It’s a new year, and you’re trying to figure out the best route to take your marketing as a small or mid-sized business, among all the other strategic plans you’re making and implementing right now. Let me share this with you, as you consider your options: the longer I’ve been in business, the greater value I’ve placed on having a nice blend of internal and external resources on your marketing team.
It’s really important to be able to balance and marshal your internal and external resources out appropriately to give yourself the best opportunity to be successful in the marketplace. First, you need to understand your internal resources and their capabilities. In many small businesses, this may be the owner or founder, or even someone with a different job title than marketing (I’ve seen everything from salespeople to admins who happen to have a knack for this field). No matter their role or background, if someone has a penchant for your brand and how it should be expressed, they should command your respect.
The best part about your internal resources is that they are stewards of your brand. It’s important to them, so they will consider your brand their mission. But are they perfect? Of course, not—none of us are. Sometimes, we can have a blind spot internally, or especially in this era of constantly expanding digital marketing opportunities, we may have a skill set deficit. Regardless of the reason, I find that seeking external resources to blend in with your team can be a real difference-maker, as everyone can play to their strengths and have each other’s backs.
While your internal folks will understand your product or service better than any external person ever could, your external people often bring a missing perspective to your strategic preparation. Often, that missing voice happens to be that of your customer—as a lay person, external marketers can often more closely relate to your customer than you can. They aren’t as prone to use industry vernacular or take certain pieces of knowledge for granted. In addition to adding to your skill set firepower, your external teammates help keep you grounded.
As you can see, having a good team of internal and external marketers, and balancing their skills and perspectives accordingly, can really give you a more well-rounded view of your product or service, how it’s perceived by the public, and how you can be most successful marketing it.
Regardless of medium, strategies, and tactics, having a well-rounded team of external and internal resources really will provide you the tools as a small business to be more successful. Don’t think you have to do it all yourself, but also, don’t think that it’s best to pitch everything over the fence to an agency while you handle the rest of the business and its needs.
From our team at Celero, best wishes for great success for you and your team in the coming year.