Let’s face it: there are some marketing tasks that you could do without. In fact, online surveys (which you’ll read about below) often find that search marketers do have some tasks that drive them crazy. And even self-driven entrepreneurs only have so many hours in a day.
What is someone in a position of small business leadership to do? How do you run a company and keep up with your social networks and incorporate a smart marketing strategy when it feels like you only have time to tackle one thing at a time?
We have a few ideas. But first, let’s find out what the experts say their most annoying digital marketing tasks are. Then we’ll explore some of the best ways you can outsource them to experience great marketing results without the frustration.
#1: Balancing Marketing Work with Actual Business Work
When you work a basic nine-to-five, it’s not too difficult to focus on your work. You don’t have to think about building a landing page for marketing your company, or what to write in the company newsletter.
But for entrepreneurs? These basic marketing tasks are part of maintaining a solid business. Their marketing strategy eats into their productive hours. And in some cases, it doesn’t eat into these productive hours at all, and the entrepreneur is forced to work overtime just to keep the business humming along.
In a Reddit Entrepreneur thread asking entrepreneurs their least-favorite tasks, business promotion and bookkeeping were two of the most upvoted tasks. Some entrepreneurs worked their way around this by organizing their time. For example, one commenter responded that they would spend 4 days of work on clients, and one day of work on bookkeeping and marketing.
#2: Keyword Research
In a survey of search marketers, WordStream found that “Keyword Research” had one of the highest “yes” rates when they asked what marketing task marketers found most tedious, at 32%.
Let’s be clear: identifying keywords is important. You want to be able to target your online content to a specific audience, and you want to be confident that you’ve chosen the right keywords.
The problem? Keyword research can feel like a thankless task. After all, it’s research. Looking up keywords alone isn’t going to guarantee great results. It will take more marketing after keyword research to make sure that you’ve properly positioned your company to benefit from its marketing strategy. And then it will take landing page optimization or blogging to make sure you generate valuable results to encourage the likes of Google to post your page for that targeted keyword.
#3: Writing for Content Marketing Purposes
Content marketing is great. Everyone knows how important it is to have a blog that targets specific keywords and generates value for your readers. Everyone knows it’s important to demonstrate expertise in your chosen field.
But not everyone does it. In fact, 63% of businesses don’t have a documented content strategy at all.
So what’s the disconnect?
Content marketing is time-consuming. Putting together a business and writing long-form, informative posts on your blog is just not something that many people can do. That doesn’t even mention the effective marketing necessities like coming up with great subjects for your target market or creating a calendar of blog topics to tackle every month.
The obvious answer is outsourcing the writing. But how do you find a virtual assistant who can handle your needs for high-quality writing while also understanding your business? Is it even possible to outsource something like that without paying a lot of money for first-rate freelancers? In our tips for outsourcing below, we’ll address some of these issues.
#4: Optimizing Your Conversion Rate
In that WordStream survey, one of the least-favorite tasks of digital marketers was that of conversion rate optimization. A full 30.9% of digital marketers find it to be among the most annoying and time-consuming tasks they had to tackle.
Optimizing your conversion rate can be difficult because it’s very research-intensive. You have to review your analytics. You have to look at your landing page. You might even look at a heat map of your web page, trying to diagnose where users are going wrong.
But the longer you spend optimizing your landing pages, the less time you spend on other aspects of your business. Lead generation. Creating new content. Reaching out to new customers. Promoting a new product. Don’t get us wrong; conversion rate is important. But if it digs into everything else you’re doing at your company, it can quickly become one of your most annoying tasks.
#5: Link Building
Link building rated the highest on the WordStream survey, with one out of three digital marketing responders listing it as an annoying and time-consuming task. But there are some statistics that suggest that link building is still valuable. 92% of marketers believe that in five years, link building will still be an important way to generate vital search engine value for your online presence.
If we asked you why you opened a small business in the first place, we’re going to guess that link building is at the bottom of your list, too. Yet it can be vital work when done right. And when not done right, that means it can be a time-consuming, frustrating, unenviable task that digs into the valuable time you could otherwise spend on creating a fully-functioning business.
