Optimizing resource utilization is a universal aspiration, but achieving it is considerably more complex than one might express in mere words. The process demands extensive performance testing, precise server right-sizing, and numerous adjustments to resource specifications. These challenges persist and, indeed, become more nuanced within Kubernetes environments than in traditional systems. At the core of constructing a high-performing and cost-effective Kubernetes cluster is the art of efficiently managing resources by tailoring your Kubernetes workloads.
Delving into the intricacies of Kubernetes, it's essential to comprehend the different components that interact when deploying applications on k8s clusters. During my research for this article, an enlightening piece on LinkedIn caught my attention, underscoring the tendency of enterprises to overprovision their Kubernetes clusters. I propose solutions for enterprises to enhance their cluster efficiency and reduce expenses.
From cost savings to leveraging expertise, outsourcing your digital marketing needs to our Agency Partners is a smart and cost-effective decision, especially if your business has limited resources.
Is your business struggling to keep up with the constantly changing marketing landscape? Hiring external professionals or agencies to handle certain tasks or functions that would normally be done in-house will provide significant benefits and advantages.
In recent years, outsourcing has become a prevalent business strategy, especially for businesses looking to scale up, and marketing is no exception.
Digital marketing is one of the services that businesses commonly outsource.
Digital marketing is the most outsourced service after accounting and IT. Source: Zippia
In this article, we will explore the many advantages of outsourcing your digital marketing efforts to an agency and why this can turn out to be more cost-effective for your business in the long run.
As part of your own digital marketing strategy, your business will have to decide whether to handle its digital marketing needs in-house, outsource to a digital marketing agency, or a combination of both.
To understand some of the key reasons why you may want to consider outsourcing your marketing, let’s start by looking at content creation, which, according to research on digital marketing trends, is the area that many businesses are increasingly focusing more of their efforts on.
However, businesses also face significant challenges trying to meet their digital marketing strategic goals. These challenges include having limited budget and resources, lacking systems and processes to generate content and collect data, and more.
Businesses need to engage in marketing activities to remain competitive, but many struggle to afford and manage the marketing processes required to create and deliver effective results.
Content creation, however, is only one aspect of your digital marketing needs. What about advertising, analytics and reporting, branding, SEO, email marketing, video marketing, social media, etc.? These are also necessary for an effective digital marketing strategy.
Since we are focusing on whether outsourcing your digital marketing needs is more cost-effective than building an in-house marketing team, let’s start with a brief overview of the benefits of outsourcing.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Digital Marketing Needs
Outsourcing your marketing needs to a digital marketing agency offers a number of benefits, including:
Cost Savings
One of the key advantages of outsourcing your marketing needs is cost savings. Hiring and maintaining an in-house marketing team is expensive, as it involves costs such as salaries, benefits, office space, equipment, and training.
Outsourcing will help to avoid these costs as you can simply pay for the services you need on a project basis or through a retainer, depending on your requirements. This will result in significant cost savings and increased ROI, especially for SMEs with limited budgets.
Flexibility and Scalability
Outsourcing provides you with the flexibility to scale your marketing efforts up or down based as needed, without the need for permanent hires or layoffs.
During busy seasons, you can increase your marketing efforts, and during slow seasons, you can scale back, without having to worry about hiring or firing employees.
This flexibility allows your business to adapt its marketing strategies to changing market conditions without the overhead costs associated with an in-house team.
Access to Specialized Expertise and Resources
Marketing is a complex field that requires expertise in various areas such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media management, content creation, content marketing, email marketing, and more.
Outsourcing your marketing needs to an agency will give your business access to a team of professionals with specialized skills, expertise, cutting-edge tools, technologies, and resources that may not be available or feasible to invest in-house.
For example, external marketing agencies can provide your business with access to cutting-edge technologies that will help to analyze data, track performance, and optimize your marketing campaigns, resulting in more effective and targeted marketing strategies that will drive better results.
Professionalism and Experience
Marketing agencies are specialized entities with a wealth of experience in handling marketing campaigns for different clients across various industries. They have a pulse on the latest marketing trends, strategies, and best practices, and can leverage their expertise to create effective marketing plans tailored to your business goals.
Additionally, agencies often have a diverse team with specialists in different areas, allowing them to bring a well-rounded approach to your marketing efforts.
Time and Resource Savings
Outsourcing your marketing needs frees up valuable time and internal resources for your business to focus on its core competencies.
Instead of spending time on marketing tasks, your in-house team can concentrate on their primary roles, leading to increased productivity and efficiency.
