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As a business owner, you have
the option of taking several different approaches to handling your
Marketing and Advertising. You may choose to handle the responsibility
yourself, with the idea that no one understands your business quite the
way you do.. You may also consider hiring a full time marketing manager
or even assigning the tasks, as they arise, to someone already working
within your organization. Consider this When your business needs
plumbing work do you do it yourself? Hire a plumber to be on staff full
time? Or ask your accountant to handle it?
Call in the Marketing and Advertising Experts.
Though some advertising and
marketing ventures seems simple enough to be handled in house, nothing
is as costly as a marketing misfire. Not only may you be sending out
the wrong messages, to the wrong markets, but also by the time you
catch it, your budget may be in no shape to recover and redirect. The
truth is, no one can do the job as effectively and efficiently as
someone who lives and breathes the industry everyday. Plus, the added
perk of consistent media contacts that will prove to be financially
beneficial to your business.
Seeing the forest and the trees.
When you hire a consultant
you hire an objective opinion, as well as a fresh point of view.
Sometimes a business may lose perspective on itself by being too
heavily immersed in the day-to-day operations, and lose itself in the
big picture, missing the small details or vice-versa. Sadly, sometimes
a businesss marketing will clearly reflect this. The president of a
private jet companys focus is on the bells and whistles of his fleet.
Its what he sees as important in his view of his business. Inevitably,
his marketing may also focus on this portion of his business, ignoring
what he is really selling to his potential clients: The feeling and the
status of private jets.
If you add another ball,
technically it is juggling.
If you, as a business owner, or
an employee take on the added tasks of the marketing of the business,
attention is being taken from other projects and responsibilities.
Inescapably, focus and demands are bound to pull from one and take away
from others until something falls to the floor. Consultants are
dedicated to one, and only one, portion of your business. Their focus
is committed, and they allow you to keep yours where it should be.
The Gumby Factor.
Consultants are very flexible.
Immediately ready and available to take on assignments at a moments
notice. Accessibility to getting a new project off the ground is just a
phone call away. On the other hand, trying to hire a new employee
specifically to handle your marketing needs takes valuable time to
places ads; conduct interviews and then sort through applicants, hoping
to find the right person for the job.
The M Word
Money.
When you total up the actual
cost of bringing on a new employee, you will most likely find that
hiring a consultant is much more cost effective. The hourly rates may
seem to favor a full time employee, but when you factor in employee
benefits, training time, vacation/sick time, 401(k), the added overhead
involved in situating a new employee, and the sheer fact that you may
be paying full time wages for something that may not need full time
attention, the cost effectiveness will fall in favor of a consultant.
Which bring us to....
The C- Word Commitment.
Hiring a full time employee is a
commitment. And bringing on an employee to handle a special marketing
project, or set up an initial marketing plan, may in the long run leave
you scrambling to find a new project or position for that employee. Or
worse yet, you find yourself paying a full time marketing director to
do basic maintenance. Hiring a consultant requires no long-term
commitment. When a consultant completes a project, they have the
flexibility to move into whatever position you need them, from
quarterly analysis, to basic maintenance, to completely out of the
picture, but on the sidelines when youre ready to take a new step
forward.
"There are many ways of going
forward, but only one way of standing still." -Franklin D. Roosevelt
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