Marketing is a complex field that includes different strategies designed to improve visibility, establish a brand presence, engage prospective customers, and earn more revenue as a result. Business owners need to invest time and money into marketing if they want to stay ahead of the game and stand apart from the competition. A good marketing strategy can help businesses grow and enjoy more success.
However, many small business owners hesitate to hire professional marketers to handle their marketing campaign. It could be lack of trust, no budgetary means for it, or that they feel it’s a manageable task. In the end, they struggle to share responsibilities and delegate tasks while they run a business; which means they don’t outsource marketing and rely on inexperienced in-house employees to plan and implement the strategies that they end up overseeing.
Why Hiring a Marketing Expert can Help
Modern marketing is an expansive field, and it includes everything from digital marketing online to traditional offline marketing. Business owners rarely have enough time to learn different marketing techniques and understand how to implement them well on their platforms. All kinds of businesses, especially small companies, can benefit from professional assistance. Here are some reasons why hiring a professional is a good idea:
1. To Navigate the Complexities of Modern Marketing Strategies
Modern marketing strategies involve a wide range of techniques, tools, skills, and platforms, which is why people work in teams to implement it. The digital marketing team includes professionals with different skills and qualifications who handle different tasks. These strategies are just too complex for a single person to manage, even if they’re qualified in the field. Even the simplest marketing strategy requires steps like:
- Establishing Your Audience
- Branding the Service for the Audience
- Graphic Design & Collateral Creation
- Creating a Website that Sells
- Making the Website SEO Friendly
- Promoting the Website
- Creating Social Media Profiles
- Establishing Brand Presence
- Generating Content
- Creating Ads for Paid Platforms
- Managing Ad Spend
- Managing Authoritative Links to the Website
All of these things require different skills and most business owners have to invest time to learn these skills if they want to handle marketing without professional assistance.
2. To Create Content that Establishes Industry Authority
Content is an important aspect of modern marketing strategies because it helps establish authority in the industry, engages with customers, distributes information regarding products and services, and include keywords to catch the attention of search engines. The Internet is saturated with content, so users are very selective about what they read. It’s not enough to just create generic content and include relevant keywords in the text. The content should provide the target audience with significant value.
- Content should be well-written with sound grammar and spelling.
- All the information should be current and relevant to the keywords included in the text.
- The content should be in long-form and range from 1,000 to 2,000 words. The average word count of the web pages search on the first search engine results page is 1,890.
- The keywords used should be specific, and the content should include long-tail phrases.
- All information should be well-researched and as accurate as possible.
The primary purpose of content marketing is to attract organic traffic to the website and to ensure that users stay long enough to become interested in the products and services offered. The secondary purpose of content marketing is to establish authority and win the trust of the visitors.
Skilled and experienced content marketing experts know just how to generate the right kind of content for their target audience. This job requires skills, training and deep knowledge on the nitty-gritty of writing for online audiences. It’s something most individual business owners aren’t able to manage.
3. To Develop Creative and Interactive Resources
Content marketing doesn’t just involve text though it is one of the most commonly used formats in modern marketing. Text content is easy to create, and business owners can develop good articles and blog posts if they put in some time and effort. However, experienced marketers know content marketing must be diverse and approach the target audience from different directions. A sound content marketing strategy will include:
- Videos and tutorials
- Podcasts and live streams
- Infographics and animations
- White papers and research papers relevant to the industry
These types of content require different skills and software, and a business owner doesn’t usually have access to them. In comparison, professional marketers have all the tools and knowledge required to create visual and text content and can handle it with a marketing strategy in mind.
4. To Deliver your Brand Socially
Social media is a great platform for small businesses because it allows them to reach out and connect with their target audience. They can engage with their audience regularly, establish a personal relationship, hear customer concerns, complaints, and provide resolutions promptly; this helps ensure customers remain interested in the brand.
