Better together: why your marketing team needs a strategic partner

There’s a common assumption that businesses have to choose between hiring a marketer and bringing in external marketing support.

In reality, the two can work incredibly well together.

A marketing hire gives you someone inside the business who knows your customers, your products, your people and your day-to-day priorities. A strategic marketing partner brings something different: an external perspective, senior-level experience and the space to step back from the day-to-day and look at the bigger picture.

The strongest marketing functions often have both.

Your marketing hire is close to the business

An in-house marketer has an advantage that is difficult to replicate externally.

They’re there every day.

They understand what is happening across the business. They hear conversations about customers. They know what’s launching, what’s changing and where the internal pressure points are. Over time, they develop an instinct for the brand and its audience.

That proximity is incredibly valuable.

But it can also make it difficult to step outside the business and challenge what you’re doing.

When you’re responsible for getting the emails out, updating the website, managing social media, briefing suppliers, reporting on campaigns and answering internal requests, there isn’t always much time left to ask:

Are we actually doing the right things?

That’s where a strategic marketing partner can add another layer.

Strategy and execution aren’t the same thing

One of the biggest challenges I see in growing businesses is that marketing becomes a list of activities.

Post on LinkedIn.

Send an email.

Run an ad.

Update the website.

Attend an event.

Create some content.

All of those things can have a place. But without a clear strategy connecting them, marketing can quickly become busy rather than effective.

A strategic partner can sit above that activity and help answer the bigger questions:

• Who are we trying to reach?

• What do we want them to think, feel or do?

• What makes us different?

• Where are the biggest opportunities?

• Which channels actually deserve our attention?

• What should we stop doing?

• What should we test?

• How does marketing connect to the commercial goals of the business?

• What does success actually look like?

That strategic clarity then gives the in-house marketer something much more useful to work from.

Instead of simply being asked to “do the marketing”, they have a framework, priorities and direction.

Think of it as adding another level of seniority

For some businesses, hiring a full-time Head of Marketing or Marketing Director simply isn’t the right move yet.

The business may need that level of experience, but not five days a week.

A strategic marketing partner can provide access to that senior thinking without necessarily requiring a senior full-time hire.

And importantly, that doesn’t mean taking ownership away from the person inside the business.

It can mean giving them access to someone they can lean on.

Someone to challenge ideas.

Someone to help build the strategy.

Someone who can look at the numbers objectively.

Someone who has seen similar problems before.

Someone who can help them turn a business objective into an actual marketing plan.

It can also make a marketing hire more effective

Imagine you’ve hired a Marketing Executive or Marketing Manager.

They’re capable, enthusiastic and know the business well.

But they’re relatively early in their career.

Without senior support, they may spend a lot of time figuring things out themselves. They might be expected to make strategic decisions without having the experience or confidence to do so.

Now put a strategic partner alongside them.

The in-house marketer still owns the day-to-day.

They still manage campaigns, content, communications and implementation.

But they have somewhere to go when they need a second opinion.

The strategic partner can help create the roadmap, review performance, challenge assumptions and provide the experience that might otherwise take years to build internally.

That’s not replacing the marketing hire.

It’s investing in them.

And sometimes the reverse is true

External marketing support can be incredibly effective at the strategic level, but there are things an internal person will always be better placed to do.

They are embedded in the business.

They can move quickly.

They can build relationships internally.

They can execute consistently.

They can spot things an external partner might never see.

That’s why I don’t believe the answer is always “hire an agency” or “hire a marketer”.

The better question is:

What does your marketing function actually need?

Sometimes the answer is a brilliant Marketing Manager.

Sometimes it’s a strategic partner.

And sometimes it’s both.

The sweet spot for growing businesses

For many growing businesses, the combination can look something like this:

The business owner or leadership team
Sets the commercial objectives and provides the wider business context.

The strategic marketing partner
Helps translate those objectives into a clear marketing strategy, priorities, campaigns and measurement framework.

The in-house marketer
Owns the day-to-day implementation, coordination and relationship with the wider business.

Specialist suppliers
Step in where additional expertise is needed - whether that’s PR, paid media, design, development, photography, SEO or something else.

Marketing stops being one person juggling everything and becomes a joined-up function with the strategy, skills and support to make it work. And that makes a real difference.

Don’t hire someone and then leave them to figure it all out

One of the biggest mistakes businesses can make is hiring a marketer because they know they “need marketing”, without first deciding what marketing needs to achieve.

The new hire arrives.

They’re asked to increase awareness, generate leads, improve social media, refresh the website and “do more marketing”.

Six months later, everyone is frustrated.

The business doesn’t feel like it’s seeing enough return.

The marketer feels like they’re being pulled in ten directions.

And nobody is quite sure what success was supposed to look like in the first place.

Strategic thinking needs to come before (or alongside) execution.

That’s where an external strategic partner can make a significant difference.

The real difference happens when marketing stops being one person juggling everything and becomes a joined-up function with the strategy, skills and support to make it work.

Your marketing team doesn’t have to fit neatly into one box

There is no rule that says your marketing capability has to come entirely from employees or entirely from external suppliers.

In fact, as businesses grow, the most effective model is often a combination.

You can have someone who is deeply embedded in the business and someone who can step outside it.

Someone focused on execution and someone focused on direction.

Someone who knows the brand inside out and someone willing to challenge it.

The question isn’t whether you should choose an in-house marketer or a strategic marketing partner.

It’s whether the structure you’ve created gives your business the right balance of strategy, experience, execution and accountability.

Sometimes the smartest approach is giving your marketing hire the right support and expertise to get the most out of their work. A strategic marketing partner can bring fresh thinking, experience and additional capacity to your team, helping your marketing deliver more.

If you would like to see how Strategy & Story can support your marketing, then have a look at ways we can help here, or feel free to book in a chat below.