Four Options With Your Online Marketing – Part 3 – Outsourcing Your Online Marketing

About the Author: Russ Henneberry writes and speaks about content marketing strategy and how tiny businesses can make mighty profits using a personal computer, a little imagination and a few well-placed dollars.

Four Options With Your Online Marketing – Part 3 – Outsourcing Your Online Marketing

Russ Henneberry | Jun 02, 2009 | Comments 0

This is part 3 of a four part blog post about the four choices that a business owner has when marketing their company online.

Click here to read Part I or Part II.

To recap — here are the choices we have with our online marketing (and any other activity) as a business owner:

1. Learn How To Do It Yourself
2. Hire Someone In House
3. Outsource It
4. Don’t Do It At All

In this section we discuss the considerations that are necessary when outsourcing your online marketing to a third party provider.

Outsourcing Your Online Marketing

I am a solo Internet marketing professional and a HUGE fan of outsourcing. It allows me to continue to scale up the size of my business without hiring employees.

That being said, I realize that there are numerous problems with outsourcing.

If you are looking at the possibility of outsourcing your online marketing here are some things to consider:

Risk Tolerance – Are You and Your OLM Professional On The Same Page?

There are varying levels of risk in the methods that online marketers use. Generally, very risky tactics are called ‘black hat’ and less risky tactics are called ‘white hat.’

In other words, how much will your online marketer “bend” the rules?

Being too aggressive with your Internet marketing tactics could get your website banned completely from a search engine’s index.

How much tolerance do you have for risk? This risk tolerance should be discussed with your online marketer to determine the right blend of risk in their tactics.

Are You An Online Marketing Dummy?

When you outsource something, you need to have some understanding of the discipline. At the very least you will need to know what outcome you expect. This should be discussed with your internet marketing professional.

What does it mean to be successful? What kind of reporting will be used to measure and communicate success or failure to you as the client?

Ask to schedule a monthly meeting where you can read through the reporting with your Internet marketing professional and ask questions.

How To Pick The Right Person To Outsource Your Internet Marketing

There is no shortage of people claiming to be online marketing professionals.

When I hire an outsourced worker in any profession, I begin by giving them a small task and I consider:

1. How responsive are they?

2. Did the person do what they said they were going to do. (You would be surprised how many won’t)

3. How did the cost stack up against larger firms offering the same services.

4. Overall, did I like working with this person?

Outsourcing is a wonderful thing for small business. It allows us to have the best of both worlds — we don’t have to do it ourselves and we don’t have to pay the expense of having a full time employee.

If you do your homework on your online marketer and have some good discussions about risk tolerance and expectations you are on your way to online marketing success.