Can You Outsource Your Marketing Project?
The reality is that many projects are not a good fit for outsourcing.
Others can be outsourced, but only after you have a good relationship with someone who knows your business well.
Of course, some are great candidates and can be outsourced easily.
The trick is knowing which is which.
When you know which projects and what types of work fall into each category, you will find that outsourcing works a whole lot better for you. And you won’t waste your time and your money trying to outsource work that you are not going to be able to outsource successfully. Read more
3 Best Questions to Ask Marketing Freelancers
If you are short on time, here are 3 questions that give you the fastest way to identify whether you are talking to someone who really knows what they are doing.
1. What process do you use when you work with clients?
In other words, what are the steps they are going to go through when they work with you?
Marketing freelancers who have a lot of experience typically have a pretty well-defined system. They are going to need certain information from you, they are going to go through specific steps, they are going to give you certain reports, etc.
The more clearly they can articulate the process, the better. Read more
How to Get Marketing Freelancers Up to Speed Fast – Part 2
In the last post, I said that we use a 2-part strategy to educate marketing freelancers effectively and inexpensively.
Here’s the second part…
Whenever we can, we choose the first project a new marketing freelancer works on so they can learn while they are doing productive work.
For us, that means we look for a customer-facing project. In marketing, a good first project is very often a case study or gathering testimonials.
That lets the marketing freelancer learn how people use the product or service, what it does for them, how they use it, and where the value is. Sure, you can tell them this yourself, but the information sinks in faster and more thoroughly when they hear it directly from the customers. Plus, they hear the language customers use, which is most likely different from what you say internally.
That information then provides a powerful foundation that informs everything else they do.
If the next project is designing a brochure, writing a sales letter, doing a press release, or updating the website – the result will be better because the freelancer now has a better understanding of how customers think and where they find value.
Even the best, smartest, most experienced marketing freelancers need to do this ramping up – they’ll do it better while working, and you’ll be getting useful work while they are learning. It’s a win-win.
So think about what kinds of projects do not require a lot of knowledge to do AND will let your marketing freelancers learn more about your business while they work.
How to Get Marketing Freelancers Up to Speed Fast – Part 1
One of the most important skills to master if you want to outsource marketing effectively – or even if you simply need to educate new hires and get them productive quickly – is teaching your marketing person what they need to know about your business.
The amount they need to know varies depending on what type of work you are having done. But typically, a marketing person needs to learn about:
- Your company – core areas of expertise, goals
- Your products and services – target market, pricing, differentiators
- Your clients – who they are, how they use your products/services, what value you deliver
- Your competitors – how you are better, where they are stronger
- Your market – what are current hot issues, trends, where you fit in Read more
Topgrading your marketing team
I just finished reading a classic and highly recommended book, Topgrading, by Bradford D. Smart, PhD.
It was full of wonderful advice on how to make sure you hire all “A”s (as opposed to “B”s or “C”s) – in other words, the very best people.
The problem is that Topgrading is a very heavyweight process – 3-hour interviews that start with the candidates’ college days and go through every single job they have ever held with a fine-toothed comb.
I can see where it makes sense to do this for a full-time job. But most companies now outsource at least part of their marketing, and no one – not you and not any marketing freelancer I know - is going to have the patience to do this for a short-term gig.
Yet choosing the right person is important – you need the best freelancers just as much as you need the best full-time staff.
And I love the approach he takes to doing the interviews. Read more
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