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Director at Magicalia Ltd
06 July 2006 12:56pm
We're an online publishing group, with a portfolio of community sites in specialist consumer sectors, and we're looking to substantially increase our focus on online marketing. We're currently discussing the best way to resource it, whether in-house or through agencies, or both.
We want to increase our use of online PR, improve our PPC campaigns and SEO activity, as well as monitor the analytics of our sites to better understand their activity and the effect of our campaigns. Essentially, beef up the focus and resource on online marketing all round.
Does anyone have any experience on whether this is best owned and managed by an online marketing manager in-house (my current view), or through the use of specialist agencies who have broad experience and who stay abreast of the latest issues, ideas and solutions?
Any views much appreciated.
Digital Account Manager at Mediavision
10 July 2006 10:40am
I would say in an ideal manner, yes you would use an in-house online manager, but it is unlikely that they would know everything about the job and would have to contract out the work anyway
To get the full benefit of SEO is not an overnight event and takes a consistent and continuous approach and a fair degree of work together with keeping up to date with the changes to the industry.
Specialist agencies, already have their resources in place, have developers to programme the code in house, are bang (top agencies that is) on top of the latest developments.
So there are plusses with both but I feel you will get more thorough online marketing through an agency that can offer; SEO, link building, code changes & validation, pod casting, blogs, affiliate marketing, pay per click marketing....the list goes on. Would one in house manager be able to provide you with expertise in all these areas? highly unlikely but if you found one they would be expecting a very large pay packet.
Good luck
Pete
CEO at Econsultancy
12 July 2006 10:57am
Hi Adam
In the long term (actually, pretty quickly) I think you'll realise that the understanding and insight that resides within a good online marketing manager is just too important, and too strategic, for it to remain outsourced.
So, I would say, if you have the budget, then definitely get someone in-house. However, that person may well still manage external resources such as agencies, content companies, editors, vendors, whatever.
Your MUCH bigger challenge is finding this online marketing manager in the first place! They are like gold dust -the good, experienced, ones. Pay whatever it takes to get the right person. He/she can have an enormous impact. If they're good they'll be very business and ROI focused, super-organised and efficient, completely at home with all the technologies and tools.
Anyway, more of this when we meet for coffee tomorrow ;)
Ashley Friedlein, CEO, E-consultancy.com