by: Mary Ellen Martelli
As a business owner, you have the option of taking several different approaches to handling your Marketing and Advertising. You may choose to handle the responsibility yourself, with the idea that no one understands your business quite the way you do.. You may also consider hiring a full time marketing manager or even assigning the tasks, as they arise, to someone already working within your organization. Consider this… When your business needs plumbing work do you do it yourself? Hire a plumber to be on staff full time? Or ask your accountant to handle it?
Call in the Experts.
Though some advertising and marketing ventures seems simple enough to be handled ‘’in house’’, nothing is as costly as a marketing misfire. Not only may you be sending out the wrong messages, to the wrong markets, but also by the time you catch it, your budget may be in no shape to recover and redirect. The truth is, no one can do the job as effectively and efficiently as someone who lives and breathes the industry everyday. Plus, the added perk of consistent media contacts that will prove to be financially beneficial to your business.
Seeing the forest and the trees.
When you hire a consultant you hire an objective opinion, as well as a fresh point of view. Sometimes a business may lose perspective on itself by being too heavily immersed in the day-to-day operations, and lose itself in the big picture, missing the small details… or vice-versa. Sadly, sometimes a business’s marketing will clearly reflect this. The president of a private jet company’s focus is on the bells and whistles of his fleet. It’s what he sees as important in his view of his business. Inevitably, his marketing may also focus on this portion of his business, ignoring what he is really selling to his potential clients: The feeling and the status of private jets.
If you add another ball, technically it is juggling.
If you, as a business owner, or an employee take on the added tasks of the marketing of the business, attention is being taken from other projects and responsibilities. Inescapably, focus and demands are bound to pull from one and take away from others until something falls to the floor. Consultants are dedicated to one, and only one, portion of your business. Their focus is committed, and they allow you to keep yours where it should be.
The Gumby Factor.
Consultants are very flexible. Immediately ready and available to take on assignments at a moment’s notice. Accessibility to getting a new project off the ground is just a phone call away. On the other hand, trying to hire a new employee specifically to handle your marketing needs takes valuable time to places ads; conduct interviews and then sort through applicants, hoping to find the right person for the job.
The M –Word Money.
When you total up the actual cost of bringing on a new employee, you will most likely find that hiring a consultant is much more cost effective. The hourly rates may seem to favor a full time employee, but when you factor in employee benefits, training time, vacation/sick time, 401(k), the added overhead involved in situating a new employee, and the sheer fact that you may be paying full time wages for something that may not need full time attention, the cost effectiveness will fall in favor of a consultant. Which bring us to....
The C- Word Commitment.
Hiring a full time employee is a commitment. And bringing on an employee to handle a special marketing project, or set up an initial marketing plan, may in the long run leave you scrambling to find a new project or position for that employee. Or worse yet, you find yourself paying a full time marketing director to do basic maintenance. Hiring a consultant requires no long-term commitment. When a consultant completes a project, they have the flexibility to move into whatever position you need them, from quarterly analysis, to basic maintenance, to completely out of the picture, but on the sidelines when you’re ready to take a new step forward.
"There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still." -Franklin D. Roosevelt