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Benefits of Outsourcing Graphic Design Services for Marketing Teams
We discuss the benefits of outsourcing graphic design services vs building an in-house design team.
In today's visually-driven marketing landscape, high-quality graphic design is no longer optional, but essential for maintaining a competitive advantage and keeping your brand relevant. Your marketing team will likely face increasing pressure to produce more content across multiple channels while controlling costs.
To help ensure good business results, you may consider outsourcing your graphic design needs instead of building an in-house graphic design team.
In a previous article, we provided a guide for business owners on how to find a reliable graphic design partner. In it, we compared the pros and cons of hiring freelance designers vs in-house designers vs agencies.
In a separate article, we discussed the topic of graphic design subscription services and what they can do for you as a business owner. In both articles, we listed key issues in the choice of a graphic design provider, including their reliability, predictability, project complexity, design workload, etc.
In this article, we will discuss the benefits of outsourcing graphic design services vs building an in-house design team.
Graphic design outsourcing can bring a number of strategic advantages to your business.
Before you consider building an in-house design team, it is important to be aware of the costs associated with it, some of which may be hidden. You should factor in the full cost of employment, including salaries, benefits, software licenses, hardware, training, and overhead.
These costs can quickly add up to a substantial fixed and reoccurring financial commitment. In contrast, outsourcing can help you convert these fixed costs into variable expenses that you can scale up or down based on your actual business needs.
This can lead to significant cost savings compared to maintaining an in-house design team. Here are some of the financial implications of outsourcing your design needs:
- Elimination of employee benefits and payroll taxes
- No need to invest in expensive design software licenses and regular upgrades
- Reduced office space and equipment requirements
- No training or professional development costs
- Ability to pay only for the hours or projects you need
Graphic design is a complex and quickly evolving professional field that requires designers to obtain and maintain a diverse set of skills and talents.
Good designers typically specialize in a few areas to ensure the quality of their work and keep up with changing trends. They also develop a unique creative style and can deviate from it only to a limited extent.
When you’re building an in-house design team, these factors make it difficult and costly to hire and keep the right people with the right skills.In contrast, an external graphic design partner like an agency can provide access to a broader range of specialized skills and creative perspectives.
This diversity of talent becomes particularly valuable when:
- Launching campaigns that require specific design expertise
- Targeting different market segments or geographic regions
- Experimenting with new design trends or techniques
- Handling projects that require specialized skills (like video editing, photo retouching, specific styles, etc.)
As you certainly have found out yourself, marketing demands do not follow a predictable pattern. Campaign launches, seasonal promotions, and special projects can create sudden spikes in design needs.
This can lead to your in-house design team being incapable of handling the increased workload on time and ensuring a high standard of quality.
Outsourcing will provide you with the flexibility to:
- Quickly scale up resources for major campaigns
- Bring in specialized talent for specific projects
- Maintain consistent output during team member absences
- Handle multiple projects simultaneously without overloading internal resources
As we have shown, graphic design outsourcing brings a number of strategic advantages. In the following section, we will explore the many operational benefits and quality improvements that outsourcing can bring to your organization.
When you’re building an in-house graphic design team, you will need to create the design processes, rules and guidelines yourself. If you have no prior experience with this, this can be a daunting task.
In contrast, professional design service providers like agencies often operate with established, optimized workflows to deliver fast results. Specifically, they are often optimized to:
- Work across different time zones to provide around-the-clock productivity
- Leverage multiple designers for quick turnaround on urgent projects
- Maintain consistent output during peak periods
- Navigate complex projects efficiently through established processes
Related to the previous point, we believe that businesses, teams, and departments should focus on core competencies. For your marketing team, this will be difficult to do if they have to function as an internal graphic design agency in addition to their other duties.
