marketing consultancy

Like hiring staff, outsourcing is never an easy decision for a business owner to make – there are lots of things to weigh up and consider.  So when you do finally decide to take the plunge and outsource to a marketing agency, it’s worth making sure you are doing everything you can to make the partnership a success.

STEP 1. Decide what you will be outsourcing

As well as defining your budget you need to decide what marketing you can (and should) keep inhouse.  It’s important to be realistic about your resources and your talents.  If you aren’t sure what you can handle, then you should be honest about this when you start to engage with agencies.

STEP 2. Choose your stakeholders

The easiest way to get the best out of your relationship with an agency is to make it clear who will interact with them and who will be required to approve budgets, outputs and anything else.  Clearly defined roles are key to success so nail it down before you do anything else.

STEP 3. Choose the best agency for YOUR business

Just because an agency is the biggest in your city, or has won the most awards, does not mean that they are the right agency for your business.  When you are hiring staff you have criteria that an interviewee must meet, so set similar pointers before you interview an agency.  Engage with a few companies and choose one that you feel a connection with, that you trust with your brand, and that offers the services that you need.

STEP 4. Set Expectations

If you’ve told your agency that you want to increase your social media presence and then you end the contract with them because your sales are the same…you are at fault.  You need to set expectations for what you would like to see done, and what results you would like to see from that work (these may not marry up, but a good agency will advise you on strategy…we’ll get to that in Step 5!).

STEP 5: Make the contract strategy driven instead of task driven

Tasks checked off a to do list is not going to generate business.  If your agency knows why they are doing something, what the goals are, then it will be much more effective.  A good agency will help you create a strategy and plan the actions to achieve it rather than taking a list of actions with no reason.

STEP 6: Keep on top of the results

Reviewing the results of marketing efforts is crucial to the success of any team – inhouse or outsourced.  An agency will be able to report on everything in detail that they were involved in to show what worked, and what didn’t so your next marketing decisions can be evidence based.

Finally – Have respect for the agency

The team members within a good marketing agency live and breathe their profession, so if they advise you that your ideas for a campaign will not bring good results, don’t dismiss them before hearing their reasons.  Respect that you have brought in experts who know more than you and listen to their suggestions.

After all to quote Steve Jobs…

Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you step up your marketing in the second half of 2021 we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or give us a call on 01600 891525.

 

At LimeGreen Marketing we love creating multi-channel, all-singing, all-dancing digital marketing campaigns, but we know that not every organisation has the budget for this.

For all of our clients the main objective is predominantly the same, to promote their business, engage with their target audience and maximise the potential of their online presence.

LimeGreen can provide different levels of consultancy and support to suit all budgets, but what if you have no budget? That’s exactly the problem Home-Start Monmouthshire had come up against.

An independent registered charity, Home-Start Monmouthshire supports struggling families, with at least one child under five, living in the county. The scheme is managed by a board of volunteer trustees, but the day to day running is administered by a small staff team of four. The small but dedicated team then recruit, train and supervise 45 volunteers, each typically giving two hours of their time each week. The charity is responsible for raising all its own operational costs.

Home-Start Monmouthshire wanted to raise the profile of their local charity and the great work they’ve been doing, but weren’t quite sure how to make the most out of the free social media resources that were available to them.

Their aims were to recruit volunteers, attract potential donations and engage with service users, while utilising the skills of their recently appointed ambassador, author Julia Gregson. Raising awareness of their work would be paramount in order for them to fundraise and continue helping families in the area.

LimeGreen were only too pleased to visit Home-Start Monmouthshire and provide their staff and trustees with a crash course in marketing and a few hints and tips on using Facebook over a cup of tea and a well-earned biscuit.

We put together a quick guide for making the most of the Home-Start Monmouthshire Facebook page, most of which the team were already doing.  Here’s what we had to share…

  • Post regularly. An active account will always receive more interaction.
  • Include images with every post if you can. This makes them more eye-catching and therefore it’s more likely that people will engage with them.
  • Try to use images of people where possible, real personalities where you can see a facial expression are easier for people to relate to and this humanises what you do which is especially important given your charity work.
  • Don’t forget to include links to relevant pages of your website, in your Facebook posts from time to time to drive traffic to your website.
  • Don’t be afraid to add some personality to your posts – where appropriate. Celebrate your team. Your work is important but it doesn’t all need to be a hard-hitting serious stuff.
  • Mix in some facts and figures every now and then to show what Home Start Monmouthshire has achieved. Infographics are a particularly useful way to communicate this without using masses of text.
  • Join as many relevant Monmouth/Monmouthshire groups as possible so that you can like and share your page information and reach out to more people.
  • Share industry relevant content and engage with similar organisations.
  • Look for national days and awareness weeks to engage with on social media.

We also shared some great links to free resources to help make their Facebook posts more engaging…

Canva enables you to create visual content for social media and print using pre-designed templates. It is a user friendly platform with lots of great free content and, if your requirements are basic, can prove to be quicker than using a design tool such as Photoshop.

There are lots of websites with brilliant high quality imagery which has been authorised for reuse and is completely free. This Hootsuite article has a list of 20 of them. – https://blog.hootsuite.com/20-free-stock-photo-sites-social-media-images/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=owned_social&utm_campaign=social_hootsuite&hootPostID=da6a94b470da2fbdf64cad03cb39e4af

You can follow the team at Home-Start Monmouthshire on Facebook here.

To find out more about our consultancy services head over to the Digital Support page of our website. Alternatively, if you’d like to speak to one of our team about your own social media goals, get in touch.