10 BENIFITS OF HAVING A DYNAMIC MARKETING STRATEGY

So many companies today are relying on external resources for their marketing activities. Marketing outsourcing has many benefits! Studies show that, more companies around the world are outsourcing their marketing operations to marketing firms, and that this will continue to grow.

Why do companies choose to outsource marketing?

  • It saves them time and energy: Marketing is a very dynamic feed, you need to keep up with the latest development and tactics in the market, which means companies need to train their employees so they will be qualified. But most companies do not have the time and money to do this, so it is safer to outsource!
  • Access to talent pool: Another common reason is this, outsourcing marketing gives you the opportunity to hire the highly qualified people in the field.

Other reasons include:

  • Frees internal resources for core business functions
  • Increases efficiency for time-consuming tasks
  • Regular communication and support

Below are the 10 benefits you can get from outsourcing marketing:

1. Access to the best and latest technology: Marketing agencies do invest greatly in getting the best technology in the market, which provides their customers with the needed services. It is also useful to run their campaigns, which means when you outsource to these firms, you can get access to all these latest and cutting-edge technologies for marketing too.

2. No need to worry about your employees’ unavailability: Employees asking for time off cannot be avoided in an organization, and this can be a significant cause of issues for marketing teams, even though it is a necessary thing to do. Your employees are entitled to go for important leaves such as medical reasons, childbirth, etc. Instead of this leaving a void in your organization, you can outsource the work without overwhelming other team members.

3. Gives access to fresh strategies or ideas: As marketing personnel, sometimes, we get stuck in a repeated pattern, we most times stick with the same strategies or tactics, we repeat them from time to time without trying to explore other options. Outsourcing is a great way to get out of this endless loop, and it gives you access to different people from different backgrounds who have fresh ideas and perspectives on your business and are ready to offer them to promote your business.

4. Assurance of optimization in your business: Outsourced team have the responsibility to prove to you they are generating ROI. You can be rest assured that the teams are committed and are making sure you get the results you paid for.

5. Increase Your Flexibility and Agility: Many companies are not equipped to take advantage of marketing opportunities even when they finally arise. Outsourcing, on the other hand, gives you the flexibility and agility to launch some online marketing activities on an as-needed basis, thereby letting you progress according to your current needs without disrupting your core business flow.

6. Saves Money: Forming an in-house marketing team with workers with competency as the ones that work for marketing agencies will cost you a lot of money, especially for start-up companies, this might be too much to bear. The cost to outsource to a marketing agency is much lower, and the rate is lower than assembling an in-house team.

7. Expand your reach and presence: Marketers have numerous channels by which they can reach customers, and these days, it feels virtually endless. If you want to increase the opportunity for reaching your audience, outsourcing to a marketing agency or managed services provider will be your best bet. They can help you expand your online and offline presence in a new or existing marketing channel for your team.

8. An outside perspective can be highly beneficial: Outside perspective can be highly valuable and beneficial to your business when it comes to marketing. It is easy to spot an opportunity, and it is also possible for you or your team to have failed to capitalize on these hacks, which could have been a steppingstone to move your project forward.

9. Opens you to new markets: It cannot be over-emphasized that marketing has no geographical limits! With social media ads and AdWords campaigns, you can reach new targets and new markets. However, it should be known that creating these advertising campaigns will require a high skill set and knowledge of these media. You cannot improvise this, so you should surround yourself with people that can do that for you. Outsource!

10. Reduces internal employees’ workload: Too many workloads for your marketing team can lead to burn-out and can make them start looking for new job opportunities. You can reduce your employees’ workload by outsourcing to an agency or managed services provider, thereby keeping your marketing team members happy, this will make them focus on the parts of their jobs they find most intriguing and rewarding.

The way Companies keep up with changes in marketplace today is through outsourcing marketing. They leverage this opportunity to deliver high level of productivity their in-house resources are unable to provide. These marketing agencies help your organization to grow, ranging from guidance in creating a social media presence to creating public relations strategy. Paying for a marketing agency should only be considered if there is assurance that they will give value that moves your business in the right direction.

Five reasons why Australian startups fail

New businesses are launched every day and the number of business startups in Australia is an indication to this. To put this in a better perspective, Australia ranks 8th out of 38 OECD countries. Based on stats collated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the data shows that almost all employment growth is as a result of business startups in the country. But, despite all these, very few of these startups create either permanent jobs or long-lasting business models. It is estimated that almost 97 percent of startups will quit or cease to grow in Australia. Let’s look at five main reasons why Australian startups fail.

