It’s often suggested that “sales covers up many problems in business”, and although it’s often true, it doesn’t mean it’s a mantra we should just accept. For instance, when you find sales is covering up inefficiencies in your business, that’s a problem you shouldn’t ignore.
Inefficiencies can be in operations, administrative or personnel. They can be big or small. They can be new or old, but we should address them head on – regardless of sales.
But hey, if things are humming along…why change it, right?
Well, if you truly understood how those inefficiencies affect the bottom line, you may not feel that way.
Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle, named after the Italian engineer Vilfredo Pareto who developed the field of microeconomics? It’s the “law” that 80 percent of negative results are due to 20 percent of the inefficiencies. Identifying the inefficiencies that are making the biggest impact can lead to fast and tremendous improvements in efficiency across your organization.
One of those inefficiencies we find most often is in business growth and development. Is this an area you struggle with?
Well, if you don’t know, let me ask you this:
- Do you KNOW your cost to acquire a new customer?
- Do you know what marketing works and what doesn’t?
If you don’t the answer to these questions, you’re not alone. Most businesses don’t. And THAT’S why inefficiencies exist in your business growth and development efforts.
With that in mind, let me share a couple of reasons why this happens, and then more importantly how to fix it. (HINT: It involves outsourced marketing)
The first reason it’s hard to know your cost to acquire a new customer or what marketing works is that these expenses are often too hard to quantify – especially if you have tremendous internal “sunk costs” in sales and marketing personnel. With sales coming in from a wide variety of efforts, and many of your employees are working on a wide variety of tasks, it’s often hard to discern what’s contributing to sales and what isn’t. So you do what most businesses do: decide “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and therefore, continue to waste precious dollars needlessly.
The second reason it’s hard to know your costs to acquire a customer or what marketing works is typically there is no practical and effective tracking tool being used. And with that, you don’t know ways you could be even more effective.
The third reason is that growth initiatives become inefficient and incredibly costly when you are using internal employees to complete tasks they often aren’t experts in, just because of that “sunk cost” factor. I mean, why would you consider giving a business development task to someone outside of the company when you have an employee you are already paying for 40 hours per week of their time? It seems counterintuitive, right?
So unless you are willing to let the employees go, these three reasons cause the “spigot of cost and inefficiency” to continue to pour out waste which equals money that could be increasing your bottom line.
So what should you do? Well, at MEMO, we believe your answer to controlling business growth inefficiencies is by outsourcing your marketing. That’s right, outsourcing ALL of it instead of using in-house employees.
So how outsourcing your marketing help? Here are 4 points to consider:
Outsourced Marketing Will Solve Business Growth Problems by Letting You Control Costs.
It’s easy to let costs get out of hand when you’re already planning for them. In other words, internal employees are “existing” overhead. They’re already a cost you are counting on. So by assigning them to do marketing tasks, you probably think you aren’t spending more money, right? That statement actually couldn’t be more wrong. Because when you pay them, and they are doing marketing, then they aren’t doing something else. So you need to understand you are spending money on marketing.
Outsourcing your marketing is better because you can directly control the costs. You can say we are going to hire a person to do “X” and we are going to pay them “Y”. It never gets out of control and is never mixed in with other costs.
Outsourced Marketing Will Solve Business Growth Problems by Letting You Hire Only Experts in Their Field.
In-house employees can’t be the best at everything. So there will automatically be inefficiencies when you have them do most marketing tasks. Because, like it or not, there is a wide variety of activities (i.e. email marketing, social media, website development, SEO, list building, direct mail, copywriting, and much more!)
Outsourcing your marketing allows you to have a marketing expert in each area of marketing. This will optimize your investment (and at the same time control your costs).
Outsourced Marketing Will Solve Business Growth Problems by Letting You Buy Results, Not Time
With in-house employees, you are essentially buying their time – at least 40 hours per week if they are full-time. Buying someone’s time doesn’t mean efficiency, often just the opposite. But when you outsource your marketing, you can agree to set pricing for each initiative. That way, you get to pay for what it’s worth to you – not based on how long it takes someone to complete. It also means you KNOW what the cost will be each and every time that initiative is done.
Outsourced Marketing Will Solve Business Growth Problems by Letting You Pull the Plug the Moment You Aren’t Satisfied with Results.
One HUGE advantage of outsourcing your business growth needs is the relationship you have with the “production staff”. Employee relationships typically linger and, when they are not being effective, you tend to hold on to them longer than you should. If instead they are all in outsourced contract positions, and if they aren’t producing the desired result, it’s easy to end their contract and find another resource. Again, much different than how it goes if it’s an in-house employee.
So It Seems Outsourcing My Marketing Could Help. How Do I Get Started?
Great question. You really have two main options:
- Hire the resources and manage them yourself. Now if you are like more business owners, this is something you don’t have time to do – but it IS possible.
- Hire a company like MEMO Marketing Group. Our virtual marketing department uses a variety of resources who are experts in their field. We have already negotiated low prices and have tested them to assure a high quality of work. AND we manage all the resources so you don’t have to!
And even better, all of this can be completed for LESS than the cost of one in-house employee.
Are you ready to talk to see if we might be a fit for your needs? Just contact us and let’s schedule a conversation.
Error: Contact form not found.
