A lot of businesses and firms do not outsource marketing functions as it should be. Most times, their outsourcing decisions are reactive — they suddenly want to fill the unexpected skillset gap, rather than taking outsourcing for what it is — a strategic business solution with the capacity to greatly improve both the quality and efficiency of their marketing.

It’s only a few of these firms that know it is needful to plan to outsource in advance rather than adopting it as a last resort remedy. But, when you plan to outsource, you are able to make the most of it.

Now, marketing tasks can be routine or specialized. While specialized functions come up once in a while but need a relatively high skill level, routine marketing tasks are repetitive and require only minimal skill but it doesn’t mean they are quite easy to both manage and implement.

These levels of outsourcing marketing activities outlined below are to help you find out your company’s level of investment and how to adopt outsourced marketing.

First Level: Entire Functions Performed In-House – Your firm will fall into this category if it operates at two extremes of sophistication — having a large specialized skilled marketing team, and doing minimal marketing.

Second Level: Outsourced Some Specialized Functions – If your firm is making effort to do a majority of its marketing in-house regardless of whether they are skilled for the tasks or not, then your firm falls in this second category. It means the only time your firm tries to outsource is when there’s no available skill to execute certain tasks such as coding and website design.

Third Level: Specialized Functions Outsourced – The firms under this category would usually keep back routine tasks in-house and outsource all of the technical marketing aspects.

Fourth Level: In this fourth level, companies adopting this approach would outsource some routine tasks and most specialized tasks. So, the in-house marketing team only constitutes a very small number that would handle the tasks that are not outsourced. The external marketing firm takes care of most of its marketing functions and at the same time coordinates with the marketing team in-house.

Fifth Level: At this level, a firm or company outsources all of its marketing functions — this includes the strategizing aspect. The external team will closely liaise with the in-house management team to ensure the marketing strategy falls in line with the firm’s business objectives ad goals. The outsourcing marketing firm will constantly update the in-house team about performance and work in progress.

So, before outsourcing marketing, find out which of this level your company or business falls in so that you can make most of the outsourcing solution.

Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! inspires entrepreneurs to build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.