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Want to know whether you should DIY or outsource your marketing? You are not alone. In fact, it is a question I get asked by a lot of business owners. A key part of running an essential business is good marketing. And the reality is most small business owners will start doing their own marketing, but there comes a point when they’ll start to question whether continuing to look after their own marketing is the right thing to do or whether they should outsource. With that in mind, I’m going to share the pros and cons of DIYing your marketing and outsourcing your marketing to help you make an informed decision about what is the best way to market your business moving forward. Keep on reading to find out whether you should DIY or outsource your marketing.
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SHOULD YOU DIY OR OUTSOURCE YOUR MARKETING?
What is DIY Marketing?
DIY, aka do-it-yourself, marketing means you, as the business owner, are responsible for all aspects of your marketing. This will cover everything from planning and creating to delivery and analysis.
The Pros of DIY Marketing
Pro 1: Save Money
One of the big reasons why most small businesses start marketing their own business is because of budget restrictions. When you are responsible for marketing your own business you are likely to be paying yourself a lot less, or in many cases nothing, than it would cost to hire someone to run your marketing.
Pro 2: You Have An In-Depth Knowledge of Your Business
As the owner of the business, you’ll have a great greater knowledge about your business than someone you decide to hire. This should mean you are able to come up with ideas for marketing your business faster, and if you truly have a good knowledge of your clients and why they work with you then it should be easy to create marketing that directly speaks to your ideal client (without having to spend lots of time sharing all that information with someone else).
Pro 3: Knowledge and Skill Building
Marketing is an essential part of running your business and even if you want in the long-term to outsource or delegate your marketing to someone else the reality is as a business owner you need to have a good working knowledge of marketing. Otherwise, it is easy to hire the wrong person or agency and waste a lot of money.
DIYing your marketing will enable you to build your knowledge and skills. In the short term you might find this learning process enjoyable and the knowledge will help ensure the success of your marketing in the long term.
The Cons of DIY Marketing
Con 1: Time Commitment
If you are marketing your own business it is going to take time, especially if your marketing is more focused on organic content rather than paid advertising. Making the time for marketing will mean one of two things. You’ll either work extra hours or you’ll have to stop doing something else in your business so you have time for marketing. Neither is a great solution.
Con 2: Knowledge Gap
Whilst you might be improving your knowledge and skills by DIYing your marketing the reality is you aren’t a marketing expert. You don’t know what you don’t know and that can result in you wasting a lot of time and / or money. For example, running digital adverts when you don’t know what you are doing can literally result in you pouring money down the train. And even if you aren’t spending money on your marketing at the moment your organic content marketing could be underperforming because you just don’t know how to make it as effective as possible.
Con 3: Ongoing Commitment to Learning
A major con of DIY marketing is that marketing isn’t something you can learn once and be done. Marketing, especially, digital marketing is forever changing and evolving. I mean just consider the changes that happen on one social media platform over a few months. DIYing your marketing means committing to learning the foundations once, and then staying on top of changes.
| GOING TO DIY YOUR MARKETING? GET A MARKETING MENTOR.
If you decide that DIYing your marketing is the best option for your business you should seriously consider getting a Marketing Mentor. Working with a Marketing Mentor, like myself, will help address the cons around the knowledge gap and ongoing commitment to learning. I’m a Marketing Mentor, who is a Chartered Marketer, has over a decade of professional marketing experience and does all of my own marketing. I eat, sleep and breathe marketing, which not only means I’ll ensure you have a marketing strategy that is effective, but will also help you stay up-to-date with the relevant changes that you need to be aware of. My 1:1 Business and Marketing Mentoring is designed for service-based business owners, who are running their own marketing and want the strategy, training and accountability to ensure they deliver to the best of their performance and get results. To find out more about my 1:1. Business and Marketing Mentoring click here. |
What is outsourced marketing?
If you don’t want to DIY your marketing the other option is to outsource your marketing. Traditionally outsourcing refers to your hiring a freelancer or agency. However, for the purpose of this blog post, I’ll also outsourced marketing will also refer to when you hire someone to work in your business in a marketing role (Marketing Assistant, Marketing Manager, Chief Marketing Officer etc).
