If you own a small to medium size business, you undoubtedly spend time searching online for helpful tricks and tips to help you master your company’s marketing needs. Free downloads, blog posts, and training videos are great tools for learning how to market your business online. But have you ever stopped and wondered if you should be the one utilizing these tools? Moreover, should you even be the one doing the job?
Did that question catch you off guard? It’s ok if it did. Most people who were once in the position of needing to run their own marketing campaigns remain in that position for too long because they don’t ask themselves that same question.
When is the Right Time to Delegate Marketing Initiatives?
A lot of small business owners start out doing their own marketing out of necessity. In order to grow your business, you need to let your target customer exist, but that doesn’t mean your marketing budget includes delegating online advertising.
At the same time, every minute you spend on small business marketing is time away from serving your loyal customers. Part of growing your customer base needs to include retention! Only you know the right time to delegate, but we’d like to help you think about the best way to maximize the time you have running your business.
Marketing for Small Business Made Easy
It’s great that you can run your company’s digital marketing by yourself but ask yourself these questions:
- After I have completed my self-assigned marketing tasks?
- Do I have enough time left in my day/week to complete all my other tasks?
- Are my marketing efforts enough to satisfy 100% of my marketing needs, or am I only accomplishing what I can make time for?
- Am I running everything to the best of my ability and not seeing the results I desire?
These simple but important questions are critical to determining if you need to seek help from an outside professional. If running your company’s marketing campaigns is hampering your ability to run the rest of your company, you will quickly find yourself without a company to market. Additionally, if you have great online marketing ideas but have found yourself in a position where you only have time to handle the basics, it might be time to seek outside help.
Don’t Take My Job
But wait! “Please stop writing this blog post,” you’re yelling because you are the person in charge of marketing for a small business and are afraid we are talking you out of a job. Relax; you have nothing to worry about. It’s normal for small businesses to have one employee manage and run their overall marketing campaign while utilizing the services of a professional marketing company.
So, if your job is to handle marketing for a small business, these are the questions you will want to ask yourself:
- Does my skillset allow me to accomplish everything that my job requires?
- Are the results of my max effort what they need to be for my employer to grow their company?
- How much do I really understand SEO, and is it enough to modify existing marketing strategies based on the data my site produces?
- Are you measuring the right KPIs with google analytics to confirm your efforts are successful?
Listen, if you love blogging that’s wonderful, but who is handling your graphic design? What about your SEO? Who is monitoring your social media platforms? If you’re a one-person operation it’s time to pause and ask yourself a tough question. “Am I truly an expert in every area of digital marketing?”
Writing, SEO, and graphic design are very different skill sets. Some people possess all of these skills, and others are strong with one and weak with others. When you bring a marketing company in, you do so to help fill in the gaps and NOT to replace you.
It’s best to view a marketing agency as an extension of your small business, working toward your business goals, utilizing today’s best business marketing strategies to put the power of SEO, social media, content marketing, and analytics to work for your business. When you have the means to do so, partnering with an agency can be the next step on your way to taking your business to the next level.
Maximize Your Return On Investment
Running a small business requires tools. You need a way to accept payments, file taxes, and connect with your customers. You also need marketing tools. The thing is that the best tools aren’t cheap, and it takes a lot of time to learn how to use them correctly.
Part of knowing when to delegate is measuring your ROI. Everything you invest time and money in should align with your marketing objectives. You’ll maximize your ROI by creating a marketing plan that repurposes content across all your marketing channels. When your social media posts reinforce your website content, you’ll increase your opportunities to reach a larger audience and you’ll ensure search engines understand the type of business you own. Understanding the context of your content will increase opportunities to get your business profile in front of the right people.
Not Ready to Delegate Small Business Marketing?
Only you know if you have the budget to designate marketing dollars to a digital marketing agency. If you’re looking for ways to reach your target audience, we encourage you to check out our self-paced course, Simplified Digital Marketing. 2
This course covers every aspect of digital marketing including SEO, web design, keyword research, and content marketing strategy. It’s designed to help you speak directly to your ideal customer and improve your online presence.
When you’re ready to delegate, we’re here to take your marketing plan to the next level and let you focus on the day-to-day needs of running a business.
Let’s Recap
When you’re starting out you will want to handle everything that you can, and this will probably include marketing. We’ve provided tools to support every step of your marketing journey. However, once your budget starts to grow, so will your marketing needs while at the same time your available time will start to shrink. If you feel you’ve reached this point, then it may be time to pick up the phone.