What kind of support can you get for marketing your small business? An introduction to outsourcing marketing
I’ve been in marketing for over 15 years, and in that time I’ve heard business owners again and again talk about why they dislike marketing.
Oftentimes this frustration or aversion to marketing comes because they’ve fallen into marketing because they want a business, not because they enjoy marketing or have marketing expertise.
While I love to help these “accidental marketers” find joy in marketing by making it easier for them, I also know that sometimes the best thing to do for your business is to outsource the tasks that are draining your time and energy.
When you allow yourself to let go of some of these tasks, you can instead focus on the activities that are within your zone of genius; working more “on” the business, instead of “in” it.
Before you start looking for someone to hire, take some time to document the marketing tasks that you generally complete in a given week or month, along with the approximate time it takes you to complete these, and whether you need to be the person doing the task or not.
It’s also helpful to keep track of the tasks that you enjoy, and those that cause you stress or frustration.
From there, you can choose a course of action for hiring based on where you see the biggest room for improvement in your company systems and workflows, time management, or energy conservation.
Here are a few of the most common options for outsourcing marketing work.
Marketing virtual assistance
A virtual assistant may not have specific and detailed knowledge on all things marketing, but instead will likely have generalized knowledge on how to support you on the tactical and admin sides of marketing.
A jack-of-all-trades if you will, hiring a virtual assistant to support your marketing endeavours is often a great place to start, especially if you’re a solopreneur or relatively small business and need support in a number of marketing areas.
Generally a virtual assistant will be on contract for a certain number of hours each week or month, and within those hours you can assign any variety of tasks ranging from updating text on your website to creating graphics for social media.
A virtual assistant is particularly helpful with the tactical, execution side of marketing. So, if you’re someone who still wants to maintain control over a lot of the strategy, messaging, and ideas, but just need help posting, scheduling, or creating, this might be a great hire.
If you want to hand some of these marketing tasks off completely, or are looking for support with the strategy and planning sides of marketing, you likely need to look for a digital marketer or specialized hire instead. These people will have more detailed and in-depth knowledge of their craft, as they’ve likely been honing in on their area(s) of expertise for years.
Digital marketing
Digital marketing, as the name suggests, involves online and web-based forms of marketing (including email, social media, and web-based advertising such as Facebook or Google ads).
With the continued rise of social media, text message marketing, and online advertising as means of communication, having these pieces in place in your business is often crucial for success.
Your message needs to continue to be at the forefront of people’s minds, and with so many people continuously looking at screens, getting their attention on said screen is a great way to reach your ideal audience.
However, in spite of these forms of online marketing becoming increasingly important to have, it doesn’t make them easier to execute or gain success with.
Reaching and growing your target audience takes time, experimentation, continued collection and analysis of data, and a long-term content creation plan, which you may not have time for depending on the number of other pieces in your business you’re trying to handle.
Instead of (as I often say) “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks,” there are strategic ways to approach your marketing to reach your ideal audience. It just requires some time, research and planning, which is where a digital marketer comes in.
Digital marketers are often well-versed in the strategy and planning side of things, and so this consultant can provide support around where, when and what to post, based on your target audience and business goals.
You can think of a digital marketing consultant more as an advisor; helping you to plan and making sure you’re on track – rather than someone who is executing on every task.
Digital marketers are generally looking at your long-term plan, crafting a strategy that you’ll be able to execute on to hit your goals over time, and then bringing that back to the present-day, so you know what tasks to be focusing on.
Digital marketing agency
I wanted to add in one additional layer of digital marketing support, by sharing that you can hand-off both the strategic and execution sides of digital marketing, but it will likely require a full marketing agency.
Digital marketing is such a diverse topic that it’s unlikely you can find a contractor who is well-versed in every area of marketing, and will both plan and execute on these tasks for you. Agencies provide a way to work with multiple digital marketers with different areas of expertise to support you.
The different pieces of your marketing strategy and plan should be working in tandem to create the most cohesive experience for your audience, which is why it can be helpful to outsource everything to the same company, assuming you have the resources.
Depending on who you hire, you likely would still have say in general content and posting themes, but much of the strategy, creative content creation, graphic design, email writing, and the technical posting, scheduling, uploading and running of content and ads would fall on the team you hire.
While this may be a good option if you’re a growing business and want to hand-off all of your marketing, it generally comes at a much higher price point than working with one person directly, and can potentially create some distance between you and your marketing messaging.
Writing
If you’re not looking for someone to support you in multiple areas of marketing, it can still be helpful to hire out the part of marketing that is most time-consuming or energy draining for you.
