Are you still handling your small business’s marketing efforts in-house? If so, it may be time to consider outsourcing this valuable facet of operations to help yourself grow. How can you know whether it’s time to take this step and work with outside professionals? Here are five indicators.
1. You Have No Marketing Plan
Simply doing advertising or marketing work doesn’t mean you have a strategy. And having social media accounts doesn’t mean you know what you need to accomplish with them. Buying ads doesn’t mean you’re targeting the right audience in the right way.
A marketing plan, like a business plan, is a way to encapsulate your goals, methods, experimentation, and benchmarks. Without it, you could be spending money in the wrong places or even spending it at cross purposes. Professionals can help you figure out a plan, design measurements, and execute it.
2. Your Online Presence Is Limited
The online world consists of a huge amount of different mediums and platforms businesses can choose from. Are you taking advantage of the right ones? Or is your presence limited to a handful of social media posts and a website? Do you engage with social media often? Have you made updates and changes to your online branding recently? Are customers being fully engaged?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, you may need help growing your presence.
3. You Aren’t Seeing Sales Growth
A small business in today’s market cannot afford to stay still. But are you seeing the growth in sales that you should see based on how you’re spending your marketing dollars?
If, for instance, your inventory costs kept rising but you weren’t selling any more units, you’d know that something has to change. Your profits will eventually dry up. Similarly, if your ad dollars keep going out – and keep rising – but you don’t see a corresponding rise in the return on investment, something has to change.
4. You’re Doing the Same Things
Do you try new ideas, new platforms, new forms of engagement, and new technology in your marketing plan? Or are you doing the same old thing year after year? The world changes fast in these modern times, and it can be difficult for small business owners to keep up.
However, you don’t have to try to be a marketing genius alone. Instead, hire professionals in the same way you would hire pros to handle other parts of your operations in which you’re not sufficiently qualified.
5. You’re Needed Elsewhere
When most entrepreneurs start out, they try to handle everything themselves. But as your company grows, your time is best spent focused on certain things while outsourcing others. Owners and management are generally better off networking, negotiating sales, and developing new products than they are trimming grass, getting the water heater fixed, and brainstorming blog topics.
If you have a hard time with the decision to pay for outsourced marketing, consider tracking the amount of time over a few months that you and your staff spend working on it. Add up the cost of labor and the value of other projects on which you could be personally spending your time. You may find that you’re already spending as much or more than outsourcing would require.
Where to Start-
If you fall into any of these categories, Grow Team can help. Our team vets agencies throughout the nation and matches our clients with the right digital marketing partners for their needs, as well as crafting a custom marketing plan, and building a working relationship that benefits your company. Call today to speak with a member of our skilled staff.