The Hidden Costs of In-House Digital Marketing
In-house marketing may seem like a viable option, but it also comes with often overlooked hidden costs that can add up over time, making outsourcing to a digital marketing agency more cost-effective in the long run.
Some of the hidden costs of in-house marketing include:
Hidden Cost #1: Training and Development
Keeping up with the rapidly changing marketing landscape requires ongoing training and development.
If you plan to build an in-house marketing team, then expect to invest in continuous education, certifications, workshops, and seminars to ensure that your team stays up-to-date with the latest marketing trends and best practices.
These training costs will quickly add up.
Hidden Cost #2: Employee Turnover
Employee turnover is a common challenge in the marketing industry with professionals often changing jobs or seeking better opportunities elsewhere.
This can result in significant costs associated with hiring, onboarding, and training new employees. Additionally, turnover and mis-hires can disrupt marketing campaigns and strategies, leading to delays and added costs.
Hidden Cost #3: Equipment and Software Costs
An in-house marketing team requires investing in technology and infrastructure like specialized equipment and software tools to support your marketing efforts and execute tasks effectively.
Investing in website development and maintenance, hardware, software licenses, subscriptions, marketing automation tools, CRM systems, analytics platforms, and other marketing technologies is expensive. Moreover, these tools require regular updates and maintenance, which will further increase costs over time.
Hidden Cost #4: Management and Overhead Costs
Managing an in-house marketing team requires additional overhead costs, such as salaries, benefits, office space, utilities, and other operational expenses. This will strain your budget and divert resources from other core functions.
Hidden Cost #5: Opportunity Cost of Diverting Resources
Doing digital marketing in-house requires diverting resources like time, effort, and budget from other areas of the business which results in less focus on other critical business operations.
This opportunity cost of diverting resources from other areas of the business can be significant and could seriously impact overall business performance.
Hidden Cost #6: Performance Monitoring and Optimization Efforts
In-house digital marketing requires investing time and effort into monitoring and optimizing marketing campaigns for optimal performance.
This includes analyzing data, conducting A/B testing, making adjustments to strategies, and continually optimizing campaigns for better results. These ongoing efforts require time and expertise, which may be overlooked when you consider the total cost of in-house digital marketing efforts.
Hidden Cost #7: Risk of Skill Gaps and Burnout
Running an in-house digital marketing team can result in skill gaps and burnout. Your team may need to handle various digital marketing tasks simultaneously, which often results in skill gaps in certain areas or even burnout due to the workload.
The net effect of this is decreased productivity, increased turnover, and additional costs associated with training or hiring new personnel.
Hidden Cost #8: Risks of Campaign Failures
Marketing campaigns do not always yield the desired results and in-house marketing efforts can fail to deliver on expected ROI.
When marketing campaigns do not perform as expected, it often results in wasted resources, lost opportunities, and additional costs to rectify the situation.
This risk can be mitigated by outsourcing to a marketing agency that has the expertise and experience to create effective marketing strategies and campaigns.
Hidden Costs Of Outsourcing Digital Marketing
Like in-house marketing, outsourcing also has hidden costs, so let’s explore these briefly:
Hidden Cost #1: Management and Coordination Efforts
Outsourcing your digital marketing requires spending time communicating with the agency, providing feedback and approvals, and managing the overall relationship.
The amount of effort and time required for managing agency relationships is often underestimated, so you need to have realistic expectations and include these in your cost calculations.
Hidden Cost #2: Lack of Direct Control and Visibility
Outsourcing your digital marketing needs often results in a lack of direct control and visibility over marketing efforts, and challenges monitoring and overseeing the agency’s activities, resulting in potential misalignment with your business objectives or ineffective strategies, and hidden costs in the form of lost opportunities, delays, or rework.
Hidden Cost #3: Dependence on Agency Expertise and Availability
Outsourcing typically leads to some type of dependency on the agency’s expertise, knowledge, performance, and availability. This can result in potential delays or additional costs finding alternative solutions.
Hidden Cost #4: Contractual Obligations and Fees
Outsourcing often involves contractual obligations and fees that your businesse may overlook. These include contract termination fees, additional charges for changes or revisions, or unexpected fees for using certain tools or technologies.
It’s crucial to thoroughly review and understand the contractual terms and fees associated with outsourcing digital marketing to avoid hidden costs.
Hidden Cost #5: Potential Quality or Cultural Misalignment
Another hidden cost of outsourcing is potential quality or cultural misalignment. If the agency’s work does not meet your expected quality standards or align with your business’s values and culture, you could experience additional costs to rectify or align the work. These include rework, revisions, or additional efforts to align the marketing efforts with your brand and messaging.
