Marketing. We hear it all the time. We may dislike doing it, but it’s still something that is extremely important for our businesses. So, one way or another, we have to do it to grow our business.

There are traditional methods like distributing flyers, advertisements and word of mouth, to newer, more “modern” methods like Pay-per-click (PPC), social media, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It’s all a confusing mess of things to do to get the word out, to entice people to buy your product.

How else will our potential customers get to know about our businesses then, if we do not market? We here at InCorporate.sg recommend that entrepreneurs outsource their marketing. But of course, it is crucial that you know what to outsource.

Firstly, let us give you some reasons as to why you should outsource.

Cost of hiring and Quality

It will cost startups precious money to hire a marketing professional to do their in-house marketing. Even a fresh graduate with some marketing experience will cost quite a bit, perhaps at the very least, upwards of $30,000 a year, excluding benefits and incentives. And that does not include the actual amount of money needed for marketing and advertising. It is an expensive affair compared to hiring a marketing agency or freelance professionals to do the job. Besides, the result is far from guaranteed even if you hired your own marketer. Let’s not talk about the cost of hiring experienced marketing teams in-house. That would be a huge dent in the cash-strapped budget of a new entrepreneur.

With 3rd party professionals, you can at least be assured that they will do their job and deliver the results. You save on all of the time it takes finding someone too, or trying to learn the entire Internet marketing field yourself. With that being said, there are some things you should outsource and some things you should not. There is no set blueprint for success, but here are some recommendations.

SEO

You’ve heard of this before. Search Engine Optimisation is essentially the things you do to ensure you get a higher ranking of Google Search pages. It is an immensely complicated and technical affair. Realistically, if you are expanding, you probably need somebody to work on your website’s SEO full-time at the very least.

There are so many parts of SEO that it’s mind boggling to inexperienced newbies. There’s on-page SEO, which is how you structure your webpage to get a better ranking. There’s off-page SEO, which is essentially building links on other websites that lead to your website. Then there’s technical SEO, focusing on how well search engine spiders can crawl your site and index your content.

Did that sound confusing to you? If yes, then you should probably outsource this job to a qualified freelancer or SEO team. BUT, when you outsource your SEO, you must make sure that the people you are employing are qualified. Make sure they have a comprehensive skill-set covering all aspects of SEO, and that they are not suggesting you use tactics like link buying for your off-page SEO, because that will be flagged by Google’s algorithms and you will be penalised for it.

Social Media and PR

Social Media can be annoying to deal with, but it is a crucial way to get word of your business out. Outsourcing this aspect of your marketing to an agency or freelancer is entirely possible, however it might be problematic. The 3rd party may not have a solid grasp on the type of personality you want your social media brand to portray, because they are not involved in the day-to-day on-goings of your business. Thus, it might be better to handle it yourself or get someone in-house to handle it.

If you really do want to outsource it, you must make sure that you convey what you want in terms of voice, personality, content, and methods of connecting with your followers, what you don’t want, and how to handle PR problems that arise.

PPC Campaigns

PPC Campaigns are not simple. It is not simply just setting up Adwords or buying ads on Facebook, then leaving it to generate leads for you. Proper PPC Campaign management requires consistent monitoring and research to maximise the efficiency of the money you are spending, otherwise you are throwing money, literally, and hoping for results.

This is one part of marketing that should be outsourced too because the ability and time needed is a huge barrier. This is especially true when you have big budgets, because that additional cost paid to an agency to manage the PPC campaign is smaller compared to the amount you are spending. Make sure the agency you are engaging is good at PPC campaigns and have a good depth of experience doing so. You don’t want a novice to manage your advertising budgets.

Content Creation

Now, this is one part of your website that can be easily outsourced. Freelance writers are cheap and are often able to generate decent content for your sites. Writing articles can be a time-consuming and thankless task, so paying small amounts to freelance writers to write articles for you can be a good way to save time.

We recommend Upwork, or Fiverr to search for good freelancers. Even things like video production, or stunning visuals can be outsourced to these freelance professionals. Unless you are very good at these things and want to do it, we recommend outsourcing.

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We have gone through quite a few major parts of marketing. The general thought process is that marketing is very time-consuming and skill intensive, and thus should be outsourced whenever possible if you have the budget for it. For social media, because it is something more intimate and representative of your business, it should be done in-house. Hope this article helped some of you entrepreneurs get through a dilemma. Do the things you are good at, and outsource the rest.

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