Whether you are a CMO of a bigger brand or a solo store owner, there comes a time when you’ll need a helping hand—especially in the eCommerce marketing department.

But sometimes, hiring in-house may be impossible. It’s hard to divide your resources between multiple departments instead of putting your money into things that bring quicker growth. 

In that case, outsourcing can be a good alternative.

However, not knowing how to outsource a marketing agency can lead to missed opportunities for growth, wasted time on ineffective strategies—and the risk of partnering with a bad apple. 

…which can hurt your brand’s reputation and bottom line.

This guide should help you learn more about outsourcing eCommerce marketing—and how to make the right decision. 

Why Should You Outsource Ecommerce Marketing? 

Outsourcing your eCommerce marketing is like hiring a personal trainer or a consultant. 

You get expert guidance, save time, and you can focus on the big-picture strategy instead of sweating the small stuff. 

Think about it: You think of an awesome holiday promotion. But instead of spending hours creating campaigns on various channels—you have someone creating ads and drafting emails.

Someone who knows ads managers and email automation software top to bottom for instance. 

It’s nice to have a knowledgeable team doing the heavy lifting.

But still, there’s a lot to think about when outsourcing eCommerce. Let’s go step by step…

When Is the Right Time to Outsource Ecommerce Marketing?

When is the right time to outsource? 

Well, no matter if you’re a marketing manager, CMO, or a store owner… you’ll probably know it.

Still, we’ll share a few experiences of when CMOs, marketing managers, and retailers get in touch to partner on marketing campaigns.

You Want to Focus on Growing Your Business

Spending more time managing your marketing efforts than focusing on your businesses’ core aspects? It might be the right time to outsource your eCommerce marketing. 

In that case, you can delegate marketing tasks to experts—who will probably do the job a bit better simply due to their skin in the game—and free up your valuable time and resources.

You can focus on strategic decision-making, product development, and scaling operations. In a nutshell, you can prioritize growth while leaving marketing efforts in capable hands.

And if the growth and marketing work in synchronization—you’ll see better results. 

You Want to do More For less

Outsourcing your marketing to eCommerce experts means you’ll get more work for less.

Instead of managing an in-house team with high overhead costs, you can invest in an entire team of experts for a fraction of the cost. And do more stuff.

This approach allows you to streamline your marketing efforts, reduce expenses, and deliver high-quality campaigns.

Not to mention the time you’ll save. 

You Have an Excess Budget and Want to Expand

Sometimes, your business grows to the point where you have excess budget for advertising.

You are ready to expand your eCommerce business but don’t know where to start. Then, outsourcing can be a good move—at least to take the first steps.

By working with a dedicated marketing team, you can explore new growth opportunities, test innovative strategies, and scale your efforts across multiple channels. 

Without the burden of hiring and training in-house staff!

Then, after you’ve seen which areas of expansion can yield good results, you can invest money on an in-house department focused on that channel.

You Can’t Keep Up With Trends

At the beginning of 2020, Instagram Reels didn’t even exist.

Advertising on Reddit wasn’t even an option. While not many ecommerce businesses had a tailored email marketing strategy. You see the gist?

That’s why many marketers are burnt out from managing multiple channels.
Staying ahead of marketing trends can be daunting. Especially if you don’t have a designated team to stay ahead of the latest trends and strategies.

For example, SEO favored ecommerce websites for informational content a lot during 2024, but since the August Core Update, it started favoring informational websites instead. If you don’t have a designated SEO team to pivot—how do you handle it?

Engaging with specialized marketing agencies can provide you access to experts who are well-versed in current trends and best practices. 

You Want Fresh Perspectives

An outsourced eCommerce marketing team can provide fresh perspectives that invigorate your business strategies. 

Maybe you’re not seeing the potential your organic growth has on retargeting strategies? Maybe your store isn’t synced with Google Merchant Center so they don’t display on product snippets.

External experts can offer innovative ideas and insights that you may not have considered. 

You Want to Determine What You’re Doing Right—or Wrong

Do you want an unbiased assessment of how you’re running your marketing? 

Or someone to help you pinpoint what’s driving success or where you need improvements. 

Even if you’re a fractional CMO—you often need a fresh pair of eyes or hands to determine where to double down, where to improve, and what to part ways with. 

Experienced professionals can analyze your campaigns, metrics, and strategies with a fresh perspective, offering insights you might overlook internally.

What are the Benefits of Outsourcing Ecommerce Marketing?

Outsourcing your ecommerce marketing holds many benefits. Let’s list them.

You WIll Save Money

If you’re looking to reduce operational costs, you can start looking for an external team.

