Why on earth should startups outsource digital marketing when they can do it themselves?
A lot of startups would like to get themselves known out there, and actually work hard in their digital marketing efforts. Startups are meant to grow. Time after time, I see that a lot of entrepreneurs fail to see what a complicated process digital marketing is, and that they need experts. Some of them hire social media interns, whereas others hire editors, hoping that they will whip up blog posts that are interesting and cast them out into the digital sea we call social media. This ends with frustration because editors are highly artistic and talented individuals, but not necessarily experts in defining a marketing strategy or applying growth hacking tactics. Even if they claim to know how SEO works, the chances are that they were specifically trained to do SEO correctly is really low. Companies keep hiring and firing employees in order to get their digital marketing right, turning a blind eye to the fact that the moment you outsource your digital marketing efforts, you can actually focus on growing your startup.You can outsourcing digital marketing as soon as you start building your startup or later on. Besides digital marketing, there are many other outsourcing ideas there for new and experienced entrepreneurs. One of the best ways to have a successful startup is not to do all of it on your own, but to outsource digital marketing and many other operations. If you outsource digital marketing, you will notice that you are getting better results and accessing the real people who matter. Without further ado, here are the 5 reasons why you should outsource digital marketing.
1) There is Less Risk Involved
Startup founders and business owners love outsourcing because there's less risk involved. A lot of people keep telling me that their digital marketing efforts are not working. They say things like
"I've tried everything, and it's really ineffective."
"Oh yes, I am on Twitter, but I don't really see the point in investing too much time in it."
"My SEO is not working."
You are an entrepreneur who is specialised in a service or product. It is perfectly normal that your digital marketing results are lower than what you expected them to be initially. In order to succeed in digital marketing, there are many fine details on many different aspects that need to be perfected on a regular basis; and mind you, that is a full time job that requires more than one staff who tweets stuff occasionally. Digital Marketing operations are complicated, that is exactly why many companies choose to outsource digital marketing to experts who do this around the clock, full time.
There are so many variables in digital marketing when doing SEO, content marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing and more that it is completely natural for startups to lose track quickly if they are trying to do all of it on their own. From all the internal tweaks done in the backend of your website, to the image sizes for each social media platform, or even the timing of the posts and analytical data interpretation, digital marketing can be handed over to experts who will help you bring in genuine results and success.
Hiring someone is always risky, the odds that they do not know how to do all this is really high. Moreover, startups usually have to work on a very strict budget and bootstrap their operations. If you outsource digital marketing, you will notice that they are very result oriented. You don't have to spend your precious time looking for someone who knows how to do digital marketing, wondering if it will work or not. You will work with a professional company who is highly result oriented, has genuine experience with multiple companies and will guarantee you results. You do not have to bother with firing and hiring the wrong employees, all you have to do is relax and let the experts spread the word about your startup correctly.
"I've tried everything, and it's really ineffective."
"Oh yes, I am on Twitter, but I don't really see the point in investing too much time in it."
"My SEO is not working."
You are an entrepreneur who is specialised in a service or product. It is perfectly normal that your digital marketing results are lower than what you expected them to be initially. In order to succeed in digital marketing, there are many fine details on many different aspects that need to be perfected on a regular basis; and mind you, that is a full time job that requires more than one staff who tweets stuff occasionally. Digital Marketing operations are complicated, that is exactly why many companies choose to outsource digital marketing to experts who do this around the clock, full time.
There are so many variables in digital marketing when doing SEO, content marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing and more that it is completely natural for startups to lose track quickly if they are trying to do all of it on their own. From all the internal tweaks done in the backend of your website, to the image sizes for each social media platform, or even the timing of the posts and analytical data interpretation, digital marketing can be handed over to experts who will help you bring in genuine results and success.
Hiring someone is always risky, the odds that they do not know how to do all this is really high. Moreover, startups usually have to work on a very strict budget and bootstrap their operations. If you outsource digital marketing, you will notice that they are very result oriented. You don't have to spend your precious time looking for someone who knows how to do digital marketing, wondering if it will work or not. You will work with a professional company who is highly result oriented, has genuine experience with multiple companies and will guarantee you results. You do not have to bother with firing and hiring the wrong employees, all you have to do is relax and let the experts spread the word about your startup correctly.
2) You will Have Better Results than Hiring Someone in-House
Startups and mature companies choose to outsource work because they know they can get outstanding results when finding the right partner. Many startups prefer to hire in-house editors who will write up beautiful articles about their products. But here's a sad truth; most of the time, the methods editors use do not work, and do not convert into sales. And mind you, we don't want to derogate what editors are doing, they are valuable for startups as well, when writing brochures, creating perfect pitches for investors, writing the texts in product packaging, magazines, and much more. You might need an editor, and the truth is, they are definitely important.