Capital

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for startups is the fact that most of them do not raise enough capital to keep it going for the first few years. When planning on launching a startup, the integral part is raising capital because we cannot expect to make huge profits while just beginning to gather clients and sell products or services. 7 out of 10 startups in Australia take a loss for the first couple of years because it takes some time to get their foot in the door and become a business the average Australian would support. Most of these entrepreneurs in Australia get so excited about starting a business and not think about gathering enough capital. Try sourcing for funds when planning on launching a brand as there is no shame in it. So many times, people want to invest in a great idea that they can feel confident in making their investment back!

Lack of Planning

So many Australian entrepreneurs do feel creating a business plan is not an essential part of the business. They want to start making money without having to sit down and plan mission statements and all. However, if we don’t have a business plan set out before the start of the business, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Having a business plan allows business owners to set out goals and know exactly how much income they need to make to break even. To have a business plan as a startup-owner will also serve as a credibility and open the doors to Government Funding and additional grants.

Inconsistent business models

When building a startup, it is essential to have a well laid business model. A business model should consist of:

  • Reason for building the startup
  • Products or services that are planning to sell
  • Ways to sell these
  • How to reach customers

A business model should have a good documented revenue model and how the supply chain will be implemented. Most Australian startups fail at this stage as they think building product is enough and customers will have to flock to their doorsteps. This may work initially but as time goes on, to win more customers will become more expensive. Putting your product out there without a good business model, without establishing the fact that there is indeed a market for the product is a big mistake that may eventually lead to the failure of your business.

Lack of market education

Is the market your startup is targeting aware that your business category exists at all? If your answer is No, then you should know that it is one of your problems. As an entrepreneur, you should consider building a market campaign in your niche to make people aware that you are creating a solution to their problem. When you develop a new product or improve on an existing one, it is your responsibility to let people be educated about the solution you are trying to bring to them.

Expand up too Fast

A startup business may successfully scale through issues most face at the beginning of operating the business. However, when it is time to expand and grow the business, it is very important to take a step back and make sure you understand perfectly the new markets you are trying to reach. Mistakes most entrepreneurs make when expanding their businesses, they fail to understand their new products or services and new customers. Expanding your business without thorough research and planning can lead to a total failure of the business.

While the rate of startup failure in the first few years in Australia is very high, this doesn’t mean your business have to fail. You can learn from the mistakes of others. With thorough planning, appropriate research, positive mindset, you can avoid these common mistakes and make your business successful.

5 SECTORS THAT USE GLOBAL COLLABORATION

Outsourcing can be described as the process where companies engage a third-party organization; it can be locally or internationally. This third-party organization will handle any business activities in which they have been tasked to perform. Below is a list of the most outsourced sectors in the world.

1. Accounting

Accounting is just like your regular period of exercise, you don’t want to take your time out to do it but ignoring it may result in some severe complications after a specified period. In today’s world, there is the option of employing a dedicated individual or a team to take care of your company’s accounting activities. There are so many benefits that are attached to you outsourcing your accounting activities. This business model can save your employees some time to focus more on the organization’s core business. It can also help save some cash because account outsourcing in some parts of the world is cheaper compared to employing a full-time accountant locally. This also gives you access to a young and vast pool of talent around the world that will ensure accuracy and so much more.

2. Social media

Nowadays, many companies are making use of social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter for lead generation. These social media platforms are no longer limited to just personal communication; it’s business all-round! To drive this point home, the popular messaging app, WhatsApp, is also getting used by companies extensively for lead generation. Advertising on all these social media platforms listed above is not an easy task and it takes a considerable amount of time. Using social media platforms as a company does not end with merely posting content, the company must engage its users or followers in conversations and follow up with them. Your company can easily outsource this task to any of the social media marketing agencies out there. They do have a dedicated team of well-skilled professionals that specializes in growing and monitoring your followers. A software called Hootsuite is convenient in this situation as it allows you to interact with your new team members, and you can approve or disapprove whatever they post on your business’s social media profiles. Most startups think that social media marketing campaigns can be managed as a side-work, or it is about occasionally replying to some messages. This is a very wrong insight, and in case you desire to get more benefits from your social media marketing campaigns, you need to invest enough time to grow your social media presence. Therefore, outsourcing your social media marketing activities to experts in this field could be the right call that will potentially yield returns on investments.

3. Legal Services

Even though people do not expect an outsourced legal team to protect their company in the law court, any other type of legal issue is best handled by offshore firms. Some of the legal activities that a company can outsource include review, litigation support, analysis/drafting, and legal documentation. These legal tasks can be assigned to a well-experienced outsourcing team. Smaller industries that cannot afford to employ the services of an expert legal professional at the market rates tend to benefit more from outsourcing legal services. Even large companies will also find it effective to utilize outsourced employees for tedious legal tasks.

