As a small business owner, you typically have limited resources so you may find yourself doing most things yourself to save money. The question is though, is that the best use of your time and are you actually saving yourself money, or could you in fact be costing yourself money?
In my experience I have often seen people make the wrong decisions and try and do everything themselves and not maximise the potential of their business. Some parts of your business won’t be able to be contracted out, but others can be. With the parts of your business that can be contracted out, you need to undertake an honest assessment of the pros and cons. How much will it cost? Can they do it better than you? What are the risks of contracting out? If you do contract out, what can you be doing with that freed up time? Is the value of what you can create in the freed-up time greater than the cost? A blanket “I will do everything approach” without a reasoned assessment is not a sound approach to create the greatest value.
In terms of your marketing, are you best to spend hours learning how to create Google ads of Facebook ads, or should you leave that for someone else and spend that time on other aspects of your business such as developing that new product, training the salesperson/team and so on?
There are some parts of your marketing that you should be doing directly yourself and there are others, for the cost, you are much better to call in an expert and oversee their work!
If using an outside contractor for your marketing, at all times, be confident that you know your target market best and don’t be scared to give your opinion. Don’t just give them free reign to do what they like.
Social Media posting in my opinion should be driven by the business not an outside contractor. Why? Because nobody knows your business and what is going on in it like you! Unless you are prepared to pay an outside contractor to spend lots of time in your business getting to know what is going on, you need to do it yourself. Yes, get advice/tips from an expert to up-skill you in what to do and maybe get filler content from them and or get them to upload the content, but drive it yourself!
The same can be said for email marketing. This is something that you should be doing yourself. No one is closer to your business or your clients than you, so you and your staff are the best qualified to manage your email marketing. Once you learn how to do it, then it should be scheduled on your calendar and become part of your routine.
With Facebook or Google ads in most instances I would recommend that they be done by an outside contractor. Why? Because it takes years of ongoing training and experience to get the best out of this type of advertising. You can’t easily replicate that and for a few hundred dollars a month in management fees, you are much better spending your time on things that you are an expert at!
You need to ensure that your priorities are correctly aligned to create the most value in your business. Those few dollars that you may save in not using an outside contractor, may be much less than the value you can create if you use that time in other parts of your business.
It is the start of the year, so a good time to assess the different parts of your business and ask yourself: “Should I/we be doing this, or should I use an outside contractor so that I/we can spend that freed up time doing…….? Maxmise your opportunities for your business by asking that question!
Related articles:
https://msofmarketing.com/you-just-have-too/
https://msofmarketing.com/the-biggest-issue-facing-small-businesses/
https://msofmarketing.com/new-years-resolutions-are-a-waste-of-time/
https://msofmarketing.com/lessons-so-far-from-insights-into-success-interviews/
https://msofmarketing.com/the-trap-of-being-busy/
https://msofmarketing.com/embrace-your-problems-to-succeed/
https://msofmarketing.com/6-success-books-insights-into-success-guests-are-reading/
