Running a business is hard. Marketing a business is even harder. Without someone who understands marketing and knows how to create an effective strategy on your team, marketing gets even more complicated.
Odds are this question has crossed your mind at one point in time if you’re a small business owner: “Should I hire someone in-house for marketing or continue to seek outside help?”
So many small business owners are afraid to hire marketing people internally. Where do you even start? You may have even questioned if there is something wrong with outsourcing your marketing.
Although there is nothing wrong with outsourcing parts of your marketing, there comes a time when you need to stop renting marketing and own it internally.
The difference between owning and renting marketing
First, let’s define what owning marketing versus renting marketing really means.
Renting your marketing is when you seek outside help from a consultant or an agency to market your business.
Consultants are strategic partners—take the team at EDGE Marketing as an example. We can help you with high-level strategy and things like crafting messaging that set you apart, sharpening your brand identity, optimizing your website, or building your blog.
Owning your marketing is when you hire a marketing person internally to handle routine things like writing content for your blog, creating social posts, managing your communities, and more, depending on your industry. It's like having a personal marketing agency right within your company that manages a whole range of digital marketing services.
There’s a time and place for both. And there’s a sweet spot smack dab in the middle where ‘owning’ and ‘renting’ will work hand in hand. But more on that later.
Why you can’t completely hand over your marketing
It’s common to delegate what you can as a small business owner. Marketing is one of those things that gets delegated most of the time. But when delegation becomes abdication—then you’ve got a problem.
In many cases, businesses have someone external looking after their marketing. But when you look beneath the surface, it’s less about having someone effectively run their marketing and more about a convenient opportunity for business owners to check the marketing box and turn their attention elsewhere.
Consultants can’t be your entire marketing department. They can only carry so much on their plate, and they won’t know all of the intricacies of your business as well as someone internally would. So, if you want to get your business to the next level, it’s time to start building an internal team.
Why small business owners don’t hire for marketing
Business owners are often skeptical of someone coming in to help with their marketing—whether it’s in-house or on a consulting basis—so much so they don’t hire marketing people for reasons like:
- They don’t see marketing as a priority— Very few business owners have a marketing background. While great marketing can deliver results, most don’t want to spend their time (or money) on it.
- They’ve been burned before— Small businesses have had a bad experience with a marketing guru of some sort, or they’ve hired a marketing person who ‘knew’ about social media but didn’t have any experience when it came to marketing strategy. (And that’s because there often isn’t a bigger strategy.)
- They can’t justify the cost— Hiring is a commitment, and small businesses often have limited resources. It’s an upfront cost, and the Return on Investment (ROI) isn’t instantaneous. But your costs should pay for themselves quickly if you hire the right person.
- They don’t know how to hire or train the right person—Business owners (usually) aren’t marketers. They don’t know what to look for, where to find talent, or how to get someone up to speed.
You can get help to make marketing an asset
This is where one of EDGE’s newest services comes in - our Certified Marketing Manager Program. It is the sweet spot between ‘owning’ and ‘renting’ your marketing. It combines the power of working with a strategic marketing partner (EDGE) with an internal marketing hire who is better equipped to do their job.
A marketing consultant can help you with the strategic components like the plan, the plan’s implementation, the analysis of results, and ensuring you remain on track when working towards your big goals.
Meanwhile, the internal marketing person who knows the intricacies of your business (or soon will) can be directed by an outside resource—like EDGE Marketing—to execute this plan and craft messages that align with your strategy. This is how you get the best of both worlds.
By hiring internally, you end up building an asset for your business. But that still brings us back to one of the biggest hurdles for small business owners—how do you find, hire, and train the right internal marketing person?
Well—the Certified Marketing Manager Program solves this exact problem. The program is based on Duct Tape Marketing’s proven system (Duct Tape Marketing). It comes with an experienced consultant and a personalized online training program based on your business for your marketing team (even if that’s just one person).
We will teach your team how to build, run and implement a custom marketing system tuned to evolve as you grow.
This program gets you and your team to the next level.
So, this all sounds great, right? But where do you start? Because every business is different, we offer a free coaching session where we present an overview of the program and what to expect, tailored to your situation.
Arrange a Free Coaching Session
Posted: October 19, 2021