However, social media is a double-edged sword if it’s not handled properly. Even the smallest mistakes can compromise the reputation of the company and alienate the target audience. Experienced social media professionals know how to navigate these platforms well and will:
- Understand different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., and develop unique strategies to engage audiences on every platform.
- Explore the paid ads, promoted content, and other such paid marketing options available on these platforms and use them to the best advantage.
- Monitor engagements and interactions between the business and target audience to understand customer preferences.
- Handle complaints, questions, and requests from customers on the social media platforms.
- Build and maintain a good reputation on these platforms and establish authority through content.
Professional marketers will use sophisticated social media management tools to keep track of all this activity and ensure nothing goes wrong. Managing social media requires time and commitment, but it can be very rewarding. Social media marketers are very savvy on these platforms and know how to engage the audience efficiently.
Many small business owners struggle with this aspect of marketing and have neither the time nor knowledge to keep track of their social media accounts. The time to update, post content, respond, and then interact with their audiences just isn’t there.
5. To Develop your Brand and Website Concepts
A marketing campaign will fail if the business doesn’t have a well-designed website and a carefully crafted brand presence. A website is the foundation of all marketing campaigns and needs to provide a good user experience to visitors, regardless of the platform they approach it from.
The website should be easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, SEO-friendly, quick to load on all platforms, aesthetically pleasing, and informative. It should be designed in accordance with the branding to ensure it conveys the right message to the target audience. Experienced website developers and marketers will consider the factors mentioned below when they create a platform and branding:
- Target audiences and their preferences
- Type of products and services provided
- Competitors and the industry in general
- The company’s ethics, goals, and message
- The location of the company
All of these factors are considered in the website design and branding process to ensure the online presence is unique and appealing to the target audience. While business owners know their industry, product and target market well, they don’t have the skills and knowledge on how to position themselves best when it comes to branding. A haphazard approach or unplanned branding strategy can have a long-term impact on the success of the venture.
6. To Research and Analyze Your Engagement Campaigns
Modern marketing strategies are fluid and dynamic. They need to change and evolve in response to the changing market conditions, search engine regulations, target audience preferences, and other such influential factors.
A marketing campaign that’s successful today might not be as successful six months down the line, which is why experienced marketers always keep an eye on the campaigns through analytics and research latest marketing trends regularly. Here are some of the many analytic reports professional marketers browse through regularly:
- The analytic reports containing website activity like a number of visitors (repeat and unique), duration of the visit, bounce rates, most popular pages, etc. This information will help them improve the overall quality of the website.
- Analysis of paid ad campaign performance on search engines, social media platforms, and even off-line strategies like direct mail marketing. They keep an eye on the performance of the paid ad campaigns and determine if the ads provide sufficient ROI.
- Analysis of organic social media interaction. This often includes impressions, opened posts, comments, likes/dislikes, shares, etc. Experienced social media marketers will study these reports and alter their social media strategy accordingly.
Without regular analytics, it’s difficult to determine if the campaigns are performing well and delivering the right amount of ROI. The information from marketing analytics can also help with content creation, marketing campaign planning, social media campaigns, etc. A business owner will find it extremely difficult to handle all the aspects of analytics, which can lead to the failure of the marketing campaign.
7. To Save You Time and Money
Small business owners have many responsibilities and not a lot of time to attend to them all. Marketing can be an additional burden they don’t need, which is why DIY marketing is never a good idea. While DIY marketing seems affordable, it can have a long-term negative impact on the business, cause the business owner a considerable amount of stress, and draw their attention from tasks that can’t be outsourced and need their attention.
While there are multiple avenues and sources providing information about digital marketing strategies, nothing can replace the training, skill, and experience professional marketers have. They also have connections with different entities in the marketing world that can make developing effective strategies easier. Professional marketers will achieve more with less money so even if the initial investment of hiring a professional marketer seems a bit expensive, it can help business owners save money in the long run. Marketing research can prove it.