Sonja Crystal Williams: 0:06

Hi everyone, welcome to today’s episode of 10Minute Marketing. I’m Sonya Crystal Williams, your host, so this season we’ve been having a lot of conversations with experts in and around digital marketing and talking a lot about different ways that you can approach your business, ranging from how you go about designing your Google ad campaigns and what you need to be thinking about to influence your marketing tips to building brand authority as an author, using quizzes and funnels for your product and offer launches. Lots of great information. If you haven’t been listening to these this episode seasons, definitely listen back Now. I want to spend the next few episodes this, my website. These are the things I need to do to make sure I have funnels in place.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 1:07

The question is– and I asked this question to several of the people I interviewed, who do it for clients as a living– but the question really is for you: are you going to do it solo? So today, in today’s episode, I want to really explore that topic with you more deeply and I want you to think of this again as a lesson in really determining, “m I equipped to execute my own digital marketing and online marketing tactics or should I be pulling in support? And I think it’s a good conversation because there’s a lot of pros and cons to deciding which route you’re going to take and cons to deciding which route you’re going to take, and the truth of the matter is you can start in one direction and then decide you’re going to pivot and go in a totally separate direction. So I really want you to think about what that looks like for you. So let’s start with a couple of things. Okay, first, I want to address what I think are pros to running things on your own. Okay, you take some of the lessons learned that we’ve been talking about in some of our previous podcast episodes and I’ll use a really simple example. Let’s just say, because I love running paid ads for clients, let’s just use the paid ad campaigns example. Going back to the Google ads interview I did with Ankit Patel, so let’s just say you decide yes, I like what he was saying in that episode. I could see us launching our own search campaign. In fact, it’s critical that we do it for our business.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 2:37

So now, if I’m going to do this solo, or even let’s just say we’re going to keep it in- house and run it ourselves, okay, what are the fundamental things that you would need to have in place and for anything that you are assessing taking on when it comes to your online marketing or your social media, you need to really make an assessment. Number one: do I have the right skill set and knowledge to implement this on my own, or will there be a learning curve? And there’s no right or wrong answer here. That’s just your starting point. If you have a background in marketing, let’s just say, and now you’ve started your own coaching business and you’re going to coach people on something totally unrelated, but you have years of experience where maybe you did paid media in the past or you ran social media for some other organization and you have a knowledge in running ad campaigns or you’ve seen it happen, even if you didn’t do it yourself. That could be an option where it’s a pro for you to initiate the campaigns on your own.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 3:39

On the flip side, if it’s totally new to you and you’re like well, I have the aptitude to learn how to do this and I want to learn how to do this, then maybe you need training and at that point, you need to really be thinking timeline wise. If I’m going to spend time in training, how long will it take before I can truly execute my first Google search ad campaigns because I need to go through a learning process. If I’m going through a learning process, what’s the best route to get me to a quick and profitable ad campaign? Because when you’re going through that learning curve, right, there’s a difference between if you decide you’re going to hire a team to do it and that team has years worth of experience they can bring to the table right away, but there’s a cost associated with it, okay. So you need to decide where you are.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 4:30

What side of the coin are you on? Do I have the aptitude to learn and I’m willing to invest the time in learning, knowing that’s going to delay sometimes, the results that I’m going to get to some degree it doesn’t mean it has to be long, but it might delay those results. Or do I know what I’m doing and I’m ready to build a campaign today and I’ve got enough experience to do it on my own? So if you’re thinking solo, then that’s one option. Just know that. What comes with it? Okay, which is some of the things that I just mentioned.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 4:55

And then, on the flip side, there are the cons to that. Ok, there are the cons to I decided to take everything in-house. One, I’d probably say with, particularly with small business. But honestly, even when I work with larger teams and organizations, budget is always of concern because things have to go through approval processes and there’s only so much that’s going to get spent in any given fiscal year. So the question which you want to ask is, you know, am I prepared to pay for either A” if I’m doing it solo again the cost of time or B am I prepared to set the budget aside to hire a team? And here’s what I’m going to say to you all, particularly because you have a place in my heart, because I’m a small business owner and I’m going to say this directly to small business owners and entrepreneurs Don’t allow whether or not you have the money to be the only deciding factor and whether or not you keep something in-house or you hire a team or person to come in and support you.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 5:58

Don’t look at it and say you know what? I just I don’t really have the money in place and I can’t hire, and you’re just “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Okay, don’t put yourself into that corner, because what you may find is it’s going to be really hard, as you press forward, to get the results that you want. Speaking from experience here, by the way, either have seen it or have done it okay. It’s gonna be really hard to get the results you want when you’re hitting your head against the wall trying to figure out how to set up that ad campaign on your own, when you really could shorten that and increase your profitability by immediately hiring the support you need and just finding that support, maybe within the right budget, or finding the right workable solution, that’s gonna get you the results that you need.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 6:47

Now, if you decide to hire in-house, there are pros and cons to that too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across a team that has had a previous relationship with a digital marketing agency. Or I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across a business owner or entrepreneur in the same predicament and that agency hasn’t delivered the results they promised or the results that that business owner or team was hoping for, and that could be for a number of reasons. Sometimes it’s, you know, miscommunication or lack of communication. Sometimes running ads is not going to fix a product that wasn’t converting to begin with, so sometimes it’s that, you know. So, whatever that looks like, sometimes that can be the downside to hiring.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 7:39