#6: Traffic Generation
Let’s be honest: traffic generation is important stuff. By bringing in new customers (especially for an e-Commerce site), you keep money flowing through your business. Without traffic, you don’t get as many new leads—especially those targeted leads you might be after.
But according to a survey, over one out of three digital marketers is absolutely stumped about how to generate new traffic for their website. That means even paid, experienced marketers are having trouble. And if you don’t have a marketing team at your company, you may feel even more lost. How are you supposed to handle traffic generation while running a business? More on that in a bit.
#7: Building an Email List
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote your business. Capturing even a small, miniscule sliver of the 3.9 million daily email users will generate enthusiasm and targeted leads for your company. And once you have an email list, it’s easy to send out promotions, newsletters, and all sorts of content that will generate more e-Commerce sales.
The problem? Building the email list in the first place.
It can feel like a long slog, building an email list for the first time. From market research to using marketing automation to capture email leads, it’s like rolling a snowball downhill and waiting for the snow to accumulate into something bigger. In the meantime, you have a small email list and a slow sales process. It can be thankless, long-term work, even if it’s vital to your long-term success.
#8: Building a Sales Team
Outsourcing marketing tasks is an obvious way to get out of these frustrating, time-consuming strategies. But what about building a sales team that can handle the influx of traffic you encounter as your business grows?
In the age of COVID and social distancing, one solution is obvious: build a remote team. But hiring people to handle everything from your marketing budget to connecting with business owners (if you run a B2B business) means finding people who will represent your business well. And let’s be honest: it’s not always easy to find the talent that’s able to do that consistently.
#9: Installing New Marketing Tools
Marketing tools are important. For example, good CRM software is a great way to keep on top of all of your customers, leads, and potential marketing possibilities. But taking the time to implement it? It can be the last task on your daily to-do list when you’re struggling with everything from handling your business taxes to making payroll. And while marketing tools are important, don’t forget what it takes to get up and running with them:
- Researching the latest tools. You might have a solution in mind for one of the marketing tasks on this list, such as building an email newsletter. But do you know which one is best for your needs? It takes a decent amount of research to find the right tool for the right price point.
- Implementing the latest tools. Installation and onboarding can be the most frustrating part of the process, because you’re still not sure that the tool is really going to be an improvement over the old way of doing things.
- Integrating the tools into your workflow. This may be the most difficult task of them all. Are you able to integrate the tools into your workflow so that you’re more productive with your marketing?
#10: Managing Your Social Networks
For some people, managing social networks is a fun part of the business because it feels like time off. In fact, that is how some people slack off: checking their Twitter and interacting with other people.
But productive social media work can be difficult. You need to make sure that your social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter don’t only have optimized profiles, but that they’re useful enough to your followers that people want to share your content.
In a way, managing social networks is like content marketing. You have to make sure you’re providing consistent value on your social networks. And that content has to be relevant to your followers. If not, you’re only spinning your wheels.
How to Turn Annoying Marketing Tasks into Strengths at Your Business
The good news about being a small business owner is that you’re in charge. And if you can find the right digital marketing assistant for outsourcing these annoying tasks, you’ll be able to focus on the essential work that helps your company grow.
But there’s the rub. How do you find a virtual assistant capable of tackling everything from customer follow-up emails to generating new marketing materials?
We think there are a few essential steps here:
- Build a list of your most-hated marketing tasks. Think about the things you really do not want to do. Then rank them at the top of a list. Take out a fresh sheet of paper and write them down if you must, but make sure it’s something you can revisit later.
- Build a list of your most important marketing tasks. Consider this a separate list. Write out the most important things for your marketing. What generates the biggest returns? What do you most want to invest in? Rank them as well.
- Now cross-reference the list. If something ranks “1” for each category, for example, it would add up to “2,” the lowest possible score. Think about it like golf: the lower the score here, the better it is to delegate it.
That should leave you with a list of high-impact, high-frustration marketing tasks you can delegate. Great! Now look for those exact skills when you sign up to Delegated and search through our available virtual marketing assistants. You’ll know exactly what kind of experience to look for, which tasks to delegate, and how to onboard your new virtual assistant so they can immediately handle those tasks for you.
