How much time are you spending on digital marketing on a weekly basis?
If you're spending an average of 20 hours per week on managing the marketing aspects your business, then you’re not alone. You're in good company because so do most other small businesses. However, many spend much more to the detriment of operations and delivery quality. According to a recent survey by ConstantContact, the extra effort has panned out across multiple metrics, but it is still better to hire a qualified vendor and focus on improving the delivery of goods and services.
When doing it yourself (DIY) instead of hiring a provider, the challenge comes from the sheer number of venues and channels where small business owners can reach their customers; thus the "Rabbit Hole" effect. There has been an explosive number of online marketing platform choices, along with the traditional non-digital resources and options.
The time consuming culprit is online (digital) marketing that’s taking up most of a small business owner’s time. The opportunities presented by multi-channel marketing bring challenges to the novice. Most small business owners are not marketing professionals and the flood of marketing tools and the need to be everywhere their prospects are, from social media, smart phones, blogs and newsfeeds, is in fact overwhelming. Not to mention the news about changes, advances and new service launches is overwhelming.
The run of the mill small business owner — at times, with another employee — will usually spend an average of 20 hours or more per week on marketing, according to most surveys on the topic. That time is not usually spent during the day, it comes at a price for family time and personal time when one should be decompressing.
Most of the business owners surveyed (over 80 percent) said they market their business across multiple channels usinge up to 4 different platforms that included their websites, landing pages, email and social media, mostly. In addition, the surveys reveal that 49 percent of small business owners were using 3 or 4 vendors to help achieve their marketing goals, which means that they are spending too much money on the service and not the advertising portion. A good vendor, can do that as a single point of contact.
While there may be benefits to multiple platforms, there are the drawbacks of using multiple platforms including:
> Lack of knowledge on how to use the various tools;
> Taking an inordinate amount of time;
> Not knowing if their prospects are using the same channels the business is using; and
> The lack of metrics to measure the results across the many platforms.
In the end, a good vendor, that specializes in digital marketing can provide the reports and results a small business needs to stay on track to profitability.
