In an earlier blog, we talked about how outsourcing work can be beneficial for your business, as it frees up time for your team to be able to focus on more important tasks. While this may seem simple enough to understand, getting the most out of it depends on choosing the right tasks to outsource. You benefit the most from working on what you specialise in; similarly, outsourcing is best applied in cases where the work involved requires specialisation outside your expertise.
Technical tasks in creative and marketing work are a prime example of such cases. While it’s natural for a company’s leadership to be personally involved with a marketing strategy for instance, the execution is often best left to technical specialists. Graphic design, SEO, and web development, to name just a few, are pursuits that need distinct, specialised skills, but might not, for a single company, require a full-time in-house employee to handle them.
The list, of course, varies from company to company, and even campaign to campaign. You might have a full-time web developer, for instance, while outsourcing content and search optimisation; or you might have a social media specialist overseeing your strategy, while outsourcing other social media work like scheduling, posting, or monitoring.
Listed below are some creative services that are often outsourced:
Graphic Design: Graphic design or visual content require both a careful eye and a creative mind. Graphic design outsourcing is common practice, since such work typically needs a degree of expertise for quality work to be produced efficiently and reliably. The kinds of output under the visual content category include social media images, website design, infographics, and video creation.
Social Media: Whether it’s curating posts, making the actual social media posting plan, making a social media ‘playbook’, executing online customer service, making social media reports and analytics, monitoring or managing social media accounts, or tracking trends, a lot of companies today tend to leave this task to the specialists. Social media is a dynamic, ever-changing facet of marketing. To excel at it, you need an expert who keeps abreast of the latest news and updates, and knows how to analyze your results to be able to provide effective recommendations for your business.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): SEO is best delegated to experts who are knowledgeable about which keywords can work best for your content, as well as how to make your content rank high up on Google’s search results pages. Like social media, this also needs to be tracked and analyzed to know what kind of technique would be best for your business.
Content Creation: Creating content such as blogs and newsletters can be a bit tricky to outsource, since you’d essentially be letting a person outside your company write about your business. However, if the person you’re entrusting the task with is very familiar or informed right about your company and what you offer, this can be fruitful as well.
Website Development: Much like the aforementioned tasks, this is also best left in the hands of an expert. Outsourced web development can cover improving the codes, improving accessibility and user experience, expanding functionality, optimisation for mobile, or even creating or rebuilding a website from scratch.
Marketing Strategy Implementation: For this, the team or company you’ll be outsourcing this to needs to be aligned with your own company’s goals, as well as the nature of your business. Both your company and theirs also need to be on the same page when it comes to the means of achieving your goals. Some outsourcing companies offer packages to other businesses, as well as recommendations on how they can come up with a feasible and effective marketing plan. However, you can negotiate with them in terms of what you would like them to do for your strategy. Keep in mind, however, the way your company approaches marketing and what processes you’re comfortable with so you can find an outsourcing company that suits your marketing needs.
Now that you’re familiar with some of the common tasks that get outsourced, you can now weigh and identify what you can afford to delegate. Outsourcing can be a great opportunity for your business to grow, as it leaves you with some time to spare for other priorities. With a helping hand, you can enjoy better results and get where you want to be without breaking a sweat.
Integrating outsourced processes into your regular workflow is easier with a well-written project brief that can be referred to time and again. Take a look at our free templates to see how to draft one.