Are you the DIY Digital Marketer ?

Today is the era of Do It Yourself (DIY). The internet has provided companies, especially small business’s the degree of freedom to do literally everything themselves. SaaS firms have started offering business solutions from everything starting from accounting to legal or HR or Sales and Marketing. You could for instance keep your books of accounts yourself, create invoices online and have those invoices emailed directly to your customer while instructing your warehouse to ship out the products and keep your books in ship shop order all by yourself.

Or if you’re the more adventurous kind, you could even create your own website using anything from half a dozen SaaS sites and have it all uploaded. No more looking around for that geeky looking guy who would talk in a language you don’t understand and possibly bill you a lot more. Welcome to the DIY world.

With all the ease and benefits that DIY platforms bring to the table, why should you still look at hiring a digital service provider? Here are 6 powerful reason to do so.

1.You are in the Digital Business yourself

The temptation to DIY is highest amongst those who are in the business themselves. Knowledge is a powerful heady drug and when you feel that you know exactly what is to be done, the pressure to do so yourself is extremely high. Take a step back and resist that temptation. If you’re the business owner, your time is better spent in growing the business than handling marketing. If you’re in marketing, your time is better spent in adding value to the role than in operations. Go DIY, only if you’re role is marketing operations.

2.You’re going DIY to save money

On the face of it DIY helps one save money. After all why pay a fee to someone to do what you could do yourself? Right? Wrong! If you’re running a business, you will understand the concept of an ROI (return on investment). If you’re a DIY customer, chances are you’re not a high spender on digital marketing yourself, either because you can’t afford it at present or because you don’t want to. In either case, trying to do something you’re not skilled at can take up far more time than what it would take someone with experience doing it. Ask yourself, will my ROI be better if I did it myself or would it be better if I hired someone to do it for me while I focused on something else?

3.You know what’s to be done and how to do it.

Knowing what to do in digital marketing is half the battle won. Why waste your knowledge now in doing it yourself when you could outsource the work and value add with your experience? Wouldn’t it be far better for you to broaden your experience in something new on the digital front and learn that while you let others operationalize what you already know?

4.You think you can do it yourself.

DIY digital marketers make it look incredibly simple to do things. That’s great marketing and communication at work. The truth about digital marketing is that unless you analyze your data points and keep fine tuning your work, you’re unlikely to be a great success at digital marketing. This is especially true when you’re trying you hand at aspects like online advertising through say Google AdWords or Facebook advertising or LinkedIn. You see a button that says ‘boost’. You click on it, and hey presto the system automatically guides you to the spending amount that you want to spend. You do it and feel happy until you see the results and wonder ‘maybe I spent too little”. So you spend some more.

The fundamental truth of online advertising is trials and repeat trials and very close monitoring and analytics. That’s how you optimize on your spends to get the best bang for your buck. Leave it to people who do this every day.

5. You’re feel ripped off by your current digital agency.

You have the nagging suspicion that you’re current digital marketing agency is not pulling their weight behind your business. And you feel that you could probably do it yourself better. After all it doesn’t take a genius to do a couple of posts every week on your social media accounts does it?

Don’t throw out the bath water along with the baby in it. Social media marketing is not just about putting up a couple of posts every week. If that’s what you’re getting, maybe it’s time for you to think about changing your agency rather than trying to do it yourself.

6.You don’t seem to find an agency interested enough in your work.

Maybe you have a tight budget. Who doesn’t? Maybe you’re in a city where you have a serious dearth of good talented folks who understand this medium. Maybe you simply don’t know anyone who knows someone who does what you want done. So you decide it’s better to do it yourself than not do anything at all. Maybe a few years ago that would have been a good solution. Not today. Today you can find talented agencies and service providers who would be willing & happy to take on your project. You could post your requirement on places like LinkedIn or forums. It’s as simple as that!

By Rajesh Menon