015 Barbara Hales: Outsourcing Your Digital Marketing

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In this episode, Barbara discusses:

Benefits of outsourcing digital marketing
How digital marketing experts can contribute to your practice
Why companies choose to outsource

Key Takeaways:

You can maintain consistency when outsourcing digital marketing – experts are at your disposal and can research, create, and implement marketing strategies
Different projects require different marketing strategies
All good marketing agencies know that they can be replaced, pushing them to provide the best results

“You need to focus more on what you offer as a service and leave marketing and similar stuff to people who are already experienced in this” — Barbara Hales

Transcription

015 Barbara Hales- Outsourcing Your Digital Marketing

Barbara Hales: Today, my friends, we’re going to be talking about outsourcing.

When you’re running a medical practice or a small business, time is precious. You know that you need to promote yourself but marketing your brand can take up more time than you have to spend. Outsourcing various activities has grown in the last decade.

According to recent statistics, outsourcing marketing amounted to $85.6 billion in 2018 alone. 62 billion United States dollars of which was provided by IT industry. Here are some benefits of outsourcing your digital marketing. First, you can maintain consistency. When staff are out sick, the practice is concentrating on caring for patients and conducting business. You’re running around taking care of things that you need to focus your attention on.

Marketing suffers and production of content declines. When this happens, search engines like Google detect this and organic rankings plummet. By outsourcing your content creation, you can maintain consistency regardless of any staff problems. Next, experts are at your disposal.

You are paying the team of experts in digital marketing to research, create and implement effective marketing strategies. Thirdly, you get ROI or return on investment.

When you hire a digital marketing expert, you get an increase of leads or more prospective patients to grow your practice. You stay updated.

Marketing is always evolving with new trends and techniques, but you may not be privy to them since your main goal is taking care of your medical practice. Digital marketing experts spend most of their time learning new skills and strategies so that you can take advantage of their knowledge and skills. Your expert can develop and execute strategies that provide results. The key here is to ensure that you receive reports and live status updates.

Next, you can take advantage of a wider scope of digital channels. Doing marketing in-house might be tough to use all the digital channels needed to grow your practice. You might need help with a PPC campaign, an email list, social media campaigns, but with one in-house staff member, it’s unlikely to create all this content.

Outsourcing can enable you to easily use multiple marketing channels. You can hire a graphic designer to update your website, a copywriter to handle your blog or email newsletter, and a social media expert to automate your platforms. Lastly, you’re working with people who’ve been there, done that. Digital marketers have experienced and are experts in their field. Most digital agencies specialize in marketing for certain niches, and have a resource section full of case studies to prove their expertise.

Research, strategy and market analysis are ingredients of marketing. Accordingly, an increasing number of small companies prefers to outsource marketing too. There are a number of different reasons why companies choose outsourcing digital marketing activities. The following scenarios may work. You’re a small company or a medical practice and you can’t afford to have a marketing team, or your marketing team lacks specific skill sets and experiences. Some marketing activities that you can consider for outsourcing are product naming and branding, email marketing, blogging and copywriting, social media marketing, slogans and taglines, even eBook creation.

How would you like to have a book with your name on it that was written for you by someone else so that you didn’t need to spend months or years trying to decide how you were going to write each page? Different projects require different sets of marketing activities. Businesses that have never outsourced marketing functions sometimes doubt the reliability of such an option.

Based on my experience, I would strongly recommend outsourcing at least some marketing activities. However, I’ll put aside my preferences and try to provide you with several pros and cons of outsourcing marketing activities as objectively as I can. First, you get experts in your team. You can either choose the everyday technology or the latest one, what will work best for you. Of course, the latest technology will provide you with wider opportunities.

High-end professionals are the people who make use of the latest technology from marketing solutions. Outsourcing to a digital marketing agency means you are engaging a team of experts into your business. Good specialists know how to implement newer strategies into the market as they have access to the latest tool packages to coordinate the process. You can expect high quality results.