Outsource Your Digital Marketing Needs or Build An In-House Team?
As we have just seen, while outsourcing your digital marketing needs to an agency has many benefits, there may also be associated hidden costs, so it’s important to evaluate the pros and cons before deciding whether to outsource or run your digital marketing in-house.
Every business has unique needs and preferences, so it’s important to do your own research and cost-analysis.
Before making any decision, first calculate the cost of running your marketing in-house versus outsourcing. Various sites provide comparison tables that can help you with this.
For example, the table below from HubSpot illustrates an estimated general cost of putting together a one-month digital marketing campaign in-house (calculated as 40+ hours of work in-house), versus the cost you could potentially expect to pay if outsourcing to a digital agency (around $6000).
Components of a marketing campaign completed in-house versus potential cost of outsourcing to an agency. Source: HubSpot
Note: When looking at the above, keep in mind that:
a) The table does not take into account additional costs like salaries, training, technology, research, developing marketing expertise, etc.
b) Some of the estimated number of hours depicted in the table assigned to areas like creating blog articles and an email nurturing series seem to underestimate the time it takes to create high-quality content.
WebFX offers a great breakdown of digital marketing costs as illustrated in this summarized table…
There are other sites that provide lists or breakdowns of expected costs associated with outsourcing your digital marketing needs, including the article we wrote on additional marketing services web developers can offer.
Enter your details into a tool like DigitalStoryteller’s calculator to compare the cost of in-house marketing vs outsourcing.
To calculate the cost-effectiveness of using an in-house vs outsourced marketing team, look up estimated salaries using the links provided above and then enter your own figures into the calculator for fields like employee benefits and payroll taxes.
Tips for Outsourcing Your Marketing Needs to an Agency
Let’s say you’ve assessed the marketing needs of your business, done a comparison of costs, and decided that outsourcing is the more cost-effective option. Use the tips below to ensure a successful outsourcing experience:
1. Define Your Business Goals
Before outsourcing your marketing needs, clearly define your business goals and expectations. Communicate your marketing objectives, target audience, budget, and timeline to the agency to ensure that they align with your business objectives.
2. Research and Select the Right Agency
Do thorough research to find a reputable marketing agency that has a proven track record of success. Consider their expertise, experience, client testimonials, and case studies to evaluate their capabilities. Request proposals and compare pricing models to select an agency that fits your budget and requirements.
3. Establish Clear Communication Channels
Communication is key to successful outsourcing. Establish clear communication channels with the agency, including regular meetings, reporting, and updates. Define roles, responsibilities, and expectations to ensure a smooth working relationship.
So, set realistic expectations and understand that it takes time to see results. Trust the expertise of the agency and allow them to implement their strategies effectively.
5. Monitor and Evaluate Results
Regularly monitor and evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns with the agency. Review reports, analytics, and metrics to measure the success of your marketing efforts. Provide feedback to the agency and collaborate on any necessary adjustments to optimize results.
Outsourcing To A Digital Marketing Agency – Next Steps
When it comes to evaluating whether to outsource or keep your marketing in-house, it all boils down to this:
If it’s more profitable to focus your time and resources on your business and outsource your marketing needs externally, then you are better off outsourcing and utilizing your time and resources to find and serve new and existing clients.
You will experience cost savings in terms of opportunity cost, as you can now potentially generate more revenue from activities that outweigh the expense of outsourcing, focus on your core services, and manage your time and resources more efficiently.
If your research and calculations show that outsourcing your marketing needs:
Is more cost-effective than running an in-house marketing team,
Will help to improve brand awareness, increase website traffic, deliver higher conversion rates, and drive business growth
Provides desirable benefits like cost savings, the flexibility to scale your marketing efforts based on your needs and budget, access to specialized expertise and professionalism, time savings, and more
Then the next logical step is to reach out to a digital marketing agency and begin exploring what services they offer and how they can help you achieve your marketing goals.
If you don’t know where to start, we recommend putting a list of questions together and checking out our digital marketing agency directory.
Our agency partners are experienced professionals who can assist you with all your digital marketing needs.
WPMU DEV can help you find the right digital marketing agency to outsource all your marketing needs.
To view all listed agencies and their available services, visit our Agency Partner directory or contact our 24/7 support team if you have any questions.
Many believe faxing to be outdated and obsolete. And although the fax machine now has its place in technological nostalgia, the need to send documents securely over the internet remains. The good news is that you can now leverage modern technology to fax without a fax machine.