Instead, by outsourcing design work, marketing teams can focus their energy on strategic initiatives and core marketing functions. This allows for:
- Better allocation of internal resources to strategic planning
- More time for market research and campaign strategy
- Improved focus on measuring and optimizing campaign performance
- Enhanced ability to manage and coordinate multiple marketing channels
As we have discussed in previous articles, quality and consistency are crucial for marketing materials. To protect from brand damage, all branded assets such as your website, social media posts, packaging, brochures, etc., need to adhere to a high standard of quality.
This is difficult to achieve when you need to produce a high number of branded assets on a frequent basis, especially to an in-house design team. To address this problem, agencies maintain high standards through:
- Rigorous quality control processes
- Access to the latest design tools and technologies
- Regular training and skill updates
- Fresh perspectives on brand guidelines and design challenges
As a decision maker, you may have concerns about working with an outsource partner for your graphic design needs.
Perhaps you are reluctant to place your brand in the hands of another organization. Perhaps you worry about quality control, costs, and confidentiality.
In the following section, we will address the most common concerns around graphic design outsourcing.
Perhaps you are worried that working with an external partner will lead to design that is inconsistent with your branding.
However, if your graphic design partner is experienced, they should be well-versed and better equipped than an in-house graphic design team in:
- Working with detailed brand guidelines
- Maintaining consistent brand voice across deliverables
- Implementing feedback and revisions efficiently
- Documenting design decisions for future reference
In short, an experienced graphic design partner would know to approach a brand with care and attention to avoid damaging it.
Perhaps you are worried that working with an external partner will make communication difficult and sluggish.
Perhaps you are also worried that you will not be kept in the loop and that you will lose oversight and control over the design process.
However, modern project management tools and communication platforms have largely eliminated the barriers that once made outsourcing challenging. An experienced graphic design partner should offer:
- Regular status updates and progress reports
- Clear communication channels and response times
- Collaborative review and approval processes
- Transparent project management systems
Finally, perhaps you worry that working with an external partner will cause security and confidentiality problems.
However, reputable design services understand the importance of data security and intellectual property protection. They typically provide:
- Robust confidentiality agreements
- Secure file sharing and storage systems
- Clear intellectual property rights transfer
- Documented security protocols and procedures
In our view as an outsource partner for graphic design and branding services, the success of an outsourcing agreement depends on a few key factors. In this section, we want to share our experiences working successfully on outsource projects.
If you’re considering outsourcing your design needs to an external partner, we recommend the following best practices:
As an outsource partner, it is important for us to know what the objectives and expectations for every project are. The more detailed the project requirements and deliverables are laid out, the better we will be able to understand what to do.
This also includes setting clear timelines and milestones from the start. If there are any explicit metrics to judge success, we will need to know them from the start.
Clear, regular and honest communication is essential to ensure success in outsourcing. To achieve it, strong communication channels are needed. For us this means setting up a clear feedback and revision process to avoid surprises for both sides.
This is made easier by using collaborative project management tools like Slack. If you have a preferred platform, we will use whatever is most convenient to you. If you need regular check-ins and meetings, we are happy to join.
As with most relationships, we think that it’s best to begin small and gradually expand the scope and scale of work. For us, this means starting out with simple, standalone projects before moving on to more complex tasks. This will allow us to refine communication and adapt our processes to best suit your needs.
As we have shown, outsourcing graphic design services offers marketing teams a powerful way to access design talent while maintaining operational flexibility and controlling costs.
As marketing demands continue to grow in both volume and complexity, the ability to scale design resources efficiently becomes increasingly crucial for success.
The key to successful outsourcing lies in choosing the right design partner and establishing clear processes for communication and quality control.
When implemented thoughtfully, outsourcing can transform your marketing team's ability to deliver high-quality visual content while maintaining focus on core competencies.
When evaluating design outsourcing options, consider your team's specific needs, challenges, and goals.
The right design partner can provide not just cost savings, but a genuine competitive advantage in today's visually-driven marketing landscape.
As an experienced graphic design and branding agency, we will be happy to become your trusted outsource partner.
Get in touch today!
