Is it time to outsource online marketing?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median pay for doctors of chiropractic is $71,410 per year. While this is almost double the average wage of all workers combined (which is $38,640), it still doesn’t leave much room for covering the additional expenses that are often required when running a growing practice. Expenses such as renting, leasing, or buying office space, or paying for utilities, equipment and supplies.
Because of this, it may be tempting to cut corners by doing your own marketing. But is this really the best idea or is it worth the cost to outsource this particular task? If this is the question you’re currently asking yourself, here are five factors that may indicate that you’d be better off hiring someone else to handle your business promotion activities for you.
You are already stretched on time
In a survey conducted by VerticalResponse, 43% of small business owners said that they spend an average of six hours every week on social media marketing alone. This doesn’t take into account the time spent on other marketing efforts such as email campaigns, writing and posting blogs, creating and mailing postcards, and all other marketing avenues available today. If you don’t have this time to add into your schedule, it may be time to outsource this particular task.
“What we’ve seen over the years is that small businesses who try in-house marketing most often end up losing focus on their core business as there simply isn’t enough time to do both,” says Matthew Smith, CEO of Modmacro, an award-winning web design and digital marketing firm that partners with small businesses to help them grow.
Plus, just as chiropractors must stay relevant and proficient in their fields, the same is true for marketing professionals, says Smith. “We must be constantly learning and adapting as culture and technology evolve and advance,” he says. “It would require a large and ongoing investment in both time and dollars for a chiropractic office to maintain that level of in-house marketing expertise.”
You have limited marketing expertise
“Even the simplest of marketing campaigns requires at least a few disciplines,” says Smith. This requires that you know about things such as search engine optimization (SEO), copywriting, advertising and design if you want to handle your marketing in-house.
Many small business owners don’t have the desire or the time to learn everything they need to know about these different areas of marketing, as opposed to hiring a firm where, typically, each of these are performed by different people.
“When you add up the overhead associated with maintaining an in-house team including salary, benefits, etc., partnering with an outside team makes a lot of sense,” says Smith.
You don’t know which marketing strategies work (and which ones are a waste of time)
Another factor to consider when it comes to deciding whether to develop and implement your own marketing strategies or outsource online marketing is how much you know about marketing. More specifically, do you know which strategies provide the best possible results? Not only is this important to not wasting your energy and time, but it can also potentially save you both cash and embarrassment by avoiding a marketing faux pas.
For instance, in 2014, DiGiorno used the trending hashtag #WhyIStayed to include “You had pizza.” However, what the company failed to realize was that this particular hashtag was actually initiated as a way to highlight why victims of domestic violence stay in their abusive relationships. Needless to say, this didn’t go over too well with its followers, causing an almost immediate backlash.
To outsource online marketing (and offline) gives you access to individuals who know how to avoid these types of mistakes, as well as having a better idea of what works and what doesn’t within the marketing realm. “It also brings deep experience across industries, technologies and markets,” adds Smith. “Being able to leverage that experience and all the data we collect brings huge value that our clients wouldn’t otherwise have working for them.”
You want specific marketing results
If you aren’t super concerned with how many new patients your marketing brings in or how many leads it is able to generate, you are probably fine with taking care of this business-growing activity yourself. But if you want specific results — such as a 10% increase in clients in the next 12 months — it may be best to leave it to the pros.
“It’s hard to imagine a chiropractor or someone on their staff being able to produce marketing results similar to what we are capable of,” says Smith. “That’s just not what they’re trained and experienced with. In some ways, that’s similar to expecting that I should be able to practice chiropractic on a friend without having disastrous results.”
You run into issues when marketing yourself
You may also want to outsource your chiropractic marketing if you’re running into issues with your current self-made campaign. “Like many health care professionals, chiropractors are specialists,” says Smith. “Patients choose them for their specific expertise to help solve problems that other health care professionals can’t. It’s the same with marketing. Clients partner with marketing firms and gain access to a team of specialists that provide knowledge and abilities that others don’t have.”
Maybe you’re struggling with how to create effective content or are unsure of the best way to target your ads. Hiring a team of professionals within the marketing space can help you resolve these types of issues, sometimes with a very simple and quick fix.
“The economics of hiring a marketing team versus trying to do marketing in-house almost always makes sense,” says Smith. So maybe the real question is: Why not outsource online marketing (and offline) and save yourself both money and time?