In my opinion, outsourcing wholesale is one the worst things a startup can possibly do.
Marketing is first and foremost about understanding what your client need and want. This allows you to let your devs know what users are begging for, thus making your product more compelling, and to make your copy using words straight from the horse's mouth - for SEO friendliness, explanations of what your product does in terms of client needs and wants, etc.
If you outsource the thing wholesale, either you de facto outsource your product R&D, or you end up losing touch with what your clients actually want and moving forward in an ivory tower.
I'm part developer/part marketer and I once tried something like this. Unfortunately, it was easy to bill for tactics but incredibly hard to bill for strategy. So, all the research that goes into being good at marketing was a sunk cost.
I would highly recommend trying it yourself first. If you hire an agency you won't know how to guide them appropriately, and they'll end up applying tactics that may not work for your product/market.
I advise a few startups that are paying local marketing agencies thousands of dollars a month (much to my chagrin) to "take care of marketing" for them. None of them have seen any real traction as a result.
Granted, it's anecdotal, but I just can't see how a marketing agency can be effective unless given substantial guidance from the founder(s).
Yes, for the most part. This is what marketing agencies do.
You still need to provide them with the talking points and value proposition so they have the background for drafting copy for the Marketing collateral, but once they have that they can do a great job at putting together a marketing plan and executing on it, assuming you found a good agency.
There's the rub. How do you find a good one? We've spent obscene amounts of money on agencies that said they could get us growth but none made the needle move. Where are all these good agencies?
Yes, that's the rub for sure. The same question is also asked by non-technical people when trying to find a developer - how do you find a good one? So, I think you can follow some of the same principles: What projects have they done in the past? What results have they produced? Can you show some examples of your work? Can we speak to your references? etc.
Although it's not "turnkey" as the OP was asking about, you can do a lot of it on your own, or at least put together an overall plan, and then use agencies to fill the gaps. Just as with starting a start-up, there is a lot of great material and thought leadership out there on how to do it, along with a lot of practical advice.
Other than a few courses as part of my business degree, and working with marketing agencies in the past, I don't have a marketing background. However, I took a deep dive into marketing over the past 18 months, and we achieved some solid results. I spent a bit of time doing some research, came up with a strategy and overall plan, and then executed. Specifically, we put a content marketing program in place, along with some lead tracking tools, spoke at a few conferences, did some webinars, etc., all of which led to deals in the six figures. (In the B2B space.)
No. That makes about as much sense as asking if there's a turnkey service for product.
I mean, in both cases it's possible to hire competent people or firms to help you, but you still have to like actually be involved in the core work of getting customers.
Is there any recommendations for all in one turnkey service for marketing? So that i just pay money and they do the rest.