Why outsourcing is key to scaling your business from 6 figures to 9 figures
Running a business is hard work. Though the rewards and fulfillment you get from growing it is incomparable to anything else. Finding the balance between revenue, expenses, and profit is difficult and could be crippling to a business if not done right. According to Deloitte’s Kevin McCloskey “Outsourcing has gone from being a value protecting measure to a value creating measure,” in his latest report Current Trends in Outsourcing and Addressing Third Party Risks.
This is why many 6-9 figure businesses use outsourcing as a way to scale without taking on too many risks and becoming too topline heavy. After all, as a business owner, you can’t do it all. No matter how much we want to.
What is outsourcing? Let's spend 15 seconds going over it.
Outsourcing is when a business hires a 3rd party resource to help them with an aspect of their business. It can be anything from hiring another company to perform research, a marketing agency to do SEO, or a freelancer for data entry. Whatever you need to get done, outsourcing is the act of hiring an external entity to help push the business forward.
How do you scale a business with outsourcing?
The key to scaling your business with outsourcing is going about it one by one. Make sure that you aren’t increasing your expenses too fast. Otherwise, you begin eating into profits and causing yourself avoidable headaches and stress.
For example, you could start by outsourcing your bookkeeping and accounting. Then move on to different aspects of your marketing and hire VAs to help manage processes and repetitive tasks that can’t be automated.
Here is an overview of how to begin outsourcing your marketing.
So given that, what areas of the business could you outsource first?
- Financials
- Accounting and bookkeeping
- Bookkeeping and Accounting are one of the first areas most businesses will outsource. There are many different laws and details that take a ton of time away from focusing on your business. Typically these costs are relatively low and provide high value to an organization. Not to mention that a great accountant can help you be efficient on taxes, and they can become a consultant when it comes to financial decisions for your business.
- Accounting and bookkeeping
- Strategy
- Fractional CMO/ COO/ CFOs
- Most businesses can’t afford a full-time C-level executive until they begin hitting the higher 7 figures. Even though these resources are often the brain power required to get a business to the next level.
There is a solution, though, hiring fractional C-level executives. We work with many fractional CMOs who help our customers with bringing the marketing engine together. Usually, focusing on marketing strategies and hiring the right agencies and freelancers to move a business’s marketing forward.
- Most businesses can’t afford a full-time C-level executive until they begin hitting the higher 7 figures. Even though these resources are often the brain power required to get a business to the next level.
- Fractional CMO/ COO/ CFOs
- Marketing
- Branding visuals and strategy
- Some businesses have a designer in-house, so the brand visuals can be easily handled. Though the brand strategy is what drives the visuals, and that takes a special type of skillset to complete.
The brand strategy highlights the business’s voice, what it stands for, its values, who its audiences are, and how they want to be seen in the world. Once that is completed, the information gets converted into a visual identity that becomes engrained in the minds of your demographic.
- Some businesses have a designer in-house, so the brand visuals can be easily handled. Though the brand strategy is what drives the visuals, and that takes a special type of skillset to complete.
- Branding visuals and strategy
- Website development
- Unless you’re a business that runs online and relies on your website for your services, you would outsource this aspect of the business. Typically if you’re a SaaS or web-app business, you’d have resources in-house.
Though if you are a service-based business or e-commerce, you’d typically hire an agency to take care of building a website from scratch. This agency would make updates to the existing environment or fix anything that breaks. This ends up being much cheaper than having an in-house resource that may not have enough work on a daily basis.
- Unless you’re a business that runs online and relies on your website for your services, you would outsource this aspect of the business. Typically if you’re a SaaS or web-app business, you’d have resources in-house.
- PPC
- Hiring a strong PPC person in-house is not easy. Not to mention that all they focus on is one business, which ends up quickly making their skillset stale.
The best PPC people either work at top agencies or run their own small, boutique PPC agencies. At CJAM, we have quite a few top PPC partners we recommend to our customers and have had a lot of success here.
Client Testimonial:
“We are highly selective with the agencies we work with and had a hard time finding the right google ad partner. Bee was incredibly helpful. He listened to our needs, and knew the exact partner to team us up with. It saved us hundreds of hours and having the right paid search partner on board is invaluable. I can’t recommend CJAM Marketing enough.”
Michelle – Ecom Owner
- Hiring a strong PPC person in-house is not easy. Not to mention that all they focus on is one business, which ends up quickly making their skillset stale.
- SEO
SEO is a key focus for many businesses. It’s a solid long-term play that, if cracked, returns exponential rewards. Really, it is the gift that keeps on giving. Once Google trusts your website, it’ll continue to rank you for other keywords that you can expand to.Find an SEO agency that does these three areas of SEO well; technical, on-page, and off-page SEO. Then make sure you vet their success rate.
- Influencer marketing
This is an area of marketing that we rarely see brought in-house, though the relationships you build can be very lucrative when done right. When you outsource the influencer marketing piece of your business, the agency runs the campaigns, influencer outreach, negotiations and follow-ups. Which can take a ton of time if done in-house. Also, agencies already have relationships with many different influencers and can use those to speed up the process.
- Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very specialized area, and hiring experts is highly recommended. There are many different networks and affiliate programs that can be utilized and set up. If not done properly, though, it could cut your business’s margins without you knowing.
Finding a strong partner to do this is highly recommended, and they don’t need to be agencies, either. Though there are some agencies with strong affiliate networks that can be utilized. Deciding between an agency or independent depends on your budget and audience.
With all that being said, usually, affiliate marketing is one of the last channels you turn on.
