Exciting timesâŠour first Q&A questionâŠand a good one tooâŠ
Do you (does one) try to work out how to use say LinkedIn or FB or YT to attract professional clients on one's own, or does it really pay to pay for (some highly leveraged) help from an agency-type entity? Richard
Typically you hear two rather self-serving answers to this question.
People who teach marketing say ânoâ - you need to keep ownership of your own marketing as itâs the key to growing your business (and you should buy their training to help)
People who run agencies say âyesâ - give the work to dedicated professionals and focus your time on running your business (and you should hire their agency to help)
For me the truth is that if you seriously want to grow your business youâre eventually going to have to outsource marketing (or hire a team to do it).
But initially, youâll want to start out doing your own marketing so that you deepen your understanding of clients, get to know what marketing works and what doesnât, and build up a little war chest to make outsourcing a less risky decision when you come to do it.
When and what to outsource and what to do yourself really depends on two things:
The type of business you run. If youâre in a service business or similar where you need to work in the business serving clients then youâre going to have a limited amount of time free for marketing. If youâre in more of a product-oriented business (eg youâve created some online courses) then youâll have more marketing time available.
Your skills and interests and the kind of things you want to be spending your time doing. For example, you can force yourself to write daily posts on Linkedin for a while, but if you hate it, youâre eventually going to give up.
With those factors in mind, my experience is that every business goes through three big phases.
In phase 1, where youâre just starting up, a lot of your marketing is personal. You tap up old clients and contacts. You get referrals. You talk to anyone you bump into about your business.
That gets the ball rolling but it hits limits fairly soon and you need to start reaching new people outside your immediate network.
Thatâs phase 2 - and itâs when you first have to think about whether to do the marketing yourself or outsource it to someone else.
My own preference in phase 2 is to start by doing your own marketing because it puts you in direct contact with your clients.
Thereâs nothing teaches you more about what clients really want than trying to sell something to them. And it also teaches you what works and what doesnât so that when it eventually comes to outsourcing your marketing you can make a much more informed decision.
And finally, if it works well, it allows you to build up a âwar chestâ of cash you can use to fund your marketing in the next phase.
If you grow further, you enter phase 3 where outsourcing is an inevitability - you simply donât have the time or the skills to take it to the next level and you need to hire professionals.
But if youâve done well in phase 2, by then youâll have a much better idea of what type of marketing will work for your business and what a good provider looks like. And youâll have the money to afford a premium provider.
The key time for most people is phase 2. You have to decide what type of marketing to do and when to switch it over to hiring someone else.
If youâre in the type of business where youâre going to have limited time for marketing then you need to use strategies that donât have a huge learning curve.
The main online tactics here at the moment are regular (daily) posting on relevant social media as a way of being noticed, building a following, then guiding them to a newsletter as a way of building your relationship.
It used to be that tactics like SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads and Youtube Ads were learnable relatively quickly by small businesses and you could get results with a relatively small learning curve and small investments.
My experience is thatâs no longer true. There are exceptions of course, but by and large, ad platforms are a lot more complex to learn and to get good at than they used to be. I used to be pretty handy with Google Ads a decade ago for example, but it would take me an age to get back into it now having not used them for so long.
If youâre in a product-based business, your product is already created, and you have an aptitude for it, then, by all means, invest time in learning how to run successful ads. But be aware that youâre competing against people with big budgets who do this full-time.
If youâve reached that level where ads or SEO are your next big option for growth then for the vast majority of us itâs best to call in an agency.
Again, there are always exceptions. People for whom the targeting and copywriting side of ads just clicks quickly and theyâre able to do it well alongside client work.
But for most of us, those more technical skills are best outsourced.
Of course, choosing the right agency is a challenge in itself. Having seen behind the scenes of a few I know that some are incredibly good, and others much less so. Thatâs a discussion for another day, but having done your own marketing and being close to your clients will help you no end to make a better decision.
Whatâs important now though is to realise there are three phases to growth with different tactics being effective in each phase:
Phase 1: growth through personal connections, contacts and referrals
Phase 2: growth outside your network using an easily learnable (but time-consuming) skill like regularly posting content on Linkedin or YouTube or Medium.
Phase 3: outsourcing your marketing while you focus on other aspects of running your business
This is a big, big question but hopefully Iâve been able to shed some light on how to make a decision.
More questions? Email me or drop them in the comments belowâŠ