Writers’ Marketing Mistakes (4) – Outsourcing marketing

Getting rid of the marketing is a dream many writers share. When success comes to a writer, marketing will be the first thing to go. Someone else can do it. Someone else can take the responsibility.

Here’s how the argument goes.

“Today we’re encouraged to outsource everything. No one can do everything. People need to focus on what they’re good at, and get others to do the remaining tasks. Therefore, just as a person who doesn’t know much about accounts outsources book-keeping and accountancy to someone else, so the same should be done with the marketing.

Agreed?”

Every time a writer says this, there’s hope in his or her eyes. Unfortunately, the premise is wrong.

Book-keeping and marketing are different

You can outsource book-keeping and accountancy. It makes sense to do so unless this is your field.

Giving a brief to an expert in book-keeping or accountancy is not that difficult.

There are rules and regulations to follow. Accounts are set out in similar ways. There isn’t a great deal of scope to do things differently. Therefore, you can outsource these tasks knowing that they will be completed in much the same way whoever you engage. You’ll see profit and loss accounts. You’ll see cash flow forecasts. You’ll see your company accounts set out in a particular way.

There’s a lot more scope to address some accountancy tasks in more individualistic ways, but the basics are completed according to the same set of rules.

Marketing is individual

When you come to think about your marketing there are lots of ways to set about the task and lots of different marketing styles. There are also lots of different objectives you can set yourself.

You can aim to build your reputation. You can aim to get yourself known. You can aim to make book sales or sales of associated products. Then you can focus on off-line or on-line approaches to marketing, or you might give precedence to face-to-face marketing. You can choose to advertise. You can choose to use article marketing strategies. You can blog your way to success. You can tweet and use social media as your major marketing strategy.

You know which ones suit your business, your circumstances and your budget. That person you want to outsource the marketing work to doesn’t know you well. He or she doesn’t know your aspirations and so on. If you want someone to take responsibility for your marketing, you will have to spend a lot of time briefing that person and then monitoring the work. Even then there will be things to be done that only you can do.

Someone might get you an interview on a radio programme, but you have to do the interview.

You need to work out for yourself what your marketing will cover and how it will fit in with what you’re trying to achieve.. You need to know what your principal objectives are. You need to know which successes are you aiming for. You can’t let someone else make these choices for you.

Outsource tasks

You can, of course, outsource specific tasks, once you have your marketing strategy in place, but you shouldn’t just hand over responsibility for your marketing to someone else.

• You can bring in someone to help you with your social media strategy.
• You can bring in someone to help you to blog more effectively.
• You can ask a public relations agency to help you with all aspects of media relations.

What you should avoid doing, however, is handing over control of your marketing to someone outside your business.

You’re in charge

You know your business, your personal brand and your objectives best. You know your audience – or you should. You know what works in your industry and with your audience and what doesn’t – or you should.

You know the history of your marketing activities. You know what you have tried and what you haven’t attempted yet. You know what works.

You’re the best person to sell yourself and your products and services. You really are the expert in yourself. That’s the real reason why you can’t outsource your marketing successfully.

See also:

Planning your bestseller – what comes first?

You’ve got a publishing contract. What do you do now?

What do your tweets say about you?

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