that for most companies, the outsourcing model works best.

Don’t get us wrong, there are many benefits to planning, creating, and maintaining your search marketing campaign in-house – But there are also many downfalls.

Benefits might include:

• Less time teaching vendors about your business sector, industry, and audience
• More control over specific aspects of the campaign
• What else? (comment below)

There is no right answer to whether your company should outsource its search marketing campaign, or perform it in-house.

Here are 5 reasons why outsourcing might be your best bet…

1. Affordability

• The cost and results should be the two aspects that affect the decision to outsource or not.
• Outsourcing your search marketing efforts could cost more than having existing members of your staff perform the duties – but not in the long run!
• Since search marketing is not just a one-time task, you will be taking your staff away from the important tasks that they are trained to perform on a daily basis.
• Now those projects aren’t getting done, and you will need to bring on more resources to get those tasks done.
• If you’re thinking about hiring a SEO or SEM expert, be advised that they come with a hefty price tag.  Not to mention the behind the scenes costs of having another employee (benefits, taxes, utilities, space, etc...) – You can get a lot more outsourced search marketing help than you can for the cost of employing another head.

2. Simple Opportunity Costs

• Search marketing is an activity that takes certain skills that must be acquired over time, to be done correctly.
• Trying to teach these lessons to your staff will require a lot of time, and cost.
• Less time will be available for your staff to work on other projects that may have high importance, and less revenue will be able to be generated from these important projects.
• Also, everybody has a different learning curve.
• You cannot accurately predict the total time it will take to have everyone trained to the same standard.
• And when the staff is trained, you will get different results from different people.
• This can result in certain parts of your search marketing campaign being stronger than others.
• Another consideration is how are you going to train this person?  It’s not like you have an expert already in-house. 

3. Looking In From The Outside

• As a member of your industry, you have a certain perspective about how things are done.
• A search marketing company does not necessarily know your industry like you do, and will ask a lot of questions.
• These questions will help them generate ideas that break away from the normal ways of marketing in your industry – ways that you may not even have thought of without an outside perspective.
• This can open up new opportunities that would have not been discovered without the perspective of an “outsider” of the industry.

4, It’s Not a One Time Thing

• Search marketing it not something that you can just sit down and do for a few hours and then it is done-
• It is an on-going process.
• For the best results, you need to be performing search engine optimization activities on your website every week (if not every day).
• New content needs to be published, and link building needs to be performed in order for your campaign to have any significant results.
• Also, you have to keep up with your Pay-Per-Click advertising, and implement any changes that may be needed to improve its efficiency.
• Outsourcing these activities will give you the confidence that it is being performed properly, while giving you and your staff time to work on the important projects that are not related to search marketing.

5. The Tools of the Trade

• Search engine marketers use more than just their minds to perform their jobs – they have many special tools that they use to implement certain search engine marketing tasks, track the tasks, and to get the best results.
• These tools cost a good chunk of change, and require the proper training to understand how they work and are used to improve search marketing efforts.
• Unless you have one or two people who will be working on your campaign, it will take a lot of time and money to get everyone up to speed on the tools that are used to improve your search marketing campaign.
• It is usually better to outsource your search marketing to experts who use these special tools on a daily basis.

In Short: Outsource Your Search Marketing

It is better to let your staff concentrate on what they are trained to do, and let a company who specializes in search marketing take care of your campaign.

Also, most search marketing companies have a monthly rate, so you pay the same every month and do not have to predict the fluctuating costs of your staff performing different search marketing tasks every month.

If search marketing is the single most profitable (ROI) path for your online business, you want to make sure that it is being performed correctly – no matter if it is by your staff or an outside company.