As a business owner, you have a laundry list of responsibilities, people to manage and customers to please. Trying to manage marketing your business on top of running your business seems impossible. You have made it work this far but is your business really growing at the pace it could. Is it time to consider the possibilities that having a marketing expert could bring? This episode of the Coffee Chat will explore everything you need to know about whether or not it is time to stay DIYing your marketing and hire an expert.
Why Hiring an Expert is Better Than DIYing Your Marketing Campaigns
Growing a business is tough but we all expect to reap the rewards of our hard work and efforts and experience growth. Now, this growth is going to look different for each of us. Depending on our individual strengths as entrepreneurs and business leaders, different areas of our businesses will grow faster than others. No matter how strong we are in our profession, running a business all on our own will eventually create gaps because we can’t all be everything for everyone all the time.
A valuable quality of a good leader is the ability to recognize and acknowledge when it is time to share the workload and put our trust in others to manage some of our business responsibilities. This applies to all areas of your business. From making a simple photocopy of a document to bookkeeping to even the unique skill you have within your professions. At some point for the business to be effective the owner needs to get out of the weeds of things and focus on the bigger picture. Hiring staff is an important step to growing your business. A good accountant, the right sales team, a strong Human Resource manager, all of these are vital parts of a growing business. But hiring full-time staff isn’t the only way, you can also experience growth by using consultants and contractors as well. This is certainly the case with your marketing campaign development.
Marketing campaigns are a key instrument for any business to increase its sales and revenue. Marketing campaigns can be created internally by an in-house marketing team but this is a long process with many potential pitfalls. A better option is to hire an expert who has a proven track record of delivering results for their clients.
Signs you need to hire a marketing consultant
Marketing consultants are professionals that take charge of business development and marketing strategies. When you feel like your business lacks direction, it is time to hire a consultant. You see marketing is a full-time job, and something tells me that you don’t have time for this. The following are signs that indicate you need to hire a marketing consultant:
- You haven’t experienced any growth in more than six months
- You no longer know how to interpret the analytics of your marketing platforms
- There are new platforms that you are no longer energized in looking in to even if it means you are missing out on a share of the market because of it.
There are a number of reasons why hiring an expert is better than DIYing your marketing campaigns:
- Expertise: When you hire an expert, you have access to their expertise on your marketing issues. They will know the best strategies to use and be able to provide regular analytics on campaign performance. If you DIY, this expertise will not exist within the organization meaning that you will need to learn from scratch and potentially spend more time and money on training someone up in-house instead
- Access to Resource: Marketing experts have access to different tools and resources that you may not even know exist that can significantly improve your marketing. These improvements can save you time, money and give you insights that you can’t see with what you have right now.
- Your TIme: By hiring an expert, you can trust in the fact that they have your business’s best interest at heart and can manage your marketing needs. This means you will gain a significant return in time to be able to focus on managing your business and improving your product or service quality.
How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Top Marketing Agency?
Now the question is, how much is this going to cost me. Hiring an agency can be a costly affair, but what is the ROI? We break it down for you and also reveal how to get the best deal.
It does not matter how much you spend on your marketing initiatives, the key is to get a return on investment (ROI). You should always keep in mind that your marketing budget determines how successful your campaign will be. If you are hiring an agency, make sure they have expertise in your industry and can provide value beyond just executing tasks.
Generally, most marketing consultants charge small businesses anywhere from $750 to $20,000 per month on retainer. Larger corporations, with more staff requiring mentoring and training and more complex campaigns, could expect to pay a retainer of between $5,000 to $50,000 per month.
A Marketing Agency, Sisu conducted a research project on the average costs of hiring a marketing expert. Here is a snapshot of their findings.
Depending on the specific time of marketing expert you need the most, your exact pricing can vary. And there are several marketing experts that can provide multiple services so you can save by finding someone who can handle several areas at once.
Does that sound expensive? Take a minute to consider the cost to your business if you are not yet using the internet, social media, and content marketing to their full potential.
If you hired a consultant who really maximized these opportunities to produce measurable results, attract more clients and increase sales, what would the return on investment be?
The Benefits of Working with a Marketing Agency over Doing Everything Yourself
Working with a marketing agency is the best option in order to get the most out of your marketing efforts. Marketing agencies are experts in their field and provide their clients with services that are tailored to the needs of the business. They do not only offer marketing services, but they can also offer social media management, branding, graphic design, etc.
The benefit of working with a digital marketing agency overdoing everything yourself is that you will know that your campaigns are being managed by professionals who have experience in creating successful campaigns.
