You’ve decided to outsource your online marketing – now what? In this episode of Real Talk, No Fluff, Liz and Ronda discuss the things you need and need to plan for when outsourcing your online marketing.
We invite you to listen here on our website or from your favorite podcast player. Scroll below for episode summary and other resources.
Episode 19 Summary:
- As a small business owner who has reviewed their budget, understands their in-house capabilities and bandwidth, and has decided that some or all of their online marketing tasks need to be outsourced, you need to now prepare to partner with one or more online marketing vendors.
- If you haven’t already listened to our episode about tips for hiring a digital marketer, we’ll link that up in our show notes. And assuming you’ve either hired or are in the process of hiring an online marketing team to help you, here’s our list of things you need to know in order to have a successful relationship.
- First of all, probably the most important thing to know is that outsourcing a business task doesn’t mean that you are free of any responsibility to contribute to that task. This could be in the form of creating original content, sharing upcoming sales, promotions, events, and other company news, and generally being responsive to incoming questions and requests from a vendor.
- Linked closely with our most important point is that outsourcing a marketing task also doesn’t mean you should have no say in what that vendor is doing on your behalf. Any vendor should be responsive to your requests to modify drafts, posts, or ads, and the content they are publishing on your behalf should be expected to be relevant and customized to your specific business and clientele.
- Timely approvals are essential! It’s not fair to the vendor if you stand in the way of them doing their jobs, plus you can miss out on proper promotional periods if you take too long to approve a draft.
- Ongoing communication is key, and this communication needs to flow in both directions. While you don’t need daily or even weekly emails or meetings, you and a vendor should agree ahead of time about how often you’ll hold planning meetings and how approval timelines for blog posts, email newsletters, social content, and advertising will work.
- If you aren’t paying extra for someone outside of your organization to create original content, you are still responsible for that content creation. Your vendor can give you advice on how to create that content more efficiently or even what kind of content to create. But photography, videography, and blog or email writing aren’t standardly included in most online marketing services, so expect to pay for those or have a plan to create that content in-house.
- Any accounts, software, or other online marketing tools that a vendor suggests or requires in order to do their job should always be created from an email address that you own and control. Never allow or ask a vendor to start those accounts on their own because if you stop working with that vendor, it’s very possible that you lose control of or ownership of those accounts, or the historical data of those accounts.
Episode 19 Takeaways
Liz: Always, always, always have any and all accounts created on behalf of your business, be created using an email address that you own, and not an email address of a vendor. If you don’t, then when you stop working with that vendor, you might lose access, history, and ownership rights to those accounts.
Ronda: Communication is key to almost all things in life! The more communication, the better off we’ll be.
Resources: Tips for Hiring a Digital Marketer
Listen On: Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify
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Liz Jostes – LinkedIn, Website
Ronda VanBuren – LinkedIn, Website
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