Do Small Businesses Need a Marketing Team?

Small business owners often believe that they don’t need marketing when starting out or during the early stages of the business. However, as a small business, your main focus should be all about profiting and growing. And while it is understandably not that easy to invest time or money into marketing efforts as you may want to allocate your resources to customer service, it is important for small business owners to know how investing in marketing can affect the business in the long run.

Current circumstances have changed the way both small and large businesses operate. The change in business landscape has affected a vast majority (if not all) of transactions and interactions and now, most take place online.Therefore, without establishing your presence online, people will not be able to find you and chances are it will take some time before you get new customers.

So why waste time waiting to make a couple of sales before you get the resources to hire your marketing team? Take a good look at your business and consider the benefits of hiring a marketing team for your business now.

Benefits of Hiring Marketing Team

You might be wondering, why hire when you can build your own? A small business owner might even take it into their own hands and handle the marketing all by themselves. While this can potentially save a business some time and money, there are a lot of areas that could go wrong by trying to do it all on your own.

As you get more responsibilities, you might do your small business more harm than good. Spreading yourself too thin might cause crucial aspects of your business, including customer service, to suffer.

When onboarding a marketing team, you are paying for professionals who know exactly how to put your business out there, drawing customer base. All the while, giving you room to focus on other important things to run your business smoothly.

Factors to Consider When Hiring a Marketing Team

While it is beneficial for a small business to hire a marketing team, there are three factors one must consider. 

        1. Budget

Getting your marketing team will no doubt cost money. However, not getting customers will also cost you money, posing lots of other uncertainties for your business including massive losses. 

Since hiring a marketing team may not be part of your initial budget planning, take the time to plan extra carefully and consider how much it may cost you and how much money you can invest. Setting up meetings and asking for quotations with potential marketing agencies will definitely help. Marketers will offer different packages, discuss your options and choose the one that will work best for your business’ needs.

         2.  Goals

It is important to identify and define your goals before an agreement with a marketing agency even begins. Communicate all your goals, business concerns, and other objectives with your potential team to avoid issues and miscommunications in the future. State why you will be hiring them and what are your expectations for the next six months.

Be mindful of the fact that you are hiring a marketing team to help your business grow, not to make it an overnight success. Marketers are scientists, not magicians and they will need their time to construct the engine, which will move your company forward. 

         3.  Expertise Needed

Marketing is broad so it is important to narrow down the methods and strategies you need before giving a go signal to every promising idea or marketing plan proposed to you. 

Proposals, presentations, and even case studies will be handed to you. Don’t just scan over them!

Take the time to study and understand the methods and strategies. Since you know your business best, you may be able to provide valuable information and insights into how these plans can be improved for better results.

What if I really cannot afford it?

A marketing consultation might be a good option if your budget really does not allow the hiring of a whole team. 

Those consultations can be executed each month, or every few months. The marketing agency will prepare a strategy, which you will put into action on your own. They will provide you with tips and knowledge on how to use certain listening tools, which will assist with the releasing of your campaigns and with the gaining of insights on your engagement. 

Individual one-to-one appointments are flexible and will indeed save you money. At the same time, they will lead you on the right direction until your resources grow enough for you to employ full-time marketers.

If you want help on deciding whether or not you need a marketing team, jump into a call with us, check out our services, and we’ll assess how marketing can push your growth.