But if you want more traffic to your website, if you want more visibility for social media, the biggest mistake you can make is hiring an editor to do this for you. To get a full startup growth strategy, you need a full team and that's what an outsourcing company can provide. You need to outsource digital marketing if you want better results in terms of visibility.
You will have better results when you outsource digital marketing, rather than asking editors to do all of it for you. An editor is not an expert in digital marketing, they might be great writers, but they might not know all the digital marketing techniques or details about marketing on the internet per se. And if you do want better results, you'd have to hire a lot of people; and even that might not be necessarily effective when it comes to conversion.
If you outsource digital marketing, you will be getting much better and more effective results in a short amount of time. For instance, an agency will have the experience and expertise in inbound marketing than an individual or will know how to implement many more content marketing tactics than a single person. An agency can create a content marketing strategy, implement SEO, be able to put in place great email marketing campaigns and more - all at the same time and with experts in all these fields. There is no much chance than an individual can be expert in everything. A lack of marketing expertise is one of the main reasons why startups fail, and by having one you can bring it toward success.
But... and yes there's a but. Not all marketing agencies are equal. When outsourcing your campaigns, hire a reputable growth marketing agency like Growth Hackers, an agency with proven track record of success. You want to make sure the digital marketing company you hire doesn't actually hurt your business.
But if you want more traffic to your website, if you want more visibility for social media, the biggest mistake you can make is hiring an editor to do this for you. To get a full startup growth strategy, you need a full team and that's what an outsourcing company can provide. You need to outsource digital marketing if you want better results in terms of visibility.
You will have better results when you outsource digital marketing, rather than asking editors to do all of it for you. An editor is not an expert in digital marketing, they might be great writers, but they might not know all the digital marketing techniques or details about marketing on the internet per se. And if you do want better results, you'd have to hire a lot of people; and even that might not be necessarily effective when it comes to conversion.
If you outsource digital marketing, you will be getting much better and more effective results in a short amount of time. For instance, an agency will have the experience and expertise in inbound marketing than an individual or will know how to implement many more content marketing tactics than a single person. An agency can create a content marketing strategy, implement SEO, be able to put in place great email marketing campaigns and more - all at the same time and with experts in all these fields. There is no much chance than an individual can be expert in everything. A lack of marketing expertise is one of the main reasons why startups fail, and by having one you can bring it toward success.
But... and yes there's a but. Not all marketing agencies are equal. When outsourcing your campaigns, hire a reputable growth marketing agency like Growth Hackers, an agency with proven track record of success. You want to make sure the digital marketing company you hire doesn't actually hurt your business.
3) You Can Focus on What Matters
When you are an entrepreneur who owns a startup, there is so many things you have to think about. Not only do you have to perfect your product, you have to think about the sales, the investors, the customer service, shipping, the logistics of everything as well as hiring the right people. When startups have so much to do, oftentimes they lose focus and end up neglecting digital marketing.
Digital marketing is not about tweeting or facebook posting with occasional tweets and hashtags. There is a lot of work, calculation and strategy involved. And people who have become experts have acquired a lot of knowledge about digital marketing throughout the years. Most of them do not work for startups, given that they know that as one staffer, it will be almost impossible to achieve great results within no time. Digital marketers invest in a lot of expensive tools in order to operate successfully. As a startup your focus shouldn't be on investing in digital marketing tools (you would have to spend weeks to do research and find the right tools anyway), and spend months with trial and error to figure out what the right digital marketing strategy is.
When you outsource digital marketing, you no longer have to worry, spend time and money on experimentation to see what works and what doesn't in digital marketing. All you have to do is hand over your digital marketing efforts to an expert so that you can focus on growing your startup, and start building a great company.
Digital marketing is not about tweeting or facebook posting with occasional tweets and hashtags. There is a lot of work, calculation and strategy involved. And people who have become experts have acquired a lot of knowledge about digital marketing throughout the years. Most of them do not work for startups, given that they know that as one staffer, it will be almost impossible to achieve great results within no time. Digital marketers invest in a lot of expensive tools in order to operate successfully. As a startup your focus shouldn't be on investing in digital marketing tools (you would have to spend weeks to do research and find the right tools anyway), and spend months with trial and error to figure out what the right digital marketing strategy is.
When you outsource digital marketing, you no longer have to worry, spend time and money on experimentation to see what works and what doesn't in digital marketing. All you have to do is hand over your digital marketing efforts to an expert so that you can focus on growing your startup, and start building a great company.