- Copywriting
A business should consider outsourcing its copywriting needs because it allows them to access the skills and expertise of professional copywriters without the cost of hiring full-time employees. A strong copywriter will connect with your audience, highlight your strengths, and do it all without sounding like a corporate robot.
Many times a business may need more than one copywriter, and outsourcing this aspect makes it more cost-effective. For example, at CJAM, we have 2 copywriters we use for our blogs and assign content based on their skill sets.Additionally, the best copywriters take extensive training and are always upskilling. The business doesn’t pay for this cost since that training is done by the contractor. You reap the benefits without having to pay the large one-time costs of these courses that typically go for $2k+.
One of the key aspects of outsourcing your marketing is knowing how to manage your marketing partners.
- Diversity and inclusion
In today’s world, diversity and inclusion are on everyone’s minds. You may not know that you can outsource to diversity and inclusion consultants because it can help you create a more inclusive workplace that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Diversity and inclusion consultants have the knowledge and expertise to help businesses develop and implement strategies that foster a culture where all employees feel welcome and safe. They can provide valuable insights and guidance on issues such as unconscious bias, microaggressions, and systemic racism. Which helps businesses create an environment where everyone feels valued and supported.
Additionally, outsourcing to diversity and inclusion consultants can help businesses attract and retain diverse employees, improving creativity, innovation, and overall performance.
- Operations
- Virtual Assistants
Businesses should consider using VAs (virtual assistants) because it allows them to access skilled professionals who can handle a wide range of tasks remotely without the need for in-house staff.
VAs can handle various tasks, including administrative tasks such as data entry, email management, scheduling appointments, and booking travel. They can also provide customer support, manage social media channels, do website management, and some offer graphic design skills too.
If you have good systems and processes, you can use VAs to open up time for you as a business owner.
VAs can be especially beneficial for small businesses and startups that need to manage their workload more efficiently and cost-effectively. Outsourcing tasks to VAs can free up valuable time that can be spent growing your business, not managing the small-picture tasks.
- Virtual Assistants
- Lawyers
A business should outsource any legal matters to a lawyer. Unless you went to law school and are up to date on corporate law, you’ll need a lawyer to navigate complex legal issues and mitigate legal risks.
They can assist with a wide range of legal matters, including contracts, intellectual property, employment law, litigation, negotiations, and more. Outsourcing legal work to lawyers can provide businesses with access to legal expertise that they may not have in-house, without the cost of hiring full-time legal staff. This is especially important since there are so many different kinds of law, and each requires specialization.
- Human Resources
Human Resources has many different components. Many of these can be managed via outsourcing before bringing your HR in-house is necessary. Some large organizations will have an in-house and outsourced team to maintain unbiased judgements when needed.
HR companies provide various services, such as payroll administration, employee benefits administration, recruitment and staffing, performance management, training and development, and compliance management.
This would require a massive in-house team to run, so outsourcing in the first few years of business definitely puts you ahead and allows you to use the experience of these teams.
Ultimately, you can outsource large portions of your business, which means your leadership team can focus on your company’s growth strategy.
Now you might ask, what do different outsourcing models look like as my business grows?
Outsourcing models for 6-figure businesses
If you are running a 6-figure business, you aren’t able to outsource every aspect of the business you’d want to. So the key is to focus on the areas that provide you with the highest value once you have an established budget. Usually, this involves accounting, one or two marketing channels, and VA services.
As the business grows, you can begin to outsource other high-value channels to further focus on growing the business. If you’re looking to hire the right marketing agencies to outsource your marketing, we can help.
Outsourcing models for 7-figure businesses
Businesses making 7 figures are in a tough position because it requires the most growth from the business owner to get to the next level. At this stage, a lot of the outsourcing comes from building out a proper strategy and getting the right executives in the company to move to the next level. Usually, these executives start as fractional placements and slowly convert over to full-time positions.
When it comes to marketing, there is also an evolution of who the business works with during different growth stages. To move from 7-figures to 8 or 9, you’ll need to work with an agency that already plays well in this sector. Partner with an agency that already has multiple successes with 8 and 9-figure businesses, and it’s more likely to do the same for your business.
Outsourcing models for high 8-figure businesses
At this stage, most businesses have a strong leadership team in place and are consistently on the lookout for top talent within their budget. When it comes to outsourcing, it becomes more about the niche services that they don’t want to bring in-house. On the marketing side, we see these companies working with agencies that do services such as; SEO, amazon marketing, conversion rate optimization and other very niche types of marketing. Here is another blog where we speak about our outsourcing business model for digital marketing.
Ultimately, your business needs to use outsourcing to scale. Without it, you will be left behind by the companies that do. Hiring a fractional team of 5 people is always going to be better than hiring one person who doesn’t have the same skillset. Plus, the added benefit of a larger team is the experience and knowledge that comes from many heads solving one problem.
What are the 6 key benefits of outsourcing?
- Getting your time back
- Efficiently scaling your business
- Working on your business vs working in your business
- Building out trusted relationships
- Testing out new channels and ideas
- Getting access to different skillsets
At CJAM marketing, we help many businesses find the right outsourcing partners when it comes to marketing and development. If your business needs support finding the right partners, reach out to us today.
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What’s Next?
Now that you know a little more about personal branding, it’s over to you so that you can put what you’ve learned today into practice. Of course, if you still need some help with developing and implementing your personal brand, we’ve got you covered there, too.
We specialise in helping people just like you to find the perfect agency to help them out, so reach out to us today to find out more. You can also leave a comment to keep the discussion going or follow us on your favorite social networking sites for more. We’ll see you soon!