Faxes are still the go-to method of sending important documents quickly and securely. With the internet, you can now send them directly from your computer.
In this article, we give you five simple steps to get started.
The 12 Best Online Fax Services for Sending Faxes Over the Internet
Every online fax service is slightly different, and the one that’s right for you will depend on your communication needs. To help you find the best online fax service for your business, we’ve tried and reviewed the 12 best online fax services to make it easier for you.
Without the need for paper, ink, a phone line, or a fax machine, sending faxes has never been easier. Here are six steps to take to start sending faxes via the internet.
Step 1: Choose the best online faxing service for your needs
If you want to send faxes over the internet, there are several different options for doing so. But they aren’t all created equal.
There are several reasons to use an online faxing service:
Ease of Use: You don’t need a fax machine, phone line, printer, or extra hardware. All you need is a subscription to your chosen software provider and a WiFi connection, and you’re ready to start.
Security: Online faxing is a secure and reliable way to send documents online. The data transmission is encrypted, which makes it almost impossible for hackers and unauthorized users to intercept your information.
Cost Savings: Using an online faxing service saves money on hardware and recurring phone line costs. You also save time, as you don’t have to wait for the document to print out and be physically sent via a fax machine.
Going Green: You can send and receive faxes without paper or ink. Since it is much less resource-intensive than traditional methods, online faxing is a great way to reduce your environmental footprint.
But the right faxing service for you will depend on the size of your business and its needs. Take some time to research the different options available and decide which one best suits your requirements.
RingCentral makes it easy to start sending faxes over the internet today.
To choose the right vendor for your needs, consider the following:
Assess your faxing needs. Knowing the volume of documents you need to send and the level of security required is vital. If you send sensitive documents (e.g., healthcare records), you’ll need a HIPAA-compliant service like Sfax. You’ll also want to consider the industry you’re in and the specific features that are important for your business.
Look at the features offered. Different providers have different features like cloud storage integration, mobile app support, and recurring faxes. If your company already uses VoIP phone services, you may want a fax/phone bundle like Ooma.
Compare costs. Prices vary widely between vendors, so compare to find the best deal for your budget. If you plan to use the service less, you can use a per-fax pricing plan. If you plan to use it more than a few times a month, you’re probably better off paying for the monthly service.
Look at multiple vendors. It’s important to shop around and evaluate multiple providers to find the best fit for your business.
Read user reviews. Online faxing services can be hit or miss, so read what other customers have to say before making your decision.
Once you’ve chosen the right provider, you can set up your service and send faxes in no time.
Step 2: Set up the service with your chosen provider
Once you’ve decided on a provider, setting up the service is easy. All you need to do is sign up for an account and configure the settings.
Most providers offer both a free trial and a paid plan, so you can test out the service before committing to it.
If you opt for a paid plan, the setup process usually involves verifying your credit card information and signing up for a subscription. Most providers also allow you to test out their services with a limited number of faxes during the trial period.
When you sign up for a service, you will also get a dedicated fax number, which you can use to send and receive faxes.
Once your account is set up, you can access the provider’s dashboard and start sending faxes over the internet.
Step 3: Get up-to-date on online faxing best practices
When it comes to online faxing, there are some best practices that you should be aware of.
Make sure that your computer is protected by up-to-date anti-virus software. As the documents you’re sending and receiving are sensitive, you don’t want them to be exposed to malware or viruses.
When you’re sending documents, make sure to encrypt them. This adds an extra layer of security and makes it much harder for unauthorized users to access your information. To do so, you will need to use a secure file format like PDF.
Delete any sensitive documents that you no longer need. As online faxing does not require a physical paper trail, it’s important to make sure that all sensitive information is securely deleted once you no longer need it.
Be aware of security risks. Online faxing is a convenient way to send documents, but missent information, lost data, and hacking can all be real risks. To protect your data, make sure to keep track of who you’re sending documents to and confirm with the recipient that they’ve received the documents.
Have a backup plan for emergencies. Make sure that you have a backup plan in case your provider experiences technical issues or outages.
Step 4: Compose your documents and prepare them for sending
Creating your faxable document is easy. Most fax services allow you to upload documents from your computer or drag and drop them into the online service.
Depending on the document type, there are several different ways you can do this:
Branded PDF Files: Larger companies have branded PDF files that they use as templates for faxes, which you can easily upload to your fax service.
Word Documents: Word documents are the simplest type of document to send and receive. Simply save your file as a PDF and upload it to the fax service.
Images: If you need to send an image, make sure it is in a high-resolution format like JPG or PNG.
