You put in a lot of long days. You knew that was what it was going to take to get your business started, and it’s been totally worth it.
But the long nights? You know, besides the ones where you’re burning through Red Bull at your laptop. The sleepless ones where you are tossing and turning, the nights you didn’t sign on for when you went into business for yourself.
Those nights happen to all of us, but there are a few reasons why outsourcing your marketing can help you have fewer of them and get back some of your daylight hours, too.
Buying Time
When you think of outsourcing your marketing, you may tell yourself, “Well, I don’t spend that much time on it. It’s just a blog post here or there.”
Outsourcing doesn’t just save you the time you spend on it; it buys you the time spent on it to do it well. Consider the steps to write a high-quality blog:
- Plan a topic and do research
- Write and edit the blog
- Find images or a video to accompany your blog
- Proofread
- Optimize the content for SEO
- Upload the blog to post it on your site
- Promote the blog on social media
Skip any of these steps and you might as well skip all of them. For instance, a blog that isn’t optimized for SEO is one that doesn’t increase traffic to your site. Likewise, a blog that isn’t promoted on social media is one that doesn’t get read.
You could apply this view of time to any part of your marketing strategy. If you have a social media presence, there is a lot of planning that goes into doing it well. You need analysis to see which platforms your audience frequents, determine what time of day is best to post and a strategy to stand out from the ever-present noise of every brand trying to get attention on a platform.
You don’t have time to do marketing, much less do it with a strategic approach. Outsourcing gives you back time and adds in a comprehensive strategy.
Accessing Expertise and Resources
Outsourcing your marketing gives you access to a whole range of expertise; a typical agency will employ not only marketing specialists, but also a social media analyst, copywriter, videographer, web developer, photographer and SEO expert. While any in-house marketing specialist might have expertise in one or two of these areas, you aren’t going to get all of them in one employee.
You also have the benefit of those experts without their salary requirements, or having to pay for their vacations, benefits and training.
That expertise also comes with decades of combined experience across many industries, with companies that look like yours and those that don’t. It’s a fresh perspective that will bring new ideas and excitement to your strategy.
And the resources! There are marketing solutions that you gain access to by working with an outsourcing partner. There’s nothing better than getting fancy software that you not only don’t have to license, but you don’t even have to learn how to use it. These are platforms that do the manual work of marketing: email automation, social media schedulers, SEO analysis tools, keyword researching solutions, website auditing and more.
Sit at the Cool Kids’ Table
We hate to say everybody’s doing it, but according to Statista, approximately half of B2B companies outsource at least some of their marketing.
While hanging with the cool kids isn’t a bad reason, the real reason this stat matters is that there’s a good chance your competitors are outsourcing. Marketing can give you the edge you need when you take a strategic approach with the right partner.
A comprehensive approach to marketing moves you from isolated social posts and a blog written here or there to a strategy where every visitor and every customer feels they have had a personal experience with your brand.
Wrapping it up With a PSA
Since SJC is this close to being your marketing agency, there are some words of caution in case you go with someone else and we don’t get the chance to tell you.
- Marketing is a slow burn. You should not expect instant results. It takes time for an SEO strategy to start impacting your website traffic. You may need to try a few different approaches to your social media posts before engagement gets a bump.
- You are going to be asked to give up some control. Trust the marketing agency to know what they are doing and let them do it. It may look like art to you but there is data-focused science behind everything they do.
- Let them talk you into something that sounds crazy. They’ve probably done it before with a lot of success, so when they encourage you to make a funny video or go on a podcast, give it a try!
At SJC Marketing, we understand the needs of small businesses because we are a small business, too. And we would love to hear where you are headed and how we can help you get there faster. Contact us for an initial chat and let’s see what we could do together!