Where do you think your sales figures would be if you were able to double or even triple your marketing productivity?
“Well, yes Tom, that sounds awesome but I can’t afford to hire a new marketing person…”
OUTSOURCING
Technology advancements have enabled small business owners to hire experts, that’s right… online marketing experts with a number of years experience in making sales online to support their online marketing campaigns for as little as $5 per hour.
Finding the talent is getting easier and easier…
However, making sure you are handing over the right tasks to your new awesome Team Member in the right way, is not so easy…
Which is exactly what we will be discussing in this post…
1. Social Media Scheduling
An effective strategy and consistency is key to performing an effective social media campaign, though once the strategy has been defined (by you…), the consistent actions that bring results do not need to be completed by you.
However, it is important to ensure that your companies brand and tone of voice are consistent through all channels and that this is fully understood by your Team Member.
This is the Google Sheet that our team members use to schedule and manage our social media schedule, feel free to download a copy.
2. Keyword Research
Pumping out articles without a thought for how your potential customers will find then is a waste of time and effort. All content your business produces should target keywords specific to your niche.
However, trawling through the Google Keyword Planner or other paid alternatives is not a good use of your time. I would spend 1 hour researching yourself and then hand off the process to your new Team Member.
3. Blog Commenting
Not the spammy kind…
But comments that actually take note of the content written and provide valuable insight in response…
Again, it is useful to first define the blogs and posts that you can add value too (and where your potential customers are located) and then action this yourself first. Only then can you spend time training your Team Member on the comments that they should be leaving.
When completed consistently overt time, this is a free strategy that can build valuable links and sustainable, relevant traffic back to your site.
4. Lead Generation
Finding the types of customers or businesses that would potentially be interested in your business can be a tedious and time-consuming task…
Though direct mail, when completed correctly can bring sales faster than almost any other online marketing channel.
With the use of data scraping tools such as Import.io and Kimono, you will be surprised at the rate in which your new Team Member will be able to build out your lead database.
5. Content Creation & Scheduling
Perhaps the most effective free marketing channel around today, content marketing can bring your site boatloads of traffic…
If you are willing to invest the time.
Luckily, your outsourced Team Member can take on the majority of tasks within a content strategy:
• Managing the content schedule
• Distributing content
• Researching content topics
• Creation of design assets
This is the Google Sheet that our team members use to manage our content schedule, feel free to download a copy.
Now…
All of the tasks above are crucial parts of any small business, online marketing campaign. But fortunately, they do not need to be completed by the founder, CEO or even head of marketing…
In fact, they shouldn’t be, you need to be working on higher leverage activities such as strategy, product improvements and closing deals 😉
Now, the one thing I would ask of you if you found value in the article…
Is to send this article over anyone that you feel is spending too much time on the low leverage activities outlined above, you could be responsible for doubling or even tripling their productivity.
About the Author:
“Tom is the Founder of Virtual Valley, a platform that connects Entrepreneurs and Rockstar Virtual Assistants with the mission of giving Entrepreneurs back 10 million hours of their time by 2020. Tom writes about how to grow your remote business on the Virtual Valley Blog, you can also follow him on Twitter here: @tomhuntio.“
