DIY Digital Marketing - Is It Worth It?
If
you have a small business, then you’ve likely wondered whether hiring a digital
marketing company is worth the expense.
And
it’s a very valid question - with all the instructional articles and videos out
there, it technically is something you can DIY…
But is it worth it?
In
this article, we’re going to look at the 3 major forms of digital marketing and
show you which ones you should DIY and which are better served by calling in
the big guns.
First
up…
Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
The
granddaddy of digital marketing, pay-per-click (or PPC), is essentially all
about Google’s advertising program. You identify keywords, and then pay a set
price each time someone clicks your listing on search results for that keyword.
The
only problem - other people want to advertise for the same keyword, which
drives the price higher and higher.
For
this one, there’s almost no comparison - a
professional service will almost certainly give you better returns on your
marketing spend than DIY. That’s because they:
●
Know how to identify underused keywords and correctly
value keyword price
●
Are familiar with Google’s advertising algorithms and how
to take advantage of them
●
Use A/B testing and other techniques for better
performance
●
Have powerful automation software to tweak your campaign
for optimal results
And
in terms of the time you need to devote to learning the in’s and out’s of PPC
and then executing a campaign, a talented PPC firm will give you a much lower
opportunity cost with higher ROI - a win-win situation.
But
is that also true about…
Social Media Advertising
Yes…
and no.
You
see, you can do social media advertising on your own simply by creating a
steady stream of content to attract and engage your followers, which doesn’t
cost you a penny.
And
it’s absolutely something you should be doing as a normal part of running your
business’s online presence. Heck, even
something as small as posting the occasional photo on Instagram is a form of
advertising and has value.
However,
with all that said, if you want to enter the realm of paid Facebook or Twitter
advertising, then digital marketing firms are still the correct choice over
DIY, mainly for the same reasons listed above - a good firm should know what
they’re doing and their efforts should return more than the price for their
services.
So,
social media advertising is a split decision. And now we come to…
Email Marketing
The
general idea about email marketing is that you develop a list of contacts and
send them emails. Those emails could range from newsletters reminding followers
that your business is out there to complex email campaigns designed to lead a
potential client to a buying decision.
In
both cases, it is quite possible to
handle email marketing on your own. There are plenty of free and low-cost
software solutions to assist in email marketing management and some are very
powerful, meaning that with the right time investment, your email campaigns can
be successful.
At
the same time, the big question is whether you’ll get the same returns with DIY
as you would with professional email marketing…
And
unfortunately, the answer is… probably not.
Just
like with PPC and social media advertising, a well-constructed email marketing
campaign by a professional firm and talented copywriter will likely have a
higher ROI than your DIY efforts.
After all, it’s their job to be better than you at marketing - it’s what they do.