The accessibility and relatively low cost of various digital marketing mediums to businesses often makes it difficult to know which you should handle internally, and which you should outsource.
For something like updating the company’s social media pages you may feel because you work in the business full time you have a better understanding of the business and what goes on day to day. That’s probably true, but don’t underestimate the desire of a good digital marketing agency to really get to know, understand, and be passionate enough about your business to be able to do this on your behalf.
If you’re the business owner or are in the senior marketing role you may feel that you want to retain control of what goes out into the public domain in your company’s name. That too is understandable, but outsourcing some, or even all, of your digital marketing activity doesn’t mean you will be completely removed from the marketing side of the business. It just means that you’re getting help when and where you need it.
Time is also one of the biggest factors in deciding whether or not to outsource your digital marketing tasks. Do you value your time? In what area of the business is your time best spent? If it is managing staff and projects, or nurturing client and customer relations, then that’s what you should be doing.
So whether it’s a time management issue, or you simply don’t have the technical skills or resources, here are 6 digital marketing processes you can outsource today:
1. Social Media and Blogging
Social media is simultaneously one of the best and worst things to happen to businesses. On the positive side it allows for 24/7, instantaneous engagement with your target audience or customers. But conversely it can be time consuming to find, curate, and create regular engaging content and posts off the cuff.
All too often we come across a company social media page or blog that was set up with the best intentions to update every day, or even once a week, but find that they haven’t been updated for months, and sometimes years!
As a digital agency we work with a number of businesses in this area and often find that sharing this responsibility with a staff member within the business makes their life easier but also generates the best results and return on investment for them.
If you can’t dedicate time to creating unique content or curating third party content to be shared on your blog or social media pages then outsource it or take your blog and social media off-line. An absent social media page is better than a neglected one.
2. Email Marketing
Has your monthly e-newsletter turned into a quarterly or bi-annual newsletter?
E-mail campaigns are all too often at the bottom of the to-do list and are seen as a chore rather than a priority.
‘Well if I get round to getting one out then great. But there’s more important stuff to do in the business.”
Marketing emails or even just informal e-newsletters to your database and existing customers are regular reminders to them that you still exist and have something to offer them.
If you can’t dedicate sufficient time to putting an e-shot together, cleansing your mailing list and analysing open and click rates then outsource this to a digital marketing agency who can.
3. SEO
You could spend time trying to master SEO yourself, but by the time you’d caught up the SEO industry could well have moved on. Okay, we might be exaggerating a little here. But good SEO implementation does require a constant awareness of the current methods and any major changes in algorithms – all of which takes time.
People dedicate their whole careers to SEO so it’s unlikely you’ll be able to give it the attention your business requires with an hour or so a week. Outsource SEO to a good digital agency or SEO expert with sound knowledge of the practices.
Bonus Tip: Avoid anyone who spams you promising to ‘get your business to the top of page 1 of Google’ for all your major search terms – that’s simply impossible (without the use of Google Ads).
4. Design
Unless you have a designer in-house then avoid ‘DIY Design’ and outsource this to a trained professional with the right software and the natural talent.
If your business attempts design without these you’re not giving your visual marketing a fighting chance. It would be better to dedicate your time to devising a clear and concise brief for your chosen designer or agency of what the required design is aiming to achieve.
5. Paid Search Advertising and Pay Per Click (PPC)
Paid advertising such as Google AdWords is a powerful tool; allowing you to get your business to the very top of Google’s search engine results pages against your keyword searches – for the right price.
Google makes it pretty easy for anyone to register and quickly get an ad showing online – but if you don’t really know what you’re doing your budget could be depleted very quickly and without a single lead to show for it.
Like organic SEO, there are PPC experts who specialise in this complex area of digital marketing who will charge for their time but will optimise your ads to get as many leads as possible for your budget; ultimately preventing you from wasting your money on ads that are under-performing.
6. Website Analytics
How is your website performing as a marketing tool? Is your website engaging enough? What could you do to improve it?
These are all questions that can be answered through a website analytical tool such as Google Analytics. However, this is another tool that requires a certain understanding of the metrics to extract any findings and make recommendations.
A good digital agency will insist on installing some form of analytical tracking on your website that they will check and report back to you on regularly – and if they don’t then they aren’t interested in the long-term success, or failure, of your business website.