If that area is writing, consider hiring a writer! This person has really honed in on their writing skill and can create blogs or emails based on your guidelines, that sound like they’re coming from you directly.
After some initial discussion about your target audience, and your company viewpoints or perspectives, a writer would require the topics that are to be posted about each week or month so they can prepare a draft for you.
Depending on the contract there will likely be room for you to provide some revisions, and then when the piece is finalized it can be posted on your website or sent via email as if it’s coming from you.
After some time working with the same writer, this process should become easier and easier as the writer really gets to know your brand voice. Ideally you’ll have fewer and fewer edits, and content can almost seem to be completed on auto-pilot.
Social media
Social media is an aspect of marketing I hear about a lot from clients who struggle to understand how they need to be showing up amidst continued algorithm changes, or who don’t have the time to show up as consistently as they need to be.
If this is the part of marketing you need the most support with, consider hiring a social media assistant to support you in regular content creation, posting and management.
After initial onboarding to get to know you, your brand, and your goals, generally a social media manager will take complete control of your accounts and posting: coming up with a content calendar for the month with graphics, photos and captions, and executing on that content calendar by posting manually to the different platforms, or using scheduling software to do so.
They also may take over other parts of account management such as responding to direct messages and comments, posting to your stories, adding hashtags to posts, and/or social media engagement, depending on what they offer and what you desire.
Similar to writing, this process will take some initial honing in on messaging and branding, but over time the social media manager should come to know your company so well that there are minimal edits required on your end.
PR
If you have most of these other pieces of your marketing plan and strategy in place, and are looking to build your company reputation, rather than drive sales, a PR hire may be right for you.
Public relations professionals or firms will often offer a range of services; everything from crisis management to media outreach to press release writing. For a small business dipping their toes into outsourcing, media outreach may be a good place to start.
This is the process of reaching out to reputable media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, podcasts and blogs, to pitch stories about the work that you do. The intention is to secure features so that your name and company name are mentioned in articles to gain brand awareness and authority.
Whether you simply provide a quote, acting as an expert in industry news, or you secure an entire post about your work, media coverage gives you a boost of exposure and can improve your reputation.
Not only does this get you in front of new eyes and potential leads, but it helps to develop trust with your current audience, securing you as an expert in your field which can be helpful for referrals and higher conversion rates.
Websites
Whether you’re in need of a website, or have one but find it quickly gets outdated, hiring specialty website support may be a good idea.
If you don’t yet have a website, a website designer and developer can be helpful for taking your vision and putting it into a tangible site. This process will involve discussion with you on the intention behind your website, the pages and services you’d like to feature, and your branding. From there, the developer can create a website draft, and through back-and-forth discussion you can revise the site until it meets your desires.
If you already have a website, depending on where it’s hosted and how it’s set-up, it can sometimes be challenging to make the edits needed to maintain your website. Whether you need to regularly upload blogs, swap-out services, or change your colour scheme, it can be helpful to have someone on your team who is well-versed in websites and can quickly make these edits.
Depending on their expertise, this website editor may also be able to support you with SEO (search engine optimization); editing the copy and images on your website to ensure you’re more likely to be found by search engines.
Unless you have a really large website or require daily edits, this hire would likely be a small contractor, paid on an hourly basis.
Before starting the hiring process
Whether you feel like you need support with all of these areas, or are very clear on one specific marketing task you want to outsource, there are a few things you want to get clear on before making a hire.
1. Do you have the resources for this hire?
It can be exciting to think about outsourcing everything on this list, but if you don’t have the funds to support these hires it will become stressful quite quickly. Instead, get clear on what you can budget for outsourcing.
On the other hand, you also don’t want to wait too long before hiring or you’re likely hindering your company growth. Consider how long it’s taking you to complete these tasks now, and where your time could be better served (maybe working with a client?). When you’re able to see the money you could be making if you released a little grip on your business, it’s easier to think about outsourcing and delegating.
2. What processes and systems do you have in place to support onboarding?
If you’re currently keeping all of your processes in your head, it’s going to be a lot harder to bring a team member into your vision.
Early on, you want to begin documenting your processes so that these are easier to hand-off when you’re ready to hire.
3. What is important to you in a hire?
With any hire, you want to ensure you have some guidelines in place so you can make the best decision for your company.
Consider what skills you need the person to have, what deadlines you will need them to meet, and the values you want them to have so that they’re a good fit for your business.
Ideally you want to be looking at these hires as a long-term investment, and so it’s important to have these conversations up-front!