Is outsourcing marketing tasks feasible for your small business? You might not think so at first glance.
Paying someone else to do work you’ve always done costs you money. But sometimes you need to look beyond dollars and cents to consider the amount of time you spend promoting your business, what all those hours are costing you, and whether you’re getting the best return on investment from that expenditure.
I can share my own experience as an example. I’d always managed my own website but knew it had grown a little stale. I had minimal time to devote to a refresh of the site and spent most of it staring at my home page trying to dream up ways to inject some life into it, then endlessly scrolling through WordPress themes to see if I could find one that lit my fire.
I would invariably get stressed and frustrated then move on in a huff to more pressing tasks. I was spending a lot of time “working” on my site, yet always ended up right back where I had started. Eventually I just gave up and left the site as it was. For years.
When a family member launched her own branding business*, I decided to take the plunge and invest in a package of branding ideas, including a logo refresh. I was blown away by the results and realized that what she accomplished in a couple of days, I could never have done in that amount of time, if at all.
I had learned a valuable lesson: sometimes it pays to pay someone else.
If I assigned a dollar value to the time I spent accomplishing virtually nothing, it would have been equal to–if not more–than what I ended up spending to have another professional do a task I could clearly not complete on my own. Not to mention that this “outsider” brought perspective and know-how that I simply did not possess.
With my newfound wisdom, I share with you three key reasons to consider outsourcing some or all of your marketing tasks:
- Expertise equals efficiency. Rather than spending hours or days on a task, you can hand it off to an expert–whether in branding, social media, writing or visual tasks like photography or video. Because they specialize in their chosen field, they’ll get the job done in a fraction of the time and maybe even at a higher level than you can achieve yourself.
- It may cost less than you think. Hiring out doesn’t have to break the bank. Small businesses that serve other small businesses understand budgetary challenges and often offer pared down packages and à la carte services–a one-off logo, a short video, biweekly blog posts to keep your website and social media fresh. Compared to the time you’d spend on these tasks, this kind of investment may well be worth it. Shop around to find a service provider who offers scalable, affordable solutions.
- You’ll see your business in a whole new way. You are knee-deep in your business. Inviting someone to look from the outside in brings a different perspective and exciting ideas you might never have thought of. Would I have picked deep forest green as a colour for my business? Not a chance. But as soon as I saw it in the colour palette suggested to me, I knew it was perfect.
When you look at the value of your time compared to the cost of hiring someone for ad hoc marketing tasks, outsourcing might just be the most cost-effective choice. You’ll get things done quickly and within your budget, and might even gain some fresh ideas that bring new attention to your business.
*This is not a paid or affiliate link but does lead to the business of a family member.
Photo of vintage cash register by Ramiro Mendes on Unsplash.