4) You Will Save a Lot of Time (and Have Less Headaches)
We did mention this a little before in the previous section, but I really want to emphasise this again. Training someone, talking about your product, getting your employees to write about this in the right way, doing research, getting the metadata right every time, analysing keywords, getting right image size, having stellar designs, doing content marketing the right way, guest posting, generating good press releases and accessing the right press contacts is a lot of hard work and as you can see, a very labor intensive job. Doing it all on your own can misallocate your precious time and energy. Once you outsource digital marketing, you will notice how easier things are, and that growth is actually achievable when you focus on what matters.
5) You Will Actually Start Having Conversion and Paying Customers
The best reason why you should outsource digital marketing is the fact that they are the ones who will target the right people and attract paying customers. Getting conversion online is a very complicated process that requires expertise and know-how. If you actually want to have conversion, getting the attention of the right customers is key. And this doesn't normally work out the way you expect it to. Digital marketers are adept at finding the right people; most startups base their search on their personal assumptions and can misinterpret data because of their thoughts. When you are enveloped in your product, it is easy to lose track. Having an outsider view who can help you and check your hypotheses is always beneficial.
Imagine this not as someone who is policing your digital marketing efforts, but a proofreader who is friendly and helpful. When you outsource digital marketing, you actually become allies in making your startup succeed. By bringing in allies and an amazing team who will help you generate conversion and therefore sales, will skyrocket your startup.
Imagine this not as someone who is policing your digital marketing efforts, but a proofreader who is friendly and helpful. When you outsource digital marketing, you actually become allies in making your startup succeed. By bringing in allies and an amazing team who will help you generate conversion and therefore sales, will skyrocket your startup.
Closing Thoughts about Outsourcing Benefits for Startups (and Small Businesses)
To conclude, each and every startup is different. We obviously can't say that all startups to choose to do everything on their own are bound to fail; in fact, that is far from the truth. Don't get me wrong, startup success can be achieved by doing it all in-house. But I personally see many companies who don't do so well, given that they misallocate their resources. Many companies try to do everything on their own, although they do not have the expertise. Implementing a full digital marketing or inbound marketing strategy is not easy and cannot be improvised. You can easily hire an entire team of experts who will guarantee you genuine results, for the same salary of one in-house editor. So next time you need digital marketing support, consider outsourcing your efforts... for example, you could try Growth Hackers' digital marketing services. You will be happily surprised.Therefore, one of the best digital marketing tips for startups is to actually try to outsource your digital marketing work. Whether you want to implement digital marketing or old-school marketing tactics, outsourcing is the way to go if you want to obtain great results.
Irene Sun
I am the branding strategist of Growth Hackers. I specialize in web design, branding, startups, and content marketing.
7 Comments
Great points, Irene! The biggest challenge for startup and new companies is to find a good marketing freelancer or company. SEO and digital marketing are full of phony experts that can ruin your organic traffic or run ineffective marketing campaigns. Neil Patel has a good post about how to vet an SEO company.
Very well put. Thanks.
Really a very well written article and I agree to all of the points because a startup owner usually won’t have time to manage all the things on their own. They might should save their time by simply outsourcing the SEO or other digital marketing strategies to one popular digital marketing agency like Growth Hackers – but they are many others of course – where they will take care of their business online presence.
Thanks for explaining that the many variables involved in digital marketing can cause startups to lose track of things if they try to do it on their own. The startup I’m working for wants to improve our online presence, particularly in social media, because we think it would help generate interest in our service and attract more clients. I’m glad I read your article because now I can see why outsourcing our social media marketing would be a good call!
Rightly said! Businesses, especially the startups and SMEs don’t the length and breadth of digital marketing. There understanding is limited to primarily social media posting & consider social media posting as digital marketing. Hence, think it is easy. Therefore, they tend to do it inhouse and end it failing and spending more.
Moreover, the majority of them consider it as an expense rather than an investment. Yes, since some startups are at a bootstrapping stage, so tend to minimize the cost.
Even if they zeroed upon a digital marketing agency, the biggest challenge is that “Does the agency understands their needs and is a right fit for them?” There are plenty of digital marketing agencies (or ad agencies, primarily) who don’t have the domain expertise and so fail to understand their requirements and the projects fail.
Hiring a business process outsourcing company that specializes in digital marketing can help a lot in growing a startup business. Thanks for sharing this informative post.
This is not far from the actual procedure of marketing management, the main objective of this content is showing the right method that everyone should follow accordingly to gain them an upper hand and elevate their outsourcing career.