Entrepreneurial Q&A: If I’m trying to save money, what is the best area of my business to outsource?
Pay-per-click marketing. “Paid search is one of the easiest things to outsource. Most companies don’t need a full-time paid search expert on their team. Outsourcing this is pretty easy and will save your business money in the long term. I personally like 3Q Digital, Hanapin Marketing, Adogy Marketing and Wordstream to manage my paid search.” Murray Newlands, Due.com
Document formatting. “If you create a lot of presentations and spreadsheets, consider outsourcing the formatting of this to a college student or remote employee who can handle these repetitive tasks. I especially recommend creating step-by-step screen capture videos to explain precisely what needs to be done.” Sathvik Tantry, FormSwift
Anything outside your core service or product. “You may think you’re saving money by trying to do everything yourself, but it’s a false economy. Focus your staff hires on people who perform your core business. Everything else — accounting, payroll, marketing, etc. — can be outsourced.” Mary Ellen Slayter, Reputation Capital
Anything you hate doing (and aren’t very good at). “There is nothing more frustrating than ‘trying’ to do things well that I am bad at and don’t like. Do what you love, and what you are gifted in. Outsource the rest. It is an expense, but this expense will allow you to be more effective building and generating revenue because you are inspired all day doing what you love.” Matt Shoup, CafeConLecheWithMatt.com
Payroll and benefits. “Few people are payroll, tax and benefit experts, so it’s best to hire those who are. We’ve found that having one company manage both payroll and benefits simplified our life even more than two separate companies. It’s nice to have payroll automatically adjusted when benefits change — that used to be a manual process to make sure deductions were right with payroll and adjusted with each change.” Angela Harless, AcrobatAnt
Content creation. “The best area of a small business to outsource is probably content creation for your blog or website. Plenty of freelance writers are available via sites such as www.guru.com or www.freelancer.com. Just be sure to hire writers with industry-specific experience, and pay them commensurately. Remember, if you offer $10 per article, you’re going to get $10 worth of content quality.” Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
Prospecting. “Hire a virtual assistant to put together a spreadsheet of prospects. Provide them clear instructions by creating a set of ‘prospect criteria’ (e.g., post Series-A SaaS companies with at least 10 employees that target the Healthcare industry), provide a few ‘prospect outlets’ (e.g., AngelList, Product Hunt, etc.) and recommend a few ‘prospecting tools’ (e.g., BuiltWith, Sales Loft, etc).” Ross Beyeler, Growth Spark
Administrative support. “Virtual assistants can help you in a variety of ways, and even seemingly small tasks can add up to save you a bunch of time over the course of a few months.” Phil Laboon, Eyeflow Internet Marketing
Software development. “The best area to outsource is software development because it can be the most expensive. However, you should only outsource development through a service such as Elance if you have a dedicated developer in your company. If you have a developer, he or she can outline specific feature requirements to ensure you get what you’re looking for.” Eric Schaumburg, Eventr.io
(Source: TCA)
