If you’re a sole trader, small business or a start-up it can be tempting to try to do everything yourself or within your team in order to cut costs. Marketing tends to be one of the last thing any business really wants to spend money on, and it’s easy to assume that because social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are free to use, that it’s free to market your business there. In essence yes it is, if you do this in your spare time. But, if you are using your valuable work time or enlisting members of your team to run your Facebook accounts and such, then it’s costing you money.
You’ve got to speculate to accumulate
Yes, it’s right you need to spend money to make money, but be careful what is you’re spending your time or your money on. Is it really effective to be or to have a jack-of-all-trades in the office? Or would it be better to leave the professional marketing to the experts so that you and your team can concentrate on providing a service to your customers. A popular saying doing the rounds on a meme states “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you’ve hired an amateur”.
Whilst your admin person or your partner might have a natural flair for creating witty Facebook updates, they will come a point when you need to look at the effectiveness of what they’re doing. It can often be that despite posting every day, sounding good and giving a lot of “love” to the page, you hit a wall and stay stagnant around 100 likes. Because you just don’t know how or where to find new customers via social media. Or the opposite could be the case; that the social account really takes off and needs a lot of attention and management to serve the customers. So what do you do, employ another member of staff to look after it?
Consider the costs of recruiting, training and hiring a new staff member. You’ll spend time writing the ad, filtering applications, interviewing, negotiating and settling in. And you’ll have to pay the tax on your employee’s earnings too, as well as all the other glorious paperwork that goes along with hiring someone. You’ll probably find that a full time marketing role isn’t affordable to start off with, so will you find someone with the right skills and experience that’s really willing to work part time? Consider the actual cost of this member of staff in your office. Will they be productive all the time?
Our guess is that the answer to most of the above will be no. So if you’ve previously ignored the opportunities there are for bringing skilled contractors or agencies in to the business, think again. Agencies providing affordable professional marketing services do exist. Avoid working with the cheapest – you’ll get what you pay for.
Think about how much you would pay monthly for a full time member of staff, then half it, and you should be able to find a great agency to support you with years of expertise. They’ll take care of your online marketing, won’t need space in your office, won’t cost you extra in taxes and will have software and tools that you may not be able to justify spending on for your staff. You’ll be getting a very professional service without the hassle of employment. You’ll see the effect of their work almost instantly, as you won’t need to train them and settle them in to the office before they start becoming productive.
And if you do enlist the help of an agency, for a monthly retainer you may be able to call on a whole host of services that you’d never be able to access from your team alone. Most agencies will be able to offer an hourly rate or day rate if you just want to spend a little before you commit. You may eventually choose to sign a 3, 6 or 12 month contract, but won’t need to commit like you would with staff.
What’s more, instead of worrying about the other parts of your business, your outsourced marketing will focus purely on what they’re best at, leaving your internal team to concentrate on your bottom line.
If you’d like to outsource your marketing tasks to an affordable agency, contact I Say! Digital today and we’ll review your current marketing campaigns for free.
