By Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group
Do you change your own oil? No doubt we could all learn how. When I checked “how to change oil in car” on YouTube, I got 2,780,000 results. But is it a good use of my time? Sure, I could save the $20 bucks Jiffy Lube would charge me but it would definitely take more than $20 of my time and effort. I’d have to drive to the store, buy the oil and some tools, then figure out the process (or watch one of the 2M+ videos) to do it, so I’m not really ahead in this game.
Similarly, when should you outsource some or all of your marketing? If you’re a VAR, ISV, or a CPA consulting firm that doesn’t have a marketing team—or even a full-time marketing person—dedicated to generating leads, you could certainly add that job to someone at the firm. But should you?
Here are three reasons it makes sense to outsource your marketing.
Reasons to Outsource Your Marketing:
1. Specialized expertise.
Our industry is laden with intricate, and seemingly endless, varieties of ERP, CRM, SaaS, IaaS, cloud, BPO, and much more (not to mention our obvious love of acronyms!). According to Accounting Today, in a recent survey of accounting and professional services buyers, 35 percent of buyers ranked specialized expertise as their top deciding factor in choosing a firm—well ahead of referrals, reputation or customer service. Expertise even came out ahead of existing relationships as a deciding factor.
Specialized expertise is critically important. If you need a heart bypass, you wouldn’t go to the surgeon who does knee replacements. The same holds true for your marketing partner. Look for industry-specific expertise in the tech sector so you get help by people trained and experienced in exactly what you need, not “sort of” what you need.
2. Faster and better.
A few years into an engagement as a Virtual Marketing Director for a VAR, I proposed the client “take back” their marketing job. They had learned a lot in the 3 years we worked together and I knew they had the capability to run their own marketing campaigns. But they refused, saying “Cheryl, you’re the only person who thinks about marketing every day. And that has value to us because left to our own devices, we’ll never get anything done. We all have other jobs.” And so we continued to provide VMD services—for 9 wonderful years!
A marketer in your industry will know how to develop a strategic marketing plan, how to construct a SWOT analysis, how to execute the tactics in the plan, determine which opportunities have merit and go after them, how to track and report results, how to align the website with the company’s brand and goals, how to work with the software publishers…and much more. You get where I’m going with this. If you didn’t understand this entire paragraph, or if your marketing team isn’t performing all of this and more, it’s time to ask for help.
3. Cost effective.
As a VAR, ISV, or CPA, you know the value of time. You bill your time to clients. Your priority is to keep their utilization rates high. Your focus is on the success of the business, as it should be.
Consider the time it would take you to learn today’s marketing “must-do’s” such as social marketing, nurture marketing, outbound and inbound marketing, marketing automation tools, reporting and analysis, and the list goes on.
For example, “content rocks” in today’s marketing world. Yes, you could write a whitepaper or try your hand at designing an eBook. However, considering again what your time is worth, it would likely cost less to have a professional copywriter and designer do the heavy lifting for you. It’s okay to admit that not all of us are writers and designers and marketers, nor should we have to be!
At the end of the day, you want to know that the dollars invested in marketing are allocated toward the right strategies and tactics; the ones that put you closer to your corporate goals. If you’re not confident in what you’re doing today, and need some help with your marketing, reach out to us at info@ThePartnerMarketingGroup.com or call 734-425-7414. We don’t change oil, but we certainly can boost your marketing.
