Especially when you’re still growing, you need to be wise about how you spend your budget. Marketing help is one of those things you do need to invest in – and have a little faith in – to stimulate that growth. But not all marketing help is right for all businesses at all stages.
Here’s a quick breakdown of three of the most obvious avenues to go down in getting marketing help for your small business: marketing freelancers, Virtual Assistants, or hiring someone in-house.
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What type of marketing help do you actually need, in your business?
Today I’m going to talk about the differences between having a virtual assistant, an in-house marketer, or a freelance marketer when it comes to getting marketing help in your business.
When you need marketing help in your business, I think there are three kinds of major options out there, especially when you’re on a small team or on your own.
Do You Need Marketing Help from a Virtual Assistant?
The first option is your virtual assistant option. Virtual assistants are really great because you’ve got a really wide selection, there are quite a lot of virtual assistants out there.
That can be a double-edged sword because you do have to make sure that you, do your homework, make sure that that virtual assistant is actually good at what they do.
Experience Doesn’t Mean Better
Just as a note on that, experience doesn’t equal better. You can have a brand new virtual assistant, who will be way more committed to you, because they’re new, and because they’re new doesn’t mean they’re not good at the job.
The key thing about that is that, the job of a virtual assistant is often to really pick up the stuff, that you can’t do – or you don’t have time to do – in your business and do it efficiently and really well, so you don’t even need to check it. That’s when you’ve got a really good virtual assistant.
Signs That You Might Need Marketing Help From a Virtual Assitant
- If you are time poor – you’re constantly running out of time.
- If by freeing up your time, your business is going to make more money.
- If you have systems in place already, that someone else can pick up.
If the above is true, you’re ready for a virtual assistant!
Do You Need Marketing Help from an In-House Marketer?
The second option is bringing in an in-house marketer. This is where you’re getting someone to join your team, someone who’s going to be committed to your business, to do the marketing for your business.
The Most Expensive Option For Marketing Help
This is most likely the most expensive option because you’re going to have to pay a good salary. You’re also going to have to make sure you’ve got all of your employment processes in place. You’ve got contracts and employment policies, insurance, and so on, that you need to do as an employer, in the UK at least.
What’s really important here as well, is that to attract an in-house marketer, you’re going to have to pay well. You could hire a marketing executive in-house and that might be cheaper, but be aware that if you’re hiring a marketing executive, you’re hiring someone who doesn’t yet have expertise. Which could be totally fine and something that you may want. You may want a more blank slate and, like I said, with the virtual assistant, a new person comes with a higher level of commitment too, because they’re new, and they’re ready and energetic.
So, you might want to do that, but be aware that if you are looking for expertise, which is often why someone brings an in-house marketer, you’re looking for someone at a higher pay grade.
If you are bringing in a marketing executive at a lower level, and at a lower pay rate because you can’t afford it, then that’s fine, but make sure that you’re giving them support and training, and that you are budgeting for giving them some extra support and training because they will need it. They’ll need to learn how to do a lot of this stuff, that they haven’t had any experience doing yet. And with marketing, you do learn through experience, because everything is changing every day.
So Why Might You Want to Hire an In-House Marketer?
The bottom line of what you need, of why you might want to hire in-house, is:
- You have enough money,
- You need to pull in some expertise
- You need someone committed to your business.
And that last point about them being committed to your business is really important. Because even if you have loads and loads of money, you can hire a marketer and they will join you – money is attractive to people, and people do need money. But you won’t get them to stay. As soon as they’ve got another offer, that sounds better to them, they’ll leave. So having money isn’t the only thing about keeping a marketing person in your business.
Alignment of Values Are How You Get Your Marketing Help to Stay
You need to have a set of values that are going to attract a marketer. You need to make sure that you’re authentically living those values as well. You can’t just talk about those values and hope that they’ll believe them. You need to be authentically living them otherwise they will eventually realise.
You need to have a business that people will want to fight for because marketing can get tough. As much as people love to think, that marketing is this joyful joyland of creative creativity, marketing is a hard slog sometimes. Going through stats, figuring out new technology, figuring out why a bug has happened. And if you’re hiring in-house, that person is going to have to do a lot of things. They’re going to have to have their hands across all the different things, different channels, to make sure that everything’s working in sync. It gets tough, so if you don’t have a reason why they’re fighting beyond the money, that they’re being paid, you’re not only going to lose them eventually, but you’ll also not get the best work out of them.
Be Really Clear About Your “Why” If You’re Hiring In-House
So if you’re going to hire in-house, make sure you’re really clear about why. Why does your business exist, who are you fighting for, who are you serving and why would your marketer care. And you know what, that will apply to any employee you hire. Whether it’s an admin person, a finance person, an HR person, everyone wants to know why they’re fighting.
Yes, money is important, and they are also working to earn because everyone needs a living. But they’re staying because they want to.
Do You Need Marketing Help from a Freelance Marketer?
The last option is – surprise, surprise – a freelance marketer (like me!).
For When You Need High Expertise For Less Ongoing Spend
Why would you want to hire a freelance marketer, as opposed to the other two, is that you need that higher level of expertise in your business. Maybe you haven’t got really good marketing systems set up yet, you haven’t thought about your target person properly, maybe you’re not sure if your USP is correct and there’s all these little bits, all these foundational bits, especially when it comes to your marketing, that you need set up. But you don’t have the money, you don’t have the systems in place, you don’t have the capacity to hire someone full-time.
This is where a freelancer comes in perfectly. They’re invaluable, because usually your relationship with a freelancer is fairly fluid, so if your business is a bit money poor, then you’ll just be able to spend the amount that you have, that you can budget for, and a freelancer will be able to shape their offering, to give you exactly what you need.
A good marketing freelancer can condense their marketing expertise, to exactly what you need for your business, and to give you the tools to maybe help yourself, to get to the point where you can hire someone. Get you to where you have enough profit coming in that you are then able to hire that permanent extra support.
You can have long-term relationships with freelancers. But I think the best relationships you can have with a businesses as a freelancer is to help them get to that stable point, where your business is supporting itself, and then setting you free into the sunset.
So when you might want to hire a freelance marketer instead:
- You need high-level marketing expertise
- You don’t have enough money to spend on an ongoing salary
- You need a flexible working arrangement to only access and pay for the expertise you actually need.
There are obviously lots of different freelancers with lots of different ways of working, which also means you can find the one that fits best for your business.
If you think that a conversation with me might help you figure out what kind of marketing help you might need, feel free to get in touch and ask for a completely free chat and I’ll help point you at the right thing for you!