If you are trying to make the decision when it comes to running ads or any of these things that we’ve been talking about, whatever that one thing is for you, all my encouragement to you is on the pro side. Again, it’s the time, okay. So remember there’s an opportunity cost associated with everything that you’re doing on your team or within your business, and when you find the right support– assuming you found the right support– they’re going to get you up and running and get you those results much faster. And ideally, I hope that you’re in a situation when you do hire that support, where you don’t have to think about it. You’re going to get the reports from them. They’re going to give you a pulse on what’s going on, but there should be no invasion in your brain of how are we going to do this? How are we going to do that? What is the ad going to look like? What is the ad going to say? What date is it going to launch? What is my budget? How much did I spend last week? Like a really good team in place should be managing those pieces for you.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 8:42

Ok, and our next podcast episode or lesson. You know I’m going to walk you through all the different roles you also need to be thinking of when you hire in-house. So we’re not going to go into that in this episode right now. We’re just exploring “Should I keep it for myself or should I hire a team. But I’m going to be walking you through that. If you do hire a team, or if you’re managing in-house, what are different roles that people need to be in, because that’s an important thing to think about as well.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 9:08

Ok, so the other thing is also recognizing when you reach a pivot point in your business. Every business is going to reach a pivot point if you are making sales, determining if you should continue managing your own funnels, email campaigns, creating your own graphics, are you doing all this stuff in-house or is it time to turn it over to someone else? And that also comes down to again answering the question I just brought up a couple minutes ago, which is do you have a really good offer in place and is your offer already making sales? And it doesn’t matter whether that’s a service you’re providing or a physical product that you’re selling. The question is: is that product or service already selling? Okay, and now you need to ask yourself: do I want it to keep consistently selling and keep my energy and efforts focused on really growing and being good at what we deliver, whether that’s a product or service, and if your answer to that is yes then it probably is time.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 10:22

You’re at that pivot point where you really do need to have that additional support, and that additional support looks different depending on what kind of organization you’re in. If you are a small business owner and you’ve been doing it all on your own, you’re the person who sells the t-shirts and you’re at home packing the t-shirts and creating the pretty labels and then taking pictures and putting those pictures up on Instagram. If you genuinely enjoy that process, that’s awesome. At some point, though, if you want to keep growing your business, you’re going to have to step away from that role of being the everything person and pull someone else in to do some of that job for you, whether you’re hiring someone as a contractor, a full-time employee, part-time employee or an agency or fulfillment company, even in that case, to hire, to bring in and take on some of that role. Okay, so you’ve got to think about that pivot point. And if your answer is yes, I really want to grow this business, you’ve got to get out of the marketing and you got to get into your business.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 11:24

Where your input will always be needed, though, is continuously bringing clarity to any one person or entity that you hire. You should always be making sure they truly understand who your audience is and what kind of communication works for that audience. If you have a pulse on that and you understand that really well, that’s always going to be something you bring to the table to anyone that you’re hiring as a part of your team. The last thing I also want you to think about is there are a lot of different roles that can be taken on when you decide that you are going to bring someone into your business and kind of abandon the idea of, hey, I’m operating solo, or we’ve been operating solo as a small team, and now we need to bring in additional support, and so think of it this way: Some people that you bring on could be virtual right, so that’s like hey, I’m bringing on a virtual assistant or someone who’s going to freelance for me, and they don’t physically need to be in my space.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 12:27

We can communicate Zoom, you know Microsoft, you know all those ways, Slack, and so you need to assess that. You also need to assess should I bring someone in in-house. And again, in-house could be part-time, in-house could be full-time. So what does that look like? Or again, are they gonna be an employee or are they gonna be a freelancer? Okay, am I going to give them a set amount of hours and an actual salary, or am I hiring them and letting them pick their hours, but kind of giving them, hey, here’s the landscape of what needs to get done. So you’re gonna need to think about all of those things and, within that, assess your own strengths. Are you a big picture person who’s very visionary? Are you someone that likes being in the details? And give yourself an honest answer to that, because that’s going to have an impact on what kind of working relationship you have with any support that you hire. Okay, so you can kind of see where I’m leaning once you hit that pivot point. Do you wanna keep being solo? You can, but if you see where I’m leaning, it’s like if we’re gonna increase revenue, if we’re going to increase profitability for our business, we probably do need to bring in support, and it’s a matter of finding and getting the right support.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 13:46

All right, so that’s my quick breakdown in today’s episode. Next week, when we release the episode, remember that we’re going to be doing lessons over our next few episodes and the lesson next week is going to be around the different roles breakdown. So definitely grab a pen and paper, be ready to take notes, because we’re going to walk through the different roles you need to truly have when you’re running a successful digital marketing campaign for your product or service. Who are the people, who are the key people? And it partly depends on what you are choosing to do. I’m going to go over the general roles and details and hiring practices for how you get the right people in place. How you get the right people in place. Today we walk through should I stay solo or hire a team? Go through pros and cons, recognize your pivot point and then assess if I am gonna hire, what kind of role am I hiring into? All right, thanks for listening today. Everybody, have a good one.