What happens when free-of-charge marketing efforts lack the necessary results? Small businesses across the country are asking themselves should we outsource digital marketing?
Without the expansive budgets and in-house resources, smaller businesses attempt to utilize trends such as social media marketing on their own. Often, these efforts fail despite large spans of time invested. At that point, small business owners should reevaluate their efforts and consider whether they should outsource digital marketing.
Implementing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy is extremely important for small business growth in the modern age. To achieve these goals without exceeding budgetary limitations, small business owners should create a budget for outsourcing.
Here are the top 10 reasons why you should transfer your marketing efforts to a digital marketing agency.
1. Small Business Resources Are Limited
Small business owners will often manage marketing strategies on their own to keep spending down. As their businesses grow, they might hire a part-time employee to take care of social media and other small tasks, but often with unsatisfactory results.
With a small team, the majority of whom have no marketing experience, implementing effective digital marketing campaigns is nearly impossible. Even if you could dedicate all free time towards carrying out marketing efforts for the business, should you?
The time and money invested in implementing marketing strategies often won’t receive a return on investment that’s worth the effort. Handing this burden over to an external team of experts is the best bet for a small business.
2. Acquiring a Team of Experts
As previously mentioned, small business owners and their employees often do not have marketing experience. Realizing that you need to research marketing trends, find the right software tools, and learn how to create marketing campaigns can be overwhelming.
In comparison, small businesses can outsource digital marketing needs to an experienced agency. As opposed to hiring and training an in-house employee or attempting to shoulder marketing yourself, the agency will have all the knowledge, tools, and experience necessary to help you right away.
3. Outsourcing vs. In-House Costs
When small business owners realize they lack the time or expertise to complete marketing strategies on their own, they might hire an employee. Affording a full-time, experienced marketing professional to work in-house is usually out of the question.
Paying a salary, benefits, vacation time, and more for a marketing professional is often too costly for a small business. Even a part-time employee requires resources such as marketing-related software.
Conversely, outsourcing digital marketing to an agency will transfer all those costs, such as planning costs for a website, to the agency. The agency works in their own office, covers their own salaries and benefits, and handles all the resources they need to complete marketing tasks. As a result, the small business owner only needs to pay for services—the U.S. Small Business Administration recommends allocating 7% – 8% of gross revenue to your marketing budget.
Moreover, several marketing-related tasks can be one-time projects. For example, website building starts and ends within a set period, so hiring an employee might not be wise. For web design services, outsource the project to avoid paying overhead for an employee or letting them go once the project is over.
4. Third-Party Perspective
Small business owners are passionate about their businesses, and they should be. Passion, however, can often blur owners’ views of their own projects. Even employees can allow the amount of time they’ve invested to stop them from viewing things objectively or accepting criticism.
Outsourcing a digital marketing service can help bring in a third-party perspective. Hiring a marketing agency to audit your website, for example, can help point out flaws and gaps in your marketing funnel that you might not have otherwise noticed.
5. No Loss of Talent or Knowledge
Losing employees is not a pleasant event, but it happens often. Whether an employee is unhappy with the position or their life is taking another direction, you might end up suddenly losing your talent. Time spent training and nurturing your employees is all part of human capital, and losing these assets can cause you to start from scratch.
Outsourcing digital marketing services like email marketing means that you do not need to train a new employee from scratch. Instead, you can depend on a marketing agency to offer that service with consistent quality.
6. Zero Interruptions in Service
In addition to never needing to onboard and train new employees after previous talent leaves, small business owners also won’t need to ever suffer an interruption in service. Relying on a digital marketing agency means that marketing professionals will stay on your project for as long as you need, and the agency can replace them if necessary without hesitation.
Service like this is important for tasks like social media marketing, which happens around the clock and requires precise quality and consistency.
7. Easy to Scale Up or Down
Small businesses usually have their goals set on growing, but the early years are unpredictable. Relying on a digital marketing agency provides an ease to scale up or down at a moment’s notice. As a result, small business owners have more control of their budgets.
For instance, a small business whose income changes seasonally would be able to change its marketing budget each month if they hire an agency. As a result, they won’t need to hire and fire marketing employees according to the season. Moreover, the business can increase the marketing budget and efforts as it grows without changing any internal structures or processes.
8. Risk Management
Marketing businesses online can be risky because the messaging affects the business’s reputation. One misstep or unattended negative review can cause havoc on the business. Assigning these tasks to a part-time employee or addressing it during your free time is an even bigger risk.
Hiring a digital marketing agency puts this tricky task in the hands of experienced professionals. These experts are much less likely falter, but when they do, they’ll be responsible for fixing them. As a result, you can focus on running your core business.
9. Gives You a Competitive Edge
Let’s face it: While you’re considering outsourcing your digital marketing needs, a limited number of other small businesses do. Hiring a marketing agency will give you the competitive edge necessary to grow quickly and become the local favorite.
For instance, hiring a professional agency to set up and manage your SEO will help you outrank competitors in search results and reach a more targeted audience. SEO has an excellent return on investment as well. Learn more about the cost of SEO here.
10. Better Return on Investment
Finally, small businesses ultimately need to focus on the return on investment. If you’re sinking hours and days into marketing without substantial results, it’s time to hire marketing professionals.
Outsourcing means you won’t need to learn how to research and analyze the results you get. SEO strategy, for example, requires an understanding of keywords and how they affect web traffic. Instead, the agency will turn your results into reports and is directly responsible for how the campaigns are improving your business.
Outsource Digital Marketing for Your Business
Whether your business is new or it’s been thriving for a few years, the choice to outsource digital marketing will free up your time and energy while improving sales. Take advantage of the expertise and resources that digital marketing agencies provide so that you can focus on your passion.
VujaDay Creative Digital Agency is experienced in offering comprehensive digital marketing services to small businesses in the Philadelphia area. Contact us today to get started on your new marketing strategy.
