Womenlines takes pleasure to welcome Ahana Lara Losita, an Online Marketing Specialist, B2B & Wellness Copywriter and Business Transformation Coach from Australia at Womenlines panel. Ahana will be the influencer for digital marketing for Business Excellence segment of Womenlines online magazine and will be sharing informative content which can help business owners in their marketing activities for their ventures. This month Ahana is sharing a very informative article on the topic why solopreneurs should outsource marketing-
The two big reasons why solopreneurs outsource marketing is to increase efficiency and expertise. According to a new survey report from Clutch, leading B2B ratings and reviews firm, 52% of small businesses will outsource accounting, IT services and digital marketing responsibilities. Statistics aside, what would prompt you to outsource your marketing? Do any of the 5 reasons we mention give you a compelling reason? Let’s find out.
Reason #1: Are You Happy With Your Cash Flow?
As a small business owner or a solopreneur, we should be focused on our cash flow. Intuit QuickBooks released a global study, the State of Small Business Cash Flow in 2019 that said 69% of small businesses are worried about their cash flow. Cash flow is the money that is moving in and out of your business every month.
When talking to solopreneurs about their challenges, we found these 3 important reasons surface time and time again:
1. Many solopreneurs are not happy with what they are paying themselves
2. Many business owners don’t have a budget for marketing and therefore struggle to find resources (time and money) to manage their marketing activities
3. Many business owners don’t have a clear plan or resources to scale their business because they find it challenging to manage their monthly cash flow.
Big or small, every business must have a marketing budget in order to grow and scale. However, there is a bigger question that solo and small business owners should ask. With the limited marketing budget that they have, what is the best investment and return they can get without wasting their time and resources?
What types of marketing will generate cash flow for their business? Marketing experts have both the case studies and the market knowledge to breakthrough lead generation and sales appointments, thus directly affecting your cash flow.
Reason #2: Part Time Expert, Full Time Results
One small change in strategy can bring you a big change in results. This month, we changed the lead magnet for a wellness trainer to focus on a growing target market in her local area (and across her home state). We changed her social profiles and active prospecting strategies to get immediate interest from potential target clients. The entire process was planned on a 3-week schedule before launch. Left on her own, it would have taken her months to diagnose the challenge and pivot fast.
From start to launch a project, there are a number of steps, including strategy, implementation, and measuring the results so that you can make changes. For a solo business, working through all the moving parts could get overwhelming.
There could be challenges at various levels of the project – sometimes it’s the technical implementation, sometimes it’s getting the plan right. Outsourcing to an expert exponentially improves performance, reduces errors, and delivers results.
Reason #3: You Can’t Be Skilled At Everything – So Why Not Hire The Right Skills?
Ask yourself this – do you want your marketing to be executed by someone who does not have the skills and expertise to get the right results (even if that person is you)?
You and I both know that solopreneurs have to wear many hats. Entrepreneurship requires you to constantly keep learning and upgrading your skills. However, we can’t all be skilled at everything. For those parts of the project that you find challenging, you can outsource.
We also know that hiring and retention are top HR challenges for any business. With outsourcing, you can find the right candidate with the right skills focused on getting results for you. You also save time, resources, funds or worrying about hiring and retention.
Reason #4: Focus On Revenue Generating Activity (Especially Lead Generation)
The ultimate goal for marketing is NOT just getting leads and sales. The ultimate goal is to get QUALIFIED leads that help you shorten the sales cycle. In order to get consistent, high quality leads coming into your business, you have to play both the long game and short game.
We identified 9 steps to activate your leads in a report we created for our clients. In it, we have talked about the strategies for both long term consistent lead generation, as well as getting immediate results with active prospecting.
You are the best person to deliver your service to your clients, at its highest quality. You cannot outsource that part of your business. You might create systems (and teams) to enable you to help more people. But this part of your business requires your full attention. However, in order for your business to thrive, you need consistent leads.
Your strategic lead generation activity can be outsourced (including your social media marketing). These projects have a lot of moving parts and require both manpower and intricate project management. As a solopreneur, outsourcing it directly impacts your sales and at the same time, reduces the cost and time of managing these projects in-house.
Reason #5: Making Sales Easy
Peter Drucker said, “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could take a sales call where the client sells himself or herself into your product, service or program? This is what good marketing should do for you.
There are 2 types of marketing that you need in your business – you need to ATTRACT the right traffic to your landing pages, and you need to do OUTREACH to find potential clients and referral partners.
When outsourcing, these are 3 questions to keep in mind:
1. What kind of content do I need to create that would attract the right audience to my website and landing pages
2. What social media channels do I create the content for and how do I map it to drive traffic back to my website?
3. Network is important – how do I keep building my network to get potential referrals and leads to my business?
Marketing should be easy and focused on getting you qualified leads. You can use the 3 questions above to develop a plan with your outsourced partner. We can also help you answer these questions through our Free Online Marketing Audit as well.
Click on the link to download Activate Your Leads PDF + Start Your FREE Marketing Audit
