No matter what business you’re in, marketing must be the #1 function in your company. Marketing drives new leads and customers, and without a consistent, reliable source of customers you simply don’t have a business.
Yes, providing excellent products and services needs to be a top priority, but what good are they if you don’t have any customers? So logically, marketing is the most important job within your business.
Does it really make sense to outsource your most important job? That would mean the success or failure of your business will be in the hands of another person or company. That would be crazy right?
Well, not exactly. It depends entirely on what and when you decide to outsource.
What to Outsource
Marketing is a very broad term so it’s helpful to break it up into two core categories:
- Tactics
- Strategy
Marketing tactics are what you want to outsource. But I recommend you do NOT hand off your marketing strategy to someone outside of your company. Outsourcing strategy is like handing over the keys to let someone else drive your business
Strategic tasks include: planning new campaigns and promotions, analyzing key performance metrics, launching new products/services, deciding to test new ad outlets and sources of traffic, etc.
If you’re not sure if a task is tactical and can be outsourced, then here’s a simple test. Can you or someone else systematize the task and document the steps required to complete it? If yes, then it’s tactical and you can safely outsource the work.
For example, The Local SEO Formula course walks you through the required tactical tasks to get your business to be #1 in Google. All of the work can be outsourced and many of our customers choose to do that AFTER they learn how local search engine optimization works.
And that brings us to the next important point about when to outsource.
When to Outsource
Before you outsource anything in your business, it’s critical to get some basic education. Otherwise, it’s nearly impossible to vet service providers and monitor their work month after month.
For example, if you don’t know what an SEO company should and should not do every month, then how will you ever know if they are doing a good job? Yes, you can and should monitor search engine rankings and ROI, but those metrics don’t tell you if your SEO company is doing something against Google’s terms of service. Ignorance like this could get your business permanently removed from Google’s search results. That’s a big risk that can be avoided with a little upfront research.
Recap
As the owner of your business, you need to be in the driver seat and make the command decisions regarding marketing your company. That’s why you should only outsource your marketing tactics and never your strategy.
And before you look for a service provider, first get educated. Learn the basics about what is required so you can pick the best company and monitor their work month after month.
