Social media, websites, Google, SEO... there are so many components to online marketing that it can be tough to handle everything on your own. On top of that, every platform constantly has a new update that changes the advertising game. For these reasons, many businesses decide to outsource their online marketing management. It is easier to let the experts do their work while you focus on your core strengths.
However, even outsourcing online marketing can be confusing. The main source of confusion (as I've seen with many clients) comes from a lack of understanding of how online marketing works and how to measure the performance of an outsourcing company.
Here you'll find a quick overview of the main things you need to know before outsourcing your online marketing, so you can have more confidence in assessing performance.
- Marketing PPC budget is different from the cost of management. This means that the price you pay platforms like Facebook or Google, is different from the cost of managing those campaigns. Companies will usually ask you about your marketing budget to assess how aggressively you'd like to promote your business. The bigger the budget, the more work it will take from the company, and the higher the cost of management.
- Pay per click or pay per impressions. Most common method is pay per click or ppc. It means you get charged for every click driven by your marketing campaigns on platforms like Google and social media.
- Quality vs Quantity. Be careful with this concept. Your traffic may increase, but if it's bad quality traffic, then it will not be worth it. Ask your marketing company for quality metrics to measure the quality of the traffic that is coming to your site and compare what source brings the best traffic.
- Track conversions with tracking codes. These are small pieces of code that are entered on your site. Make sure the codes are working properly and that they are recorded in your marketing reports.
- Nobody can guarantee you the first place in Google
- Getting leads is just half the battle. Make sure you have a nurturing or following up system in place to follow up with all your leads. A series of automated emails can work really well.
- Each marketing channel is a different game. Keep in mind that each marketing platform works differently. You will find people in different buying stages with different intents.
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