Massive Marketing Mistakes – Number Seven: Trying to Do It All Yourself

Are you a Marketing Consultant? If not, why are you trying to do your own marketing? Are you a website designer? No? So why are you spending time setting up your own website?

Too many owners of small businesses think that they have to do all their own marketing. Most take this approach as they think they can’t afford to pay someone to do what they can’t do themselves. However, if you’ve avoiding Massive Mistake Number Six and have set yourself a realistic budget, you will know what needs to be done and what you can afford. If you are trying to save money by doing it all yourself, you’re committing Massive Marketing Mistake Number Seven.

Massive Marketing Mistake Number Seven – Trying to Do It All Yourself

One of the best pieces of advice given to new business when they start up is this: no matter what you ‘do’ (the work you’re paid for) you also need to be able to do three things. They are Marketing, Finance and Admin. If you can’t do any of these activities, you should outsource them to someone who knows what they’re doing.

Why? Because if you try to do everything yourself, two things will happen. Firstly you’ll spend a lot more time doing your marketing than someone who is a specialist in that area. It comes naturally to them, so they can do it much more quickly than you can. Then, because you’re spending so much time doing what someone else can do, you’ll find that you don’t have time to promote your business properly or look after the clients you have.

How do you avoid Massive Marketing Mistake Number Seven?

Unless you’re trained in marketing, you need to look for people who can help you with some of the different aspects of promoting your business. To help you decide where to look for help, start by looking at the list of possible marketing activities that you put together (the list that helps you avoid Massive Marketing Mistake Number Five). Look carefully at each activity to see if you can do it yourself or if you need help. If you don’t like writing but you know that a blog and a newsletter will help you find new clients, then you will need someone to do the writing for you. Hate making phone calls? Look for someone who loves cold calling. Love speaking to strangers? Then you can do your own networking and public speaking.

Many people believe that they have to do their own writing for marketing materials such as blogs and newsletters. “It has to be my own voice,” they say. Or “I’m the expert, so how could anyone else know enough about what we do here?”

At Appletree we work with a team of talented freelance copywriters. A good copywriter is someone who can quickly learn a great deal about someone else’s business and who can write in that person’s voice. One of our clients publishes an email newsletter every two months and a blog every two weeks. After a planning conversation about topics, a brief goes to our copywriter, who produces a draft of the copy – usually very quickly. The draft is sent to our client who regularly comes back with comments such as “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” and “It’s perfect to publish as it is.” We hardly ever need to make changes to the copy, as the writer really understands the topic and has learnt the client’s voice and style. This saves our client lots of time and allows her to focus on doing what she’s paid to do.

Are you trying to do all your marketing? Are you spending hours on work that actually stops you from doing work that you can earn money for doing? If you need help finding the right people to help you, then get in touch and we’ll recommend some of our preferred suppliers.

Massive Marketing Mistake Number Eight is doing ad hoc marketing. In the next blog in the series we’ll look at why ad hoc marketing doesn’t work and what you can do to avoid this mistake.