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Should You Outsource Your Business’ Marketing?

Hand delete Hire word on blackboard with chalk for business outsourcing concept

Who is in charge of marketing – creation and execution – within your business? Is it a person or a team? If it’s a single person, is that his or her sole focus, or is he or she wearing multiple hats and ‘handling marketing’ is one of them? So often, small businesses (we’re talking solopreneurs to businesses with 50+ employees) don’t understand the value of a solid marketing strategy. We’re not criticizing you here, not at all…it’s what we do and sometimes even we struggle with prioritizing our own marketing efforts! Marketing and sales go hand in hand. Yes, we know this is an age-old argument, but it’s true. Marketing compliments and supports (or at least it should!) sales, and without sales…well, all businesses need to sell, right?  

Some food for thought here on whether you might want to consider outsourcing some or all of your marketing. Larger companies with bigger budgets often have both internal and external (outsourced) teams, which is often optimal, but smaller companies can still experience similar benefits with an internal individual or point person and an outsourced team. Many smaller companies appoint an individual within their team who is ‘self-taught,’ and though that person may make the perfect internal point person or lead while working with an outsourced marketing company, they remain limited in their breadth and depth of experience and expertise.  

The 5 main benefits of outsourcing marketing:

  1. Cost
  2. Access
  3. Time
  4. Experience
  5. Education

Cost: 

Let’s start with money! Having a full-time, in-house marketing expert, or team, is expensive and can cost up to 6 figures. Hiring an external digital marketing team that remains educated and at the top of their field can save you money and bring you top-notch expertise!

Access:

Having access to individuals that focus solely on digital marketing and trends (which literally change on a daily basis) will often provide that extra edge over your competition. Not everyone understands, or values, the importance of staying agile and hyper focused on growth, and having an objective external team assisting with developing, executing and analyzing your growth strategies could give you the upper hand!

Time:

Recruiting, hiring, training and managing internal marketing teams takes time. We don’t need to remind you that time = money! Freeing up your valuable time to focus on what you’re good at is critical to your business’ success.

Experience:

Marketing companies have a depth of experience in all aspects of what you’ll need to create and execute a successful integrated growth strategy. Projects and tasks to consider when deciding on whether or not you might want to hire an outside team:

-Strategic Planning
-Designing Growth Strategies
-Executing Marketing/Growth Strategies and Campaigns
-Website Development
-SEO Campaign Development and Management
-Email marketing
-Social Media Marketing/Management
-Blogging & Content Marketing
-Video Marketing

Education:

Staying on top of the ever-changing marketing climate is like following a rocket ship that is zigging and zagging through outer space! From the many different social platforms’ nuances, to tweaking your company’s voice and messaging specific to your audience, to analyzing your SEO and so much more…it is literally a daily commitment to stay on top. If you’re one of the lucky ones that understands the value, and is able to invest in, the constant education for an individual or team, then we high five you!  

Marketing companies generally charge much less than it would cost to hire one full time expert and they provide fresh, objective and comprehensive input. While we understand that many business owners may be reluctant to hire an outside team, we wanted to outline some of the many benefits!

Why You Need To Commit -To Your Marketing Strategy That Is!

commit

What words come to mind when you think about commitment?   Loyalty, faithfulness, dedication, devotion, responsibility and obligation are the first to roll of our tongues here!  When it comes to your marketing/growth strategies, you need to stay loyal, faithful, dedicated, devoted and responsible!  You are obligated to commit to your business’s continued growth, right?

When it comes to developing a marketing strategy we can assume you’ve spent time identifying:

  1. Your differentiator/unique value proposition in your vertical, as well as your company’s vision and mission…
  2. Your short and long term business goals…
  3. Your available resources (the realistic amount of time, money and energy available to devote to your marketing strategy)…
  4. Your audience…
  5. And evaluating current and past marketing campaigns/efforts/budgets, etc…

Now you have your marketing strategy and are ready to execute?  Great job!  It takes the rolling up of sleeves and a lot of work just to get here but your work isn’t over yet.  It’s time to put one foot in front of the other and commit to creating fresh content daily/weekly/monthly then get it out there through your various identified channels.  Creating a marketing calendar is key.  We recommend checking in, constantly, to identify what is working, and maybe what isn’t, what you might just need to tweak a little or shelf for awhile or maybe even trash and re-evaluate that part of the strategy.  Whether you’re evaluating specific content, times of day that you’re posting (on each individual platform as they are all different), blogging style, email campaign, results of a LeadPages campaign, Fb ad, and so on…remember it’s like a puzzle in which the image is constantly changing!

The single most important detail to keep in mind that will ensure your marketing strategy will be successful is your ability to commit.  Consistent effort and execution is the key to the success of your company’s growth.  Another important thing to keep in mind is giving campaigns enough time to prove themselves.  This is HUGE.  So often we start with the best of intentions, right?  But implementing successful marketing strategies is a lot like exercise…we know we need to do it, we know we have to stay consistent to get the results we desire but, let’s face it, it’s hard work!  At the end of a long day at work how many of us would much rather curl up on the couch with a glass of wine than hit the gym?  We understand that we’re all human, life happens and sometimes there are legitimate reasons why we can’t stick exactly to our plan.  One great aspect of quantifying what’s working and what isn’t on a daily/weekly/monthly basis is we can also look at areas where we might be doing a great job, staying consistent executing one aspect of our marketing plan but maybe there’s an area where we’re falling short…have no fear, just analyze ‘what’ it is about that task that is causing you stress.  Let’s say it’s creating your weekly blog that you’re struggling with?  Maybe it’s time to change the day, or time of day, you have set aside for that project?  Or maybe you need to update the blog calendar because those topics just aren’t speaking to your creative juices?   Or, maybe you’re really enjoying (and great at) certain parts of your company’s marketing campaign but you hate blogging and someone else on your team would be psyched to take that over?

Here’s to your continued commitment & GROWTH!

“After working with thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs over my career, I’ve learned that one of the most distinguishing characteristics of success is the perseverance of commitment.”  From an article, by Todd Smith, about commitment…

TS Consulting/Hub Digital Marketing helps small businesses grow with easy to execute digital marketing strategies!

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