With a marketing agency, you can expect the best results possible. And it’s not only about the expertise and the wide skill set that their specialists possess, it’s also about their strong motivation to please the client. All good marketing agencies know that they can easily be replaced by better ones. So most often than not, they are quality-oriented.

Outsourcing helps cut costs. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, salaries usually account for nearly 70% of an employee’s wage package. I probably don’t have to tell you that. The remaining 30% includes the taxes and the benefits.

Outsourcing a marketing firm will give you the opportunity of saving that 30%. A long-term outsourcing relationship with a marketing agency may be more effective for you than keeping a full-time team of employees. This will also provide you with the flexibility to pay only for what you need. For example, corporate bloggers and content writers charge a certain amount of money per article or post. If you need say, 15 articles and 500 shares in social media this month only, you will pay the content writer and the link building specialist once and that’s all. If you’re not planning to post that many articles and to make that many sharings for the next month, then you will not have to pay anyone anything.

Things will be different with employees who must be paid regardless of whether you need 15 or 5 blog posts per month. As a startup, you typically fight for survival for the first three years of your business in 90% of cases. So, you need to focus more on what you offer as a service and leave marketing and similar stuff to people who are already experienced in it.

There are two questions you can ask yourself as a medical practice. Should I outsource my marketing? And, how do I find the source that suits my practice best? Most businesses, healthcare facilities and doctors’ offices recognize that marketing plays a key role in helping the practice grow and standing out amongst the competition. Why should patients come to you as opposed to the doctors next door? Social media specialist also help with your reputation and damage control.

Patients want to engage with you and do not want to be ignored.

There are seven questions to ask yourself. When vetting companies to outsource services, consider these key questions. How do they look? Check out the company website. Look at the following traits. Do they have a call-to-action? Do you find the website design and graphics pleasing? Is the site functional? Is it easy to navigate? Is it user-friendly? Is the content of high quality and without grammar or spelling errors? Do the links work? Is it compatible with mobile devices? This is a big one because these days most people are going through their smart devices like their iPhones in order to get the information and surf the net these days.

Secondly, what do their clients say? Testimonials speak loudly. You want to hear how detail-oriented, easy to work with and outstanding business is by an independent outside source. Sure, they could say they’re great, but hearing that from their previous clients means so much more. Is the company forthright and transparent about subcontracting?

Many companies subcontract out parts of projects instead of relying solely on in-house staff. This ensures that the work meets the deadline in time crunches. If an unknown source is performing all your work, it is bound to cost more and may be inconsistent. Is the company up-to-date on all the latest marketing trends?

Look for choices in newer marketing options like podcasts, and the latest social media channels that your patients may be on. Like this one that you’re listening to now. Does the company show how effective their marketing is?

There are analytical tools that demonstrate the effectiveness of your marketing and the company should be able to show them to you. Is the company accustomed to working with the health niche and your type of practice? Find the company experienced with medical practices. Lastly, how acquainted is the company with your practice? They should be well acquainted with you and your brand.

Making a proper assessment for a marketer means the difference between successful outsourcing and a costly mistake.

If you’re in a quandary as to what serves you best, reach out for a free consultation at Barbara@TheMedicalStrategist.com. I’ve worked like you in the trenches, seeing patients and having my own medical practice for years. I know what works and what doesn’t.

And I would like to help bring that knowledge to you to improve your reputation and help you grow your practice. I’ve spoken on both content marketing and health issues being quoted in Newsweek and on stations like CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and PBS. I can promote your business with content packages customized to your need. I would be happy to have a 30-minute free consultation with you. Let’s discuss your needs and get you going for marketing success.

Connect with Barbara Hales: 

Twitter:   @DrBarbaraHales
Facebook:   facebook.com/theMedicalStrategist
Business website:www.TheMedicalStrategist.com
Show website:   www.MarketingTipsForDoctors.com
Email:   Barbara@TheMedicalStrategist.com
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