How successful are your current marketing initiatives and programs? Do you have a marketing team to launch and execute your marketing plans? Many small businesses struggle with making their marketing program effective because they don’t have the in-house talent and expertise to manage marketing projects such as a new product launch, a website redesign, SEO or even the creation of a well-researched and comprehensive plan. Putting all of this together takes time and money and drains valuable resources from other areas of your business.
Consider outsourcing these responsibilities to a third-party marketing consulting company. Here are several important benefits to outsourcing:
1) HIRING A PROFESSIONAL MARKETING CONSULTANT SAVES YOUR BUSINESS TIME AND MONEY:
· Your business saves money in reduced overhead costs (no internal team to hire, manage, provide office space for, etc.).
· You agree up front on how much you want to spend and can cap costs at a certain amount – no more unanticipated expenses or marketing budgets run amok!
· You spend less time spent on daily marketing management, trying to find the right people for an in-house marketing team, and task delegation.
2) OUTSOURCING YOUR MARKETING FUNCTIONS TO A WELL-VETTED MARKETING EXPERT HELPS YOU REDUCE YOUR MARKETING RISK AND BUILD BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS:
· Your marketing consultant wants and needs their programs to be effective. They will work hard to bring you marketing success, as this reflects positively on them and encourages their continued work with your business.
· Access to an enormous network of skills, talents and capabilities, such as graphic designers, copywriters, website developers, and SEO consultants, to name just a few.
· Knowledge is transferred between both businesses. A savvy marketing professional will get to know your business inside and out. As a result, they’re flexible enough to adapt your marketing program to meet shifting objectives (such as industry trends) quickly and effectively.
Here is a helpful example of a company who outsourced the creation and distribution of a direct mail marketing program:
MARKETING CASE HISTORY:
Opportunity/Problem:
A realty company agent wanted to revamp its quarterly postcard-marketing program to generate new listings. Their company’s previous program’s impact was fading and no longer produced any measurable benefit.
Solution:
The budget for this project was defined, and a cross-platform marketing program was custom created for the realty company. A direct mail postcard would be sent to about 10,000 recipients in the target market. The postcard included individual website landing pages personalized for each mail recipient. The target market was segmented so that each group would receive a more relevant and specific message and personal URL. The landing pages were created for each market segment and were hosted to receive visitors to the website.
Each time a recipient landed on their personalized page, a real time lead was created, and the client was notified of the lead for immediate follow up. The actual return on marketing investment for the first year of this program was 108%, bringing incrementally increased sales revenue and a bottom line profit that far exceeded the cost of the entire program.
