When Should I Hire a Marketer? (And for How Much?)

Have you ever been stuck thinking about when to hire a marketer? Is it after your business reaches a certain revenue? Or perhaps when you reach a certain year? Not exactly.

Marketers are great, necessary investments for small businesses (of course, coming from a marketing firm). But if we’re serious for just a minute, the Small Business Administration notes marketing is one of the top 2 reasons that most small businesses fail. Reality check, anyone? Marketing helps to attract new customers, stand out against competitors and increase revenue. Frankly, marketing keeps the lights on.

Based on Gartner’s 2015 research, companies are spending an average of 10.2 percent of their annual revenue on marketing. For someone making $200,000 a year, $20,000 would be allotted to marketing–social media, public relations, direct sales, ads, video, photography, inbound, SEO optimization. We can even guesstimate this number has increased with the rise of content and influencer marketing.

Thinking about how to use your 10.2%? Skip the in-house marketing...seriously. We’ve seen small business owners give their marketing to an assistant or part-time worker, or even their interns. And while each of these individuals are excellent at helping, they have a number of other commitments that unintentionally put marketing on the back-burner. That’s simply a price small business owners can’t afford to risk. Your hard-earned 10.2% should go to a marketing firm or agency. Oftentimes, the agency can contract all the pieces you need to best maximize your dollar spend.

We’ve taken a deep dive into our customers and found these top reasons are when you should hire a marketer…

> When you’ve become content with steady word-of-mouth business
Is your business doing well with just word-of-mouth marketing? That’s amazing but there’s still some opportunity to grow your business and perfect your systems. Consult a marketer and see if there are any gaps you can fill or opportunities to capitalize.

> When your sales are inconsistent
Inconsistent sales make it hard for many small business owners to envision their 5-year plan. The reality is that someone else may be able to help you reach your ideal customer, strengthen your marketing strategy and build a dynamic eye-capturing brand.

> When your clients and customers aren’t who you want
This one can be a major burn–working with people you’re not passionate about serving. It’s as if you’re attracting all the wrong people to your business, but you can’t stop serving them or you’ll halt your revenue. A marketing agency can help you see a strategy to alleviate this issue.

> When you’re honestly just too busy to worry about marketing
We’ve all been here. Are you too busy trying to perfect your work-life balance instead of giving marketing the time it needs? This is what we call “time to outsource”. Take some time to begin looking for marketing firms that work effectively with similar businesses like yours.

> When you know what you want but...
Do you know exactly what you should be doing but lack the capacity? Like you know you should post frequently to social media but you haven’t prioritized it yet, and it’s been 3 weeks? This is a perfect time to hire an agency that can work with you to grow your business.