4. Healthcare Services

Most companies around the world find it profitable to outsource some part of the managerial healthcare services such as data entry, accounting, medical billing, medical transcription, and coding. In today’s world, it is more beneficial to hand over some medical tasks such as sophisticated diagnostics and scanning to professionals in the medical field who possess the ability to command the open market. The fact that hospitals and healthcare services in general need to lower their expenses cannot be over-emphasized. Healthcare services’ cost has increased exponentially in countries such as the United States, UK and Australia. It is not surprising that healthcare providers are relying heavily on outsourcing many of their services within their complex environments. Reducing costs in the healthcare sector is necessary for entrepreneurs to stay competitive in the market and make profit. These days, most notably, hospitals are faced with dwindling margins, many expectations from patients, and minimal federal support.

5. Engineering

The engineering sector is one of the largest outsourced industries in the world; you can virtually outsource any engineering task, be it architectural, electrical, mechanical, or structural. Outsourcing services such as computer programming, web design tasks equally apply to engineering projects. Other services that can be outsourced include (but not restricted to) consulting, construction models, Sketches, and AUTOCAD designs. To clear any misconception, it is best that your organization only outsource standardized projects that depend more on well-known methods. This will be better than outsourcing some unique tasks that only a selected number of your team members exclusively possess the needed skills to execute.

5 MAIN BENIFITS OF MAINTAINING A FLEXIBLE WORKFORCE

What do you think when the word “Offshoring” is used? Most people give a general definition that it’s the practice of relocating businesses from one country to another. However, when it comes to business models in companies, offshoring refers to getting your work done in another company in another country. Many globalized companies in the world use this business model method to explore their business. In Australia, almost all the big banks, telecommunication companies, insurance companies and many middle and small-scale engineering, accounting, IT and marketing sectors are being working with offshore staff to meet the demand of the local market. In a simple term, we say we want to hire an external agency or a third party to set up our business process for us. There are many benefits of offshoring your business.

1. Cost savings

The most apparent benefit of offshoring is a profit-boosting strategy, and it is necessary for today’s competitive market as it helps to reduce the labor cost and serves you with great benefits. This business strategy helps in decreasing the production style as you can easily depend on the enterprise solution companies for your work. Due to low infrastructure costs in Asian, African and Middle eastern countries, it is advantageous to use their highly skilled workforce for the fraction of what it would cost within Australia. Costs such as remuneration benefits, superannuation costs, overhead costs, taxes, bonuses as well as staff salary costs can save your company up to 70% when seek to source offshore employees. Through offshoring, business prospects are captured to reduce the costs and thereby increases the quality of your company’s work. With the quality and flexibility in the work, offshoring readily reduces costs to the company.

2. Focus on core business activities

In a situation where all your business activities are being handled by in-house employees, it can make the work complicated for them and at the same time slow things down. When you offshore some part of these activities to an offshore team, it gives you and your team more time to focus on your core business activities that brings more sales and revenue to your company. Top offshoring firms across the world have well-trained personnel who are good at what they do, and as such, organizations are required to reach out to them, give them all the necessary details about the project, and the offshoring agency will handle the rest. The main advantage of business offshoring is that it helps reduce business risks as there is more hands-on deck to tackle challenging business situations. More so, the opportunity to connect with individuals and business experts across different facets of the business world is highly recommended. These give the organization the chance to connect, learn new ideas, and subsequently adopt these strategies to further improve the company’s stock.

3. Access to talented employees

Adopting the offshore resourcing model allows you to reach world-class business professionals that may be limited or unavailable locally. The offshoring model gives your business unreserved access to a pool of young talents around the world. With today’s pressure of finding employees with the right skill set in already developed countries, acquiring offshore teams will complement the already existing staff. For businesses hoping to meet certain requirements, the wide range of skills available for processes that are knowledge-dependent through offshoring becomes an advantage.

4. Economies of Scale

When companies offshore their business, they are not only looking to cut cost, but they are also taking advantage of existing economies of scale. Most countries in Asia, Africa and Middle East have a very low standard of living and cost items such as power, internet connectivity, rent there are much lower. For these reasons, companies can definitely take advantage of their job markets. According to research, companies offshoring their businesses abroad expect to realize a cost savings of about 70%.

5. Close Collaboration

Offshoring can strengthen and expand your control over operations and production. It allows you to form a dedicated group of employees to work and focus on your company only. Even though there is a misconception that outsourcing takes away the control you have on your business, it enables you to sophisticate your processes by establishing your control on all aspects of every business matters. With today’s technology, remote working had made things very easy and transparent. As a business, you can take advantage of staff tracking software to monitor your offshore team as if they are sitting at your office. You know it will be your duty to train your staff and see to it that everything they do aligns with the way you want it. This can thereby lead to more productivity and a sense of accountability from your dedicated group of employees. Generally, you will benefit in terms of cost, and depending on how operations are managed, you can realize high productivity using this business model. One thing is for sure about business outsourcing; it is a popular strategy for business development in the present time, only to increase its demand in the future years to come.