Marketing is a complex field that encompasses a multitude of strategies and their implementation on different platforms. Business owners are hesitant to hire marketing experts to help, but a marketing team can help a business grow as it pulls from its collective resources.
Marketing is a complex field that includes different strategies 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 campaigns. It could be lack of trust or the budgetary means for it, or because they feel it's a manageable task. In the end, they might 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 that includes digital marketing as well as 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 variety of techniques, tools, skills and platforms, which is why people work in teams to implement them. 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 these:
- Establishing your audience
- Branding the service for the audience
- Graphic design and 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.
Editor's note: Looking for an online marketing service? We can help you choose the one that's right for you. Use the questionnaire below to have our sister site, BuyerZone, provide you with information from a variety of vendors for free:
2. To create content that establishes industry authority
Content is an important aspect of modern marketing strategies because it helps a company establish authority in its industry, engage with customers, distribute information on products and services, and catch the attention of search engines with keywords. The internet is saturated with content, so users are very selective about what they read. It's not enough to 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 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 webpages on the first search engine results page is 1,890.
- The keywords should be specific, and the content should include long-tail phrases.
- All information should be well researched and as accurate as possible.
The primary purposes of content marketing are to attract organic traffic to your website and to ensure that users stay long enough to become interested in your products or services. The secondary purpose of content marketing is to establish your authority and win visitors' trust.
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 on their own.
3. To develop creative and interactive resources
Content marketing doesn't just involve text, though it is one of the most common 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 includes the following:
- Videos and tutorials
- Podcasts and livestreams
- Infographics and animations
- Whitepapers and research papers relevant to the industry
These types of content require different skills and software that a business owner doesn't usually have access to. Professional marketers have all the tools and knowledge 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 audiences. They can engage with their audience regularly, establish a personal relationship, hear customer concerns and complaints, and provide resolutions promptly. This helps ensure customers remain interested in the brand.
However, social media can be a threat if not handled properly. Even the smallest mistakes can compromise your company's reputation and alienate your target audience. Experienced social media professionals know how to navigate these platforms well. They will ...
- Understand different platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and develop unique strategies to engage audiences on every platform.
- Explore the paid ads, promoted content and other paid marketing options on these platforms, and use them to your best advantage.
- Monitor engagements and interactions between your business and target audience to understand customer preferences.
- Handle complaints, questions and requests from customers on social media platforms.
- Build and maintain a good reputation on these platforms and establish your brand's 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 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.
Your 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 your branding to ensure it conveys the right message to your target audience. Experienced website developers and marketers will consider these factors when they create a platform and branding:
- Target audiences and their preferences
- Type of products and services
- Competitors and the industry in general
- The company's ethics, goals and message
- The location of the company
Attention to these aspects in the website design and branding process ensures your online presence is unique and appealing to your 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 your 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 regularly research marketing trends. Here are some of the many analytic reports professional marketers browse regularly:
- Website activity like number of visitors (repeat and unique), duration of the visit, bounce rates and most popular pages. This information will help them improve the overall quality of the website.
- Paid ad campaign performance on search engines, social media platforms and even offline strategies like direct mail marketing. They keep an eye on the performance of your paid ad campaigns and determine if the ads provide sufficient ROI.
- Organic social media interaction, including impressions, opened posts, comments, and likes and dislikes. Experienced social media marketers will study these reports and alter their social media strategies 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 and social media campaigns. 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 tend to them all. Marketing can be just an additional burden, which is why DIY marketing can be a bad idea. While DIY marketing seems affordable, it can have a long-term negative impact on your business, cause you considerable stress, and draw your attention away from tasks that you can't outsource and need your attention.
While there are multiple avenues and sources of 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 can achieve more with less money, so even if the initial investment of hiring a professional marketer seems a bit expensive, it can save you money in the long run.