Most of the Brands & Startups alike outsource their social media marketing / search engine marketing along with many other such services… but how many monitor their campaigns once they have been outsourced?

I came across a sponsored post on my Facebook today which made me think on the age old question.. in-house vs outsource?

Look at the campaign below… There are some major mistakes in this campaign. Can you spot them?

1. The brand advertised in the images “Tjori” is a fashion brand
2. The text below the images is for CARS24.com
3. The link which i clicked the banner lead me to ETMediaLabs.com (well, this you could not have spotted)
4. Probably the most important of all, why are they selling women fashion to me? Completely wrong target market.

When i clicked through to etmedialabs.com, i was greeted with the bold banner which read “An IIT & IIM Alumni Venture.” and below that there was another banner which said “WE PROMISE 30% BETTER ROI AND CPA VIA PRECISE TARGETING”. (sidenote: i could not find a link to their SLA to check on the “promise” delivery terms)

Clearly this is far from their claims. I would urge all startups not to “blindly” trust companies which are run by IIT & IIM Alumni’s. You need to do your homework, set a benchmark for your campaign performance and then evaluate the outsourced companies performance and claims against that benchmark to see if they have actually achieved. Get involved with the process as much as you can, after all it’s your MONEY and the credibility of your BRAND at stake!

Update: After 9 hours of posting this article, the Ad. continues to be displayed and has started to get comments as well!