DIY marketing involves doing all your own marketing instead of hiring a company to do it for you. While it can save you money, you need to consider whether it will be as effective. Below are some questions to ask yourself to determine whether DIY marketing is the right choice for you.
How much do you know about marketing?
If you want your marketing efforts to be successful, it’s important to have at least a basic understanding of marketing. If you don’t have much familiarity with marketing, take the time to educate yourself.
Nowadays, there are lots of ways to teach yourself marketing strategies. This includes reading books and blog posts, attending seminars or even taking a short course. Educating yourself could prevent you making rookie mistakes and allow you to build a better strategy instead of simply trying to wing it.
Some business owners may feel that marketing is out of their realm of expertise and may feel that it’s simply easier to hire experts than to swot up oneself. For instance, if you run a healthcare clinic, you may already have enough constant learning to do – hiring an agency like Cardinal Digital Marketing to do your marketing could allow you to focus on developing knowledge within your field. This way you’re honing your strengths.
How much time have you got to spare?
Marketing can be time-consuming work. You should consider whether you have the spare time to dedicate to marketing strategies such as social media marketing, blogging, email marketing or posting flyers.
A lot of busy companies find it easier to outsource marketing. This can prevent you from carrying out rushed marketing campaigns that could suffer in quality as a result. Outsourcing a task such as organizing a sales conference or building a website could save you hours.
Not all marketing tasks take a lot of time. Certain tasks can be automated such as sending out certain emails or even sharing content to social media. Such tasks could be worth doing yourself, providing that you can get to grips with the technology required to automate these tasks (you can read more about marketing automation here at PieSync).
How tight is your budget?
Outsourcing marketing tasks costs money. Many people turn to DIY marketing as a way of cutting costs. If you’re on a tight budget, you may find that doing your own marketing is more practical. Tasks such as building your own website could save you huge amounts of money.
If you’re on a tight budget but you’d prefer to outsource marketing, there are a few solutions out there. It’s often cheaper to hire freelancers than to hire companies. You may even be able to tap into your network to save money on certain services – this could include hiring a friend with graphic design experience to create a cheap logo or hiring a friend with photography experience to do some product photography. Just make sure that you’re not hiring amateurs so that the results are still professional.
