Here’s Why Marketing Outsourcing Can Get Companies Ready for Generative AI

As a former CMO, I do not envy today’s marketing leaders, who are forced to do more for less at an unprecedented level. I know they’re scratching their heads, wondering how to achieve all their milestones and goals with anywhere from 15% to 30% less workforce. To add to their stress, what personnel remains after a reduction in force is underwater, trying to balance multiple roles left by departing colleagues – in many instances, companies have laid-off staff, but not laid-off the work.

In citing many layoffs, companies across industries cited overhiring during COVID as the culprit; ultimately, the pandemic did not impact the economy as predicted. And when the inflationary market in late 2022 put significant pressure on the economy, many companies let go of a percentage of their staff to “right-size.” 

For instance, Disney’s layoffs included a significant cut to its marketing team. Salesforce laid off hundreds of sales and marketing employees. Look at any recent reduction in headcount, and marketers are likely near the top of departments depleted. 

Fortunately for CMOs, this period of great uncertainty has coincided with two key trends that create a window for transformation: generative AI and outsourcing. While generative AI shows incredible promise, some kinks must be worked out. Outsourcing is mature and viable today, but too few marketers are taking advantage of it. 

Why generative AI is so exciting

Marketers have forever embraced technology as a way to enhance their efficiency and impact. Tools for email automation, website personalization, buyer intent, advanced analytics, and other solutions have revolutionized how marketers do their jobs and how companies reach customers. 

Generative AI promises another giant leap forward; it can write persuasive copy in various formats, develop dozens of advertising variants, and easily answer customer questions. I do not doubt that generative AI will transform marketing many times over. But today, there are still concerns about accuracy, the risk of content being the same as what your competitors generate, the data sets being fixed in time (sometimes from years ago), and we’ve all seen examples of where AI just simply got the prompt wrong – usually to an unintentionally humorous effect. That means that while these are powerful tools you can use today, they require human operation and discernment of what can and cannot be used. They need skilled prompters, curation, and editing – they need a human component to reach their full potential.  

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What is unquestionably ready today? Outsourcing

While outsourcing is a well-established and respected action in many fields, such as accounting, IT, and customer service, companies either have been reluctant to extend this approach to marketing or don’t realize the size of this opportunity. Gartner research finds that only 5% of current sales and marketing services are outsourced, compared to 54% of IT services and 44% of finance. No one would argue that finance and IT services are unimportant, so why are they outsourced at a higher rate than marketing?  

The marketers’ response is that the work is considered too creative, customer-focused, and unique to be outsourced, but there are a few wrinkles to that assertion. Primarily, the quality of work from outsourced workers is extremely high. So even if we took the above as gospel, marketing departments are not suffering from degradations in quality when working with outsourced talent. Beyond that, the reality is that much of the marketer’s daily workload is operational: managing the tech stack, executing operational tasks, posting content, sending emails, routing leads, analyzing reports, and other “run” work. Many of the tasks are beginning to be outsourced so internal marketers get more time to think and focus on strategy: a rare win-win.

There is so much outsourced worker talent that is skilled across so many different specialties, e.g., marketing operations, martech management, account-based marketing (ABM), analytics, and even creative services. Outsourced talent in places like the Philippines, Malaysia, and elsewhere have the same accreditations (e.g., 6sense, Marketo, Google ads, HubSpot) as US-based workers, and you can tap into whatever resources you need as they arise. Outsourced marketing workers can deliver strategy and execution across many campaigns, platforms, and industries, often at 50-75% lower costs. 

MaaS: a more powerful approach

But it’s not just about outsourcing talent. Outsourcing is the beginning of thinking about the marketing organization in a new way and understanding the power of the marketing-as-a-service (MaaS) discipline. Like other “as services,” e.g., software-as-a-service, MaaS produces high value at low costs. It’s flexible and powerful during positive economic times as a lever to boost at-capacity teams, but it’s especially valued now when marketing departments have been depleted, yet responsibilities and goals remain. 

By embracing outsourcing and, by proxy, MaaS, you immediately access a global pool of resources and brainpower outside of your existing team. Outsourcing is not about mere cost savings, and it does not mean you have to suffer quality. It’s about getting better marketing. There are many talented professionals outside of the normal recruitment areas that not only perform as well as US-based talent but also can provide specific skill sets for your adtech stack, specific industry, or core social networks. What’s more, when these individuals work in a 3rd-party firm, they have trained in B2B marketing best practices, they are governed to high standards of impact (often higher than internal marketing employees are), and they are exposed to innovative approaches and emerging technology from a business that is fully in the business of providing next-generation marketing. 

Two emerging opportunities that work great together

Best of all, MaaS can go hand-in-hand with generative AI experimentation.

Outsourced content marketing experts have experimented with AI and find it a huge timesaver and idea generator. But, as with all marketing technology, it requires excellent human talent to coax out its best possibilities. CMOs should realize that the talent they can tap into to use generative AI and other marketing technologies and run their marketing campaigns is borderless. 

A future-proof strategy

This downturn, like every one before it, will eventually end, and CMOs will suddenly find their budgets increase (or cease to shrink), enabling the opportunity to add to their full-time staff. But, for some companies, that will again be the wrong decision. That budget may be better allocated to a high-impact, flexible, and scalable approach such as MaaS to get specialization and other skill sets at a fraction of the cost. 

The time is now for marketers to join their compatriots in other disciplines in realizing that outsourcing is a huge opportunity to extend the reach of their department while getting significant expertise in return. Outsourcing is here today to help marketing departments harness technology, including generative AI, and accomplish all their goals in this current economic uncertainty and beyond.