Insourcing Helps Higher Ed Marketers Cope with New Communications and Marketing Demands
Sep 24, 2019
Sep 24, 2019
Marketing industry trend watchers have identified and are following a relatively new strategy used by for-profit companies to meet the need for expertise in emerging marketing channels: It’s called insourcing. This is when an organization uses its own staff or resources to accomplish tasks that formerly were outsourced to third-party partners.
Marketing industry analysts confirm that insourcing is increasingly common. For example, this year, “marketers continue their inhousing shift, with 78% of marketers reporting some form of an in-house team today, up from 58% five years ago.” The roles that most companies are bringing in-house include “content, creative strategy, analytics, media strategy, programmatic, and social media.”
We see a similar shift happening in higher ed. Many institutions are developing more robust in-house creative capabilities and charging these teams with the responsibility for brand strategy, creative execution, and content creation and distribution across print and various digital channels.
Savvy institutions are supercharging insourcing by balancing their internal capacity with outsourced capabilities for special projects or work that requires expertise or special skills that can’t be brought in-house. An internal creative team may direct day-to-day activities and handle a much greater range of creative implementation themselves. They’ll augment their capabilities by working with external specialists for large projects that require larger teams or specialized skills that may not be found on campus for projects such as market research, brand refreshes, and website redesigns.
In the past, external partners for these projects might have provided a much greater range of services. Under the new model, partners may conduct focus group and surveys that guide an in-house team’s creative development. Or external creative development may consist of prototypes and templates rather than a suite of fully realized brand deliverables, once more typical of this kind of outsourced relationship.
It doesn’t take long to realize that while there are plenty of challenges in the ever-changing media landscape, there are also many ways in which institutions can extend their capabilities, both internally and externally. At mStoner, we’ve developed three in-depth on demand courses to help higher ed marketing teams skill up.
Advanced Marketing for Higher Education Websites
Are you seeing signs that your website needs some TLC? Whether you’re planning for a content refresh, getting buy-in for a full-scale redesign, or executing other high-impact web projects, this course on advanced website marketing will help you level up for the task.
Get ready to transform the way your institution approaches the web.
Digital Marketing for Higher Education
Digital marketing encompasses everything about your institution’s online presence and is essential to your college or university’s marketing and communications strategy. It can help you build brand awareness, promote academic programs, reach prospective students, and tell your institution’s unique story.
Educate your entire team in the latest digital marketing strategies and trends.
Digital Storytelling for Higher Education
Storytelling plays a significant role in helping colleges and universities reveal and build their brand. This course is designed to help your marketers, writers, and content strategists expand their storytelling skills. Upon completion, you’ll have concrete tools and tactics for producing, deploying, measuring, and optimizing story content.
Learn the essential elements of on-brand digital storytelling to engage your most important audiences.
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?