By hiring an ecommerce marketing agency—you’re replacing a PPC expert, a social media ads expert, a content manager, a designer… all for a fraction of the price. 

You’ll also avoid high expenses associated with hiring, training, and maintaining an in-house team.

For example, if you’re an eCommerce startup, you may struggle to afford a full-time marketing team—leading to inadequate promotional efforts and lost sales opportunities. And wasting your budget. 

You Will Have A Productive Team

An outsourced team can manage complex tasks more efficiently than one or two in-house employees—who might also lack the necessary skills and experience.

What’s better—and what we’ve had the best experience with—is an agency being an extension of your internal marketing team.

Let’s say you employ an awesome marketing expert who is overwhelmed by all the tasks. An agency is there to not only take some load off—but work in sync and report to them as well.

That way, you’ll keep your employer less stressed, but also help him learn new tricks of the trade.

You Will Have Access to Expertise

If you outsource an eCommerce marketing agency, you’ll usually get an eCommerce tech-savvy team at your disposal.

Think about this:

• An email marketing expert who understands every aspect of email automation tools
• A graphic designer who is well-versed in crafting ad creatives and emails
• A PPC expert who can boost your brand visibility on search engines
• A data analyst who can connect the dots between your backend metrics and marketing systems

…and so on. 

These teams also follow the latest trends and can determine if something is a fad or worth advertising in. They also have firsthand experience from managing multiple clients.

Box: Outsourcing eCommerce marketing has its caveats as well. It might lead to a loss of control over processes, which can be improved by higher–quality, transparent communication. Additionally, sharing sensitive customer data with third-party providers poses security risks, increasing the likelihood of breaches and financial and reputational damage.

How to Establish a Good Relationship With Ecommerce Marketing Partner 

As a brand, it’s crucial to establish a good relationship with your outsourced e-commerce marketing partner. 

This ensures clear communication, aligned goals, and effective collaboration—which lead to tailored marketing strategies, better performance, and stronger results for your business.

Agency wants to maintain a positive relationship with you, too. If you manage to find a good fit—make sure you keep it that way.

Let’s see how to do it.

Step One: Finding the Right Ecommerce Marketing Partner

How to find an ecommerce partner? Now that’s your most important question.

We’ve written a separate article about hiring an agency, but we’ll touch on a few important things here. 

Where to find an agency? If you don’t have an agency on your mind—and don’t have anyone that could recommend a reliable partner to you—you’ll have to do your own research.

Here are some things you might want to consider:

• Specialization in eCommerce: A proven track record in eCommerce marketing.
• Experience in your niche: Experience working in your product category—e.g. apparel.
• Portfolio and case studies: Review their past work and performance metrics.
• Services offered: Some agencies provide a full suite, some are channel-specific.
• Technology and tools: Ensure they use advanced tools or are alligned with your platform. If you’re building a store on Shopify—look for Shopify experts.
• Client testimonials and reviews: Look for credible client feedback to assess their reliability. Not on their website—but on third-party listings like Clutch, among others.
• Transparency and communication: If you request a call, assess how the agency representative communicates and if they provide required expertise and information. 
• Team expertise: Investigate the skills and qualifications of the team members who will handle your account. 

Step Two: Establishing Clear Goals and Expectations

Once you find a suitable agency, you must temper your expectations.

Unless you’re a unicorn brand that just needs “a little push” to drive record sales, than every marketing effort will take some time. 

However, don’t let “it takes time” become a mantra with which a sub-par agency squeezes some more months out of you. 

That’s why you need to focus on these things:

• Establish short-term goals: Define measurable, month-over-month results and deliverables that will hold an agency accountable.
• Establish long-term goals: What are the end results you’d want to achieve by the time your contract with the agency ends.

The best way to do this is to outline timeliness and specify KPIs you’ll measure.

For example, your SEO agency might improve your traffic, but is that traffic driving customers? Are the pages relevant? That’s something you’ll have to determine.

Step 3: Maintaining Communication

Communication is key to a good partnership with an outsourced eCommerce agency.

Determine the frequency of reports and meetings in advance and settle for a focal point of contact. Set clear response time and try to ask the right questions. 

Remember, poking an outsourced agency all the time can be counterproductive. If you have insecurities—make sure to write an email 

Of course, you will need to decide on the frequency of reports as well. And together with your agency, you’ll be able to make continuous improvements. 

Time to Outsource?

Outsourcing eCommerce marketing allows you to save time, reduce costs, and gain access to expert insights.

It also allows you to grow your business while your marketing performance keeps running in the background.

But finding the right agency… well, that takes some time and expertise. If you’re open to exploring an e-commerce agency to outsource, you can start here.