A question often gets asked by small business owners. Can’t I just market my business myself? The thought behind this question is that digital marketing is either easy, takes little time, or both. The reality is that there are many aspects to digital marketing and it is really difficult to be good at all of them and also be an expert on your own business.
Your Are The Expert
Think about your business. You know the ins and outs of most parts, but you may outsource some functions. You may bring in managers or experts to fill in where you lack certain knowledge or skills. For example, many businesses hire an accountant to handle their bookkeeping, taxes, ect. They would prefer to have someone who is an expert to handle that for them so they can focus on the customers and products or services.
Digital marketing is looked at differently than accounting even though it is just as important. Most people (76%) check a company’s online presence before visiting them in person. That means that ¾ of your business will potentially come from your digital presence. If most of your business depends on digital marketing, it is probably a good idea to invest in hiring experts.
Doing Your Own Digital Marketing
That doesn’t mean you can not be involved in your marketing and in fact you should understand your online presence. When business owners are actively involved with their marketing department it can create more engaging opportunities for online marketing especially with social media and business listings such as Google My Business and Yelp.
That being said, there are many areas to focus on with your digital brand. Building and maintaining a website along with monthly search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to keep you on the first pages of Google or any search engine. SEO involves reading analytics reports so you know how your users and search engines are interacting with your site. You then use that information to make decisions about changes to your site. Understanding how meta titles and descriptions work, how schema impacts your site, and what type of content brings traffic is all part of SEO.
Social media marketing is where most business owners can make a big impact with digital marketing. Creating a story and keeping followers involved and engaged is something that owners have more control over. Social media marketing requires consistency and a plan, however. Most businesses that try and do it on their own start off strong, but then when business gets busy, the social media marketing falls off.
Email marketing is another area where most businesses start off strong, but then stop after they get too busy. When business is good, marketing seems to fall off the radar, but that is exactly when marketing needs to be utilized most. By investing in marketing when business is good, it reduces the impact of business falloff when there are lulls. Unfortunately, most business owners don’t have time when business is good.
It would be unrealistic to suggest to a business owner that they should know all of these things just to market their business.
Why You Should Not Do Your Own Digital Marketing
This leads us to why hiring a marketing company can be very beneficial. A marketing company isn’t impacted by how busy your business gets. They keep your marketing consistent and focused so there is less chance you’ll have big gaps in income due to patron traffic.
Another advantage of hiring a marketing company is to have a team of experts rather than you having to be an expert in everything. SEO, social media, email marketing, digital advertising, and web design are all individual skill areas. It would be unrealistic to suggest to a business owner that they should know all of these things just to market their business. That is why a marketing team is so helpful. Each member can focus on different aspects of marketing your business while also keeping a cohesive strategy.
