If you’re a small to medium-sized business keen to expand, outsourced marketing could be just the solution you’ve been looking for. It’s a clever way to access a “virtual marketing department” without having to pay full-time salaries, which will enable you to compete with bigger companies for a fraction of the cost.
Once you’ve experienced the benefits of outsourcing your marketing and got used this way of working, you may find yourself outsourcing marketing tasks you didn’t even know you could such as…
- CLIENT INTERVIEWS / CUSTOMER RESEARCH
Finding out what your customers think of you and how happy they are with the service you’re providing is key for any business but you may not be comfortable asking them directly and they may not feel comfortable being completely honest with you. That’s where an outsourced marketing agency comes in. By outsourcing client interviews to a third party you get more honest feedback, which you can use to improve customer satisfaction levels.
- . INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
Likewise, it can be difficult to raise the issue of problems with ways of working within a business. Coming directly from management, criticism can be taken personally and can lead to resentment. Engaging an external marketing consultant to review your company’s ways of working and recommend strategies for improvement means that the suggestions are coming from an independent and impartial third party, which can make them easier for staff to take on board and implement.
- SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
Knowing who your target audience is and building a relationship with them is key to any business. Once you’ve identified them you need to find the best place to communicate with them but should you be looking for “likes” or sending out witty “tweets” and do you really have the time to answer every single customer query promptly on every single channel?
By outsourcing social media marketing you get a much more professional approach. A social media agency will find out which social media channels your target audience is using and prioritise these. They will adopt a tone of voice for your brand and ensure it is consistent. They can find out when your audience is most active and optimise post times to catch them. They can tailor your content to different platforms. They can respond instantly to your customers when you don’t have time. Most importantly, they can track posts and measure which ones work best.
- COPYWRITING
Copywriting is something that is often overlooked by businesses. After all, we can all write, can’t we? When you’re so close to your business you often use shorthand, jargon or buzzwords internally when speaking about your product or service. While this may make perfect sense to you, it may not necessarily be as clear to your customers. A good copywriter will quickly spot and cut through the jargon and rephrase it so that your customers clearly understand what you’re offering and why they need it.
Tone of voice is also crucial to how you communicate with your customers. Outsourcing copywriting means that you can ensure that this is relevant and consistent across all communications.
- EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing can be a very powerful tool for engaging with your customers but again, there’s a lot more to it than simply writing an email, sending it out and hoping for the best. To make sure your email isn’t ignored or marked as spam you need to understand the science behind it or enlist someone who does.
Outsourcing email marketing means that you can target your audience carefully and plan your communications to ensure the best results. Well written subject lines are key to getting someone to open the email, carefully targeted content ensures that you’re offering them something they need and a clever call to action will help you seal the deal. Testing the emails you send out will soon show what approach works best and help you improve your email communications in the future.
- CONTENT STRATEGY AND CREATION
These days content is king and creating compelling content is key to keeping your business relevant. Positioning yourself as an authority in your field and the “go-to source” of information is a sure way of keeping your business top of mind with your customers. Outsourcing content marketing is a great way to do this.
- BLOGGING
Outsourcing blogging on your own website or on social media means that you can regularly communicate with your customers, sharing company news, addressing topical issues and taking advantage of seasonal events. Your own staff may vary in their skills in this area so outsourcing blogging means that they can contribute to a greater or lesser extent, while the marketing outsourcing company ensures that each blog article has a consistent tone of voice.
- AWARD ENTRIES
Winning awards increases brand awareness and boosts the profile of your business and is great for staff morale and client confidence but did you know that there is a knack to writing winning award entries?
While it makes sense for the person closest to the work to have an input into the entry, they may not be skilled at writing an entry and they may not necessarily have the time to devote to it. A good outsourced marketing agency will be well used to submitting award entries and will know exactly what information to include and how to phrase it in the best possible way.
- PRODUCT LAUNCHES
Launching a new product is an exciting time for your business and to ensure success it is important that it is handled properly but it can take extra time that your internal team just doesn’t have. At times like these having extra hands on deck can make all the difference. Outsourcing product launches to an external marketing agency means you can give the new product the attention it deserves and get it out there faster without having to recruit or train extra staff.
- EVENT MANAGEMENT
Planning an event is another task that can seriously eat into your time and become a bit of a headache if it’s not something you’re used to doing. Outsourcing event management means that you can be assured of a well planned and professional event.
While it can be a little daunting at first to hand over marketing tasks like these to an outsourced marketing agency, it will be well worth it in the long run. Once you see how much time and money you save and how much more time you have to focus on your core business you may well find yourself wondering why you didn’t do it sooner.
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