Your brand is the most recognizable, you get record hits on your website, and new clients call night and day . . . Well, all that will happen as soon as you hire a marketing company, right?
Not so fast. There’s a lot more to this than meets the eye. Before you hire a marketing company, you need to make sure you and your business are ready for that. To see whether outsourcing to a marketing company makes sense for you, answer these questions.
Can you analyze the numbers you already have? When you hire a marketing company, they’ll send you reports, and data, and numbers telling you how the marketing strategy is working. Before you get all that, make sure you can understand it. You should have a simple tool already that measures hits to your website or email open rates. Study those numbers. Learn how your marketing efforts (no matter how small) impact those numbers.
Are you outgrowing the marketing efforts you have in place? No one can do it alone. You’ll come up with various projects for your marketing efforts. And once in a while, you might need to hire someone who’s good at video to get you started on YouTube, or maybe a freelance designer to do your first brochure. As long as your goals are simple, keep the outsourcing simple. But if your goals are getting bigger and more complex, it’s time to start thinking about a marketing company that can handle the various parts of your marketing strategy.
Do you understand that quality is more important than quantity? It’s tempting to hire a marketing company so you can continuously blitz your audience with blogs or social media posts. But a few great pieces of content are better than hundreds of okay pieces. People read, watch, or share valuable content—content that gives useful information. Mediocre marketing content that puts your company first, rather than your audience, turns people off. “Hiring a content marketer only for the sake of creating content is arguably the biggest mistake a company can make,” warns an article on Entrepreneur.com.
Do you understand that your marketing budget will impact your results? No, money won’t solve all your marketing problems. But it sure will help. A marketing goal that includes using every strategy out there will cost more and earn results faster than a marketing effort that focuses solely on email click-through rates or a mobile app. Ensure you can afford your goal, or else simplify the goal to fit your budget.
Do you have a specific goal for hiring a marketing company? Not only will specific goals help you, they’ll help the marketing company know how to help you. You know it’s hard to work with a client who doesn’t know what kind of candidate they need. Marketing companies need clarity, just like you do. If you’re ready with a goal, then the marketing company can help you come up with a plan to reach that goal. And with a goal in place, you’ll know if you’re reaching it or just wasting your money.
If you answered no to all these questions, you have work to do before hiring a marketing company. But if you answered yes, you’re probably ready to talk to a marketing company. ASJ Partners takes pride in being the experts at accelerating revenues for Staffing and Recruiting Firms through unique, customized and highly targeted marketing programs. These industry-specific programs help you Sell More, Win More, Grow More and Be Found More. Contact ASJ today about marketing for your staffing firm.
