DIY is great for a lot of things: home repairs or even renovations. But there are other areas where DIY isn’t such a great idea, like orthodontics. In some situations, the problem isn’t just that you don’t know a skill; it’s that you don’t even know what you don’t know. And that’s often true in marketing.
Doing your own marketing is like engaging in a battle where you don’t know who the enemy is or why you even got into uniform and went out to fight. It’s ambling through a battlefield, hoping something good happens because you fired your gun into the air a few times.
Let’s look at a few ways that your DIY efforts in marketing may be delivering you into enemy territory:
You’re Not Sure Who You’re Fighting For: Does your team have a solid identity in your brand? A great marketing strategy sits on a foundation of brand identity, an understanding of what makes your brand unique and the values you embrace as a company. Without this solid structure holding up your strategy, your team may struggle to work together as a cohesive unit.
A Lack of Training Is Resulting in Wasted Resources: You dabble in a bit of social media. You read a few articles about SEO and try to keep best practices in mind. You heard a talk on Google Analytics. Sometimes, information can be presented in a way that disguises complex subjects as simple tasks you can learn “in just five steps!”
Social media marketing, SEO and Google Analytics are areas of expertise that require experience and time. You might be led to believe that you can master them without diving in deep, but you will find that your inconsistent efforts in these marketing techniques won’t produce much of a return.
If you are paying for Facebook ads that aren’t moving the needle or investing in SEO tools that don’t seem to bring more traffic to your site or change your ranking on search engines, it’s a good indicator that it’s time to consider outsourcing.
You’re in a Stalemate: Your market share has been holding steady for years. You’ve been using the same promotions and direct mailers every spring and you religiously post a blog once a month. You know it’s time to make a move, but which move should you make?
Knowing how to prioritize your marketing dollars is a big part of successfully growing your brand, but it’s easy to get stuck in a stalemate, holding tight to your DIY approach while nothing much changes. Getting a few fresh ideas on how to connect with new audiences is a great reason to consider outsourcing.
In some situations, the issue is simply that your marketing strategy has gotten a bit dusty. You are aware that there must be new trends out there, but you aren’t sure what they are or how to best use them to your advantage.
You Lack Discipline: Your DIY marketing battle is not lacking passion or commitment, but focus. You’re using a handful of different color schemes, every social post uses a different tone of voice and there’s no thought behind which images you should use with content. Anything goes, so your brand doesn’t have a strong identity.
When you work with an experienced marketing team, they will guide you to a brand identity that is consistent in its message, look and voice. You will have guidelines for images that tell you which fit your brand and which don’t. Across your company, your team will know how to keep a consistent image in front of your audiences, so that in a glance, they will know it’s your post, your video, your logo.
Let Us Fight For You
When you outsource your marketing, you bring in the strategic team you need to gain market share, increase brand awareness and execute a comprehensive plan for your company. You’ll see a lot of advantages with outsourcing:
A Whole Team of Marketing Experts: Even if you hired someone in-house, they may have a couple of areas of expertise, such as videography or SEO. When you outsource, you’re gaining access to the whole spectrum of skills, such as copywriting, graphic design, web development and more. They will also come with years of experience with companies that look a lot like yours.
You Don’t Need to Nerd Out: Marketing specialists love marketing resources like Google Analytics and SEO tools. They already know how to use them and have paid for the licensing for access to special features. When you outsource, you get the benefit of these solutions without having to take time to learn them and invest in the technology.
Scalability: Imagine you’re in a battle and you need reinforcements, but after that, you don’t really know that you will need any extra help. It’s smooth sailing after a few weeks.
Outsourcing allows you to scale your services up and down to meet the needs you have. Running a promotion? Launching a new product line? Tackling a rebrand? These are all perfect situations for bringing in a marketing team. In six months, you’ll be rolling just fine on your own, but today you need some help.
Are you fighting a battle using DIY marketing, but finding it’s just not worth it? At SJC Marketing, we’re a small business, too, so we understand what it’s like to weigh these options. Let’s sit down and talk about the benefits you could expect to see with outsourcing your marketing.