Fill-In Forms: Forms that require filling in can be scanned and uploaded as a PDF to the fax service.
Private Records: Especially for sensitive documents (e.g., medical records, tax forms), make sure to encrypt the document before sending.
The process for composing your faxable documents will be different depending on what exactly they are. But in general, you should make sure that the documents are small enough to be sent as one fax.
If you’re sending a document from an online source such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word, you should make sure to download it in a PDF format first. This will help ensure the integrity of your files and reduce file size.
Once you’ve downloaded the document, you can then prepare it for sending by adding a cover page. A cover page is like an envelope for your fax and will help to ensure that the recipient knows what documents you’re sending them before they even open the file.
Step 5: Start sending and receiving faxes
After you have prepared your documents, you can start sending and receiving faxes.
Faxing wirelessly and faxing over the internet are fairly similar—both processes involve sending documents through the web. When you are faxing over the internet, your documents will be sent via an online protocol such as FTP or secure file sharing. This means that they won’t be transmitted through a physical phone line like traditional faxes.
There are two ways to send faxes over the internet:
On your mobile phone
Via a computer or laptop
If you choose to send a fax from your mobile phone, you can use your providers for iPhone or Android to do so. Alternatively, if you’d rather send a fax from your laptop or computer, there are several online services that offer faxing solutions. Usually, you will also have the option of sending it to their email address.
In any case, you will need a secure WiFi connection to send the fax successfully.
When you’re ready to send a fax, all you need to do is enter the recipient’s fax number, upload your documents, and hit send. Depending on your provider, you may even be able to send multiple files in one instance.
If you’re expecting faxes from other people, simply provide them with your online fax number and let them know where they can find the documents they need to send.
Once a fax has been successfully sent, you’ll receive an email notification. This is especially helpful if you’re trying to keep track of important documents and make sure that they have reached the intended recipient.
And once a fax has been received, you can easily view or print it from your online account.
Step 6: Manage your sensitive documents and properly store your records
Data privacy is important to your company and the people you work with. Thus, using a strong encryption system is essential to keep your sensitive documents secure. This will help protect the information from unauthorized access and prevent any data leakage or hacking attempts.
There are several different types of encryption you can use, such as AES, RSA, and PGP. Each of these systems will protect your documents with a unique key that only you know.
Also, make sure to store your faxed records properly. Depending on the nature of the information in them, you may need to store them for a set amount of time. You can easily keep track of all your records using an online document management system. This will help you easily access them should you ever need to refer back to them in the future.
You should also organize them so you can easily find them when you need them.
Final Thoughts About Sending Faxes Over the Internet
Although fax machines are a thing of the past, the use of fax technology has only become more commonplace in the modern office—especially with the rise of digital documents. This is why learning how to send faxes over the internet can be so helpful in helping you stay organized and efficient.
When setting up online faxing for your business, make sure to choose a reliable provider that suits your specific needs and take the necessary steps to protect your sensitive documents. And most importantly, make sure to follow the steps outlined above for a successful experience.
Using spot nodes in your Kubernetes cluster can be intimidating due to their lack of availability guarantees. Kubecost’s Spot-Readiness Checklist is here to give you more confidence. The checklist investigates your public cloud Kubernetes workloads to identify candidates for safe scheduling on spot instance types, which can save you up to 90% on cloud resource costs. Kubecost automatically performs a series of checks on your AWS (EKS), Azure (AKS), and Google Cloud (GKE) clusters using your workload configurations to determine readiness. It then estimates the savings impact from making the transition to Spot.
What Are Spot Instances and Why Use Them?
Spot instances are spare compute instances that public cloud providers offer to customers at a deeply discounted rate—potentially up to 90% cheaper. However, spot nodes vary in their availability and pricing, depending on the supply and demand of compute resources at a given time and fluctuate per instance size, instance family, and deployment location. Once the demand for a particular instance type increases, spot instances may receive an interruption notice and spin down within a short shutdown window (usually a few minutes). For this reason, spot resources are best used for fault-tolerant and flexible applications like Spark/Hadoop nodes, microservices that can be replicated, etc.
Here's what John Vester is thankful for in cloud computing.
In the United States, the end of the month of November is when time is taken to perform a retrospective-like event called Thanksgiving. What started out as a dedication to give thanks for the blessing of harvest and the preceding year has transformed into a time to simply be thankful for one's blessings.
Since Thanksgiving is recognized on the fourth Thursday in the month of November, I thought I would introduce a five-part technical twist with the following Thanksgiving-focused articles:
