Jana Dolejšová is an independent marketing strategist with 12 years of experience in developing marketing plans for SMEs and leading both internal and external marketing teams. She is able to give established businesses a fresh perspective on their marketing efforts and assist new initiatives and startups in growing.
Jana explains to us that the decision to outsource your marketing is often a pretty logical one. It can be efficient, affordable, and produce fantastic outcomes. However, it could become a major pain point for you, especially if you don’t do your research beforehand.
Jana’s presentation concentrated on the typical errors businesses can make when engaging outside marketing specialists, with Jana offering us helpful advice on how to avoid and even correct them when and if they happen.
Let’s take a look at Jana’s five top tips when it comes to outsourcing your marketing.
1) Be careful what you wish for
Be sure you are able to commit to increased sales and have the infrastructure in place to support an increase in sales and revenue. This typically can show up when the strategy is simply sales or revenue focused, meaning it can be difficult for other areas of the business such as fulfilment or customer services to keep up.
2) Learn the basics
It’s difficult to understand how well your marketing is actually performing if you don’t have an understanding of at least the basics. This means being prepared to try to understand a little of all the areas you are working. In particular, being able to understand reports so you can quickly point out where the data may be skewed in terms of any results you are getting.
3) Have someone who sees the big picture
When there are too many moving parts and individuals working on a campaign, things can get messy. Therefore make sure that there is someone working on the marketing that is able to see the bigger picture. Whoever does this need to have enough space within the project to be able to step back and take a look at how the business is responding to any campaigns collectively.
4) Be ready to commit the time personally
‘You can delegate marketing, but you cannot abdicate it’ says Jana. Be aware that you will need to dedicate yourself to any project to make it successful. Once again tip is about being present in your business and not expecting any results to appear without putting any time in.
5) Take care of your relationship
Be sure to nurture the relationships you have with marketers whether you are using an in-house team, an agency or freelancers. This includes upskilling as well as providing valuable feedback on results and up-and-coming strategies. By nurturing those working around you, you will be able to reap the benefits of improved results and better team working culture.
So there you have it. Outsourcing your marketing can be a great way to scale and grow your business. However, you need to be careful not to miss out on the opportunity to build a great relationship with the people who are working with you to achieve optimum results.
You need to ensure that you have a strategy for the management of your outsourced marketing team where you can give them the training and support they need to be successful. You also need to include outsourced marketing in your strategic marketing plan, so as to make sure you don’t get tripped up on something simple.
Jana’s talk gives insightful examples and more practical tips on how you can seamlessly begin outsourcing your marketing ad start to get the results you want. You can find Jana’s talk ‘Outsourcing your marketing? do your homework first’ below.