Not all businesses can do everything in-house, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. For this reason, outsourcing has become a common practice and is, in fact, applied by more than a third of small businesses today.
Attempting to do everything yourself can do more harm than good, even if it is the first instinct for many small business owners who want to keep their expenses to a minimum. Outsourcing is a small price to pay for the benefits that it provides, which are improved efficiency, reduced labor costs, and more time to focus on important tasks. This fact is especially true for marketing functions, which often tend to eat up a lot of time and money.
With that in mind, here are some of the marketing functions that you should consider outsourcing.
1. Lead generation
Generating leads takes a lot of time; generating effective leads that will ultimately lead to sales can take even longer. If you have a small marketing team, they need all the time they can get to focus on more critical tasks, and lead generation can take over most of it.
Although lead generation is also an important task, there’s no denying that it can be very time-consuming. That said, it may make much more sense to outsource to lead generation services that can help you generate high-quality leads in a short amount of time. Not only do your marketing staff have more time to work on other things; you will also get to generate leads much faster by letting someone else do it.
2. Content creation
Content creation is another marketing function that takes a lot of time and creativity. If your marketing people are swamped with a thousand other things (as is the case for many small businesses), you may not get the best content due to limited resources. Besides, creating graphics, writing blogs, and coming up with witty social media posts takes a lot of creative juices, so why not find someone who may be better at it than what you have in-house?
Hiring freelancers is the best route for outsourcing content creation. There is a plethora of talented writers, artists, and designers that you can choose from online. You will likely not find yourself having an extremely hard time finding someone who can create content that reflects your brand image and resonates with your target audience—all at affordable rates, too.
3. Blog management
It’s not enough to post high-quality content—you must also know when to post content and what to post about. Having someone dedicated to this function is a great way to save time and money—and more importantly, curate your blog’s content effectively. A freelancer can do this part-time or you can hire a virtual assistant to perform this function among other business tasks. Either way, outsourcing this function can be a great move for your website and a huge relief for your marketing team.
4. Photography
Whether it’s product pictures or company photos, it’s great to have a professional photographer to take high-quality pictures and has the equipment to do so. Professional photography equipment can be expensive, and if taking photos is only a minor marketing function for your company, it may not be the best time to invest.
If you have a talented photographer within the team, you can also consider renting out photography equipment (if the employee doesn’t have any or doesn’t have professional-level equipment) to save money on labor and encourage creativity within the company.
5. Marketing automation
Business automation can save you a lot of time, money, and ultimately make your business more efficient. Some important yet time-consuming marketing tasks that you should be automating include email marketing, social media management, marketing analytics, and A/B testing, just to name a few.
However, automating these tasks may require someone to set them up for your company. If you have no such person in-house to do so, outsourcing to someone who can is the best move. It can only take a one-time project to set up all of the marketing automation that you need, and you’ll get to enjoy the benefits that come with it for years to come.
Vital marketing activities can be very time-consuming, which can lead to poor efficiency, especially if you have limited people on your marketing team, to begin with. If this is the case for your company, outsourcing can be of significant help—not only do you reduce the workload on your marketing team, but you can also make their tasks more efficient, effective, and productive.
