We live in an age when marketing has become one of the most important aspects of running a business and also an age when marketing is something that can be done quite successfully on one’s own. If you are in a position where you just realized that you could use some marketing to grow your customer/client base, you are probably faced with a question of whether to do it yourself or hire a marketing agency to do it for you. So, how does one answer this question?
Well, one answers the following questions.
What Do You Want To Achieve?
There are a number of reasons why you might be thinking of doing some marketing. Perhaps you have reached the limit of what you can achieve without it. Or, perhaps, you simply want to promote your brand or rebrand your business. Perhaps you want to penetrate a completely new market that you never had any contact with before. Depending on what you want to achieve and how quickly you want to achieve it, you will be making a decision on whether to do your marketing on your own or whether to get in touch with a marketing agency of some kind. If your needs are serious and especially if you are looking to penetrate a new market, you will most likely be better off with a marketing firm with experience which will commit its resources and expertise to bringing you the results. If you just want to raise the awareness of your brand, you may be able to do it yourself with some DIY online marketing and guerilla marketing.
How Much Money Do You Have?
This is probably the most obvious question to ask yourself because it will have a huge influence on your decision. If you have no money to spend on your marketing efforts or if your budget would only allow you to hire the cheapest or below cheapest, perhaps the better choice for you would be to try and do it yourself. You will need to employ online marketing which is by far the cheapest option or do some guerilla marketing which is also affordable and still produces results. On the other hand, if your business is doing alright or if you can take a loan that you will be able to pay back later, it is safe for you to hire someone, at least to do some online PR work for you or come up with a strategy that you can implement yourself.
Do You Know Anything About Marketing?
Before you make a choice between DIY marketing and approaching marketing experts, you need to be honest with yourself – do you know anything about marketing? Do you have any ideas for your DIY marketing efforts? Today, everyone thinks they are a marketing expert, especially with the whole online marketing thing. In reality, however, this is just not true. It is like a skill and a business of any kind; you need experience, you need knowledge and you need ideas. Think long and hard about whether you will know what to do. This is for your own good. Image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons
