Is it Time?

to hire an outsider?

From Small Fuel:

When Is It Time to Bring in a Marketing Professional?

Marketing professionals run the range from full-out marketing firms capable of every marketing technique under the sun down to freelance writers who just crank out copy from brochures. Marketing services are equally varied, as are marketing price tags. It’s that last one that leads many small business owners to do as much of their own marketing as possible: even when a business has the money to spare, it often seems more practical to upgrade equipment or improve the business in other ways than spend money on marketing. Just the same, though, there are several marketing situations when calling in a professional can have a tremendous result on your business — you can find opportunities where the cost of a little marketing help is completely out-weighed by the sales that marketing professional can bring in.

When Can A Marketing Professional Help?

1. When you need production quality: To get the best quality brochures and other printed marketing materials, there are a whole list of printer specs you need to know. The same goes for getting the best website, the best advertising and so on. Becoming an expert in one of those fields can take time you’d be better off spending on running your business, especially when you can get quality results by paying a designer or other professional to handle the project for you.
2. When something has to give: As your business grows, you’ll have to hand some task or another off to someone else, if only to keep up with the rest of your business. Depending on what kind of service or product you sell, marketing tasks are often the easiest to outsource. While turning production over to someone new guarantees headaches, sometimes marketing can be as simple as handing over a copy of your current marketing materials and letting your marketing professional go.
3. When you have a specific problem: Most marketing is done with fairly general goals in mind, like getting a certain number of new customers by the end of the year. But if you’re looking at something specific, it may be time to call a specialist. From public relations issues to new product launches, there’s a specialist out there who has seen similar situations many times — and can guide you through it with relative ease.
4. When you need help to reach your goals: No business owner can succeed without ambition, but reaching some goals can require some help. Bringing in a marketing professional to help you reach one of your goals can make sense, especially when meeting your goals will bring in more than enough income to cover the expense.
5. When your time is more valuable elsewhere: In every small business, there are times when you have something you need to be doing besides marketing. You don’t want to throw marketing out the window, but you get a higher ROI by spending your time elsewhere. At that point, the best thing you can do is bring in someone to handle marketing tasks. You probably don’t need a full-fledged marketing team — instead, think about what marketing tasks you can outsource.

It’s worth your time and effort to do as much marketing as you can for your own business. If nothing else, that approach can guarantee that you’ll still have money in your marketing budget when you find yourself in need of some professional assistance. But when it’s time to call in a professional — and you’ll know when that time rolls around — it’s worthwhile to pay the costs and ensure you get the best marketing help you can. Once you’ve decided on what kind of help you need, it’s just a matter of finding the right professional — one who can complete your marketing projects on your timeline, within your budget and to your satisfaction.

SmallFuel Marketing, Inc. 126 E 2nd St, Suite A, Media, PA 19063
Copyright (C) 2008 SmallFuel Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved.

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