The Pros of Outsourced Marketing
Pro 1: Access to expertise
One of the major benefits of having a professional marketer running your marketing if you’ll get access to an expert. This will ensure that your marketing is as effective and efficient as possible. Also, they should keep up-to-date with changes within marketing and use that knowledge to adjust your marketing accordingly.
Pro 2: Saves your time
Whether you decide to hire someone to join your business or you outsource the reality is you will get your time back. Someone else will be putting in the hours and that gives you the time back to focus on other aspects of the business or have more time away from the business.
The Cons of Outsourced Marketing
Con 1: The Cost (or Investment)
Outsourcing your marketing will bring extra costs to your business. These costs will vary drastically depending on the way you decide to outsource your marketing and the level of expertise you go for.
Con 2: Loss of Control
For some business owners handing their marketing over to someone else is a daunting process, even if they haven’t really enjoyed running their own marketing. This is very common for service-based businesses where the business owner is the face of the business.
| DON’T HIRE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT TO LOOK AFTER YOUR MARKETING AND EXPECT MIRACLES IF YOU DON’T HAVE A MARKETING STRATEGY.
One of the biggest mistakes I see business owners making is deciding they want to start outsourcing, deciding they don’t have enough to hire an experienced marketing freelancer or agency and so hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) to run their marketing instead. A Virtual Assistant is rarely a marketing expert. They can run your day-to-day marketing, but they need a marketing strategy to work from. That’s why I offer Strategy Days. You can work directly with me one-to-one and get a bespoke marketing strategy created for your business. And if you want to go a step further you can even bring the person who will be implementing the marketing to your Strategy Day too. |
DIY vs Outsource Your Marketing: Making the Right Choice For Your Business.
As you can see there are pros and cons to both whether you decide to DIY or outsource your marketing. So to help you work out what is best for your business here are some questions you can ask yourself.
- How much time do I have to commit to marketing? Is that enough time to successfully market my business? If I had that time back could I use it in a more useful or meaningful way?
- How much do you enjoy marketing your business? Do you hate it, don’t mind, like it or love it?
- Are you willing to commit to improving your marketing knowledge and skills?
- How much budget could you make available for marketing? Is that enough to outsource your marketing? Could that budget be increased if the performance of your marketing increased and there was more revenue coming into the business?
- What is the growth trajectory of your business? Is marketing your business by yourself stopping your business from scaling your business? If you have big revenue goals for your business is the cost of marketing now really an investment in the future of your business?
That’s it. You now know the pros and cons of DIYing and outsourcing your marketing so hopefully you can work out whether you should DIY or outsource your marketing.
The reality is without talking to you one-to-one I can not tell you whether you should DIY or outsource your marketing. There really isn’t a one-size fits all answer. And it is also important to remember that it doesn’t have to be an all-DIY or all-outsource option. In fact, many business owners will decide to hire someone (that could be employing someone or hiring a freelancer or agency) and they have some marketing responsibilities but not all. And the reality is if you are the face of your business you’ll still be needed for some content creation.
So review the pros and cons, answer the questions and make a decision about how to market your business going forward that feels good to you.
Let me know in the comments whether you are planning on DIYing, hiring (internally) or outsourcing to a freelancer or agency.
| WANT TO GROW A THRIVING FINANCIAL SERVICES BUSINESS?
As the owner of a financial services business, there is a lot you need to consider and juggle in order to build a thriving business. I have no doubt that from a financial perspective you are confident about running a profitable business, but business is more than just the financials. You need to be offering the right services, at the right price and have the right marketing and sales process. I’m a Chartered Marketer that specialises in supporting financial services businesses to market and build businesses they love, that supports their long-term financial wealth, and that change the lives of their clients and the world as a whole. If you want to build an online presence that positions you as an authority, attracts dream clients and results in more sales then Shine Online is for you – click here for more info and to apply. If you are looking for one-to-one personalised strategy, training and accountability then my 1:1 business and marketing mentoring programme is for you – click here for more info and to apply Not sure what is best for your business? To discuss your precise needs book a free, no-obligation, introduction call to discuss your business here. |
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