Why outsourcing can be an entrepreneur’s best friend

There’s no need to whisper it. You can say it. Go on. It’s ok. Outsourcing has been seen very much as a dirty word within startups and small business formation. The thought of delegating tasks away from being in-house is almost seen as defeatist or admitting that you can’t cope when nothing could be further from the truth.

Outsourcing is about knowing your limitations, having the humility to understand when you are best employing off-site experts to undertake specific tasks and utilising your money when purchasing services in the most impactful way.

There is often no point in training up staff in house in an attempt to foster your own faux industry experts. This can result in money wasted in sending individuals off on training courses when they should be implementing your business vision. Sending your marketing team off on a course to try and understand the nuances of keywording and SEO will not necessarily result in your website receiving more hits or appearing higher up in the Google rankings. Instead, you need to consider outsourcing. Take a look at these common facets of business that are outsourced to improve the success of startups.

Troubleshooting

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, you will inevitably have a set of IT equipment whether this is a couple of laptops and some industry specific software or a more comprehensive set of networked hardware and a cloud server. While you might be tempted to hire an IT expert in-house, it can make more financial sense to outsource to a company like Mustard IT tech support who can manage any IT projects you might have, deliver training to your staff and install any updates remotely. This means you do not have to worry about any computing bugs that might arise, panic about the Internet going down or having your business ground to a halt because you can’t send emails. Comprehensive outsourced IT troubleshooting means problems can be rectified speedily and expertly.

Marketing

If you want to hit the ground running and concern yourself with implementing your business vision of providing exceptional accounting services to contractors nationwide or producing the highest quality handcrafted kitchen utensils, you probably don’t want to be getting bogged down in marketing and advertising. Instead, you can outsource this job to expert marketing professionals. These individuals understand how to promote your business online, will drive traffic to your website and will work with you to generate a social media campaign to enhance your brand and get you noticed.

You no longer have to worry about writing three engaging blog posts every week or updating your social media feeds every day. A company can do this for you. These content marketing professionals will find your company voice, engage your current customer base and expand your clientele to new niche markets. If money is tight, you could employ a freelancer to focus on your SEO and keywording while providing exceptional and engaging content for your online platforms.

Payroll

The most boring and time consuming aspect to running a business is payroll. As your startup becomes more successful and you take on more staff, your payroll requirements will become more complex. Don’t allow your time to be diverted from the implementation of your business vision just to crunch some numbers. Outsource your payroll requirements to a team of financial planners and bookkeepers who understand the financial regulations and tax legislation that all small businesses need to adhere to.

Website design

While the drag and drop website builders that anyone who can switch on a laptop can master have become more nuanced and aesthetically pleasing, nothing still beats the slick and bespoke designs of a website designer. These individuals will sit down with you, work out what you need from a website and will emulate your ethos and branding throughout your webpages. Cutting corners and saving money by using one of the many free website builders can be a false economy. They tend to be weak on meta tags, keywords, and SEO. When you are formulating content for your homepage, do you understand what your customer base will be searching online? The experts that you outsource to will design your website with search results, traffic, revenue and sale conversions as their priority.

If you reject outsourcing, you will be undertaking too much as an entrepreneur. You cannot be expected to be the managing director, the HR bod, the marketing geek, the PR guru and the IT expert. You need to outsource to make your startup more efficient, more impactful and more successful.