Do it well or just don’t do it! 

The classic “make or buy decision” has its roots in manufacturing and is one of the most common of important business decisions companies make all the time. As manufacturing firms encounter new or expanded opportunities, the question often becomes how to fulfill the need profitably. Do we invest precious capital in new equipment to make additional products ourselves or do we partner with another manufacturer from whom we can buy those parts cheap and continue to sell finished products at a good profit? “Make or buy” applies to all kinds of business services in our daily management march. Marketing leads that procession.

A business owner can spend time doing all kinds of business functions to save labor and service costs. Before delivering any billable products to customers, he may be struggling through the learning curves of Wordpress CMS and Constant Contact email design templates. He may get overload shock from the fire hose delivery of industry chatter online, not understanding the point of it all.

So, Mr. Entrepreneur, what do you want to do with your day?  Work toward becoming the leader in your industry or teach yourself through trial and error how to be a great marketing communicator? We have another question to add perspective. Let’s say you rarely or never play golf. If you had to represent your company with a player in a high profile charity golf tournament, would you send a scratch golfer from your team or go for the glory yourself, risking the embarrassment of player disqualification?

The problem with Do-it-Yourself Marketing can be likened to this scenario: While you’re hacking divots all over the fairways of marketplace, your competition is hitting sweet spots and setting up the birdie putts of better products and fortified relationships. While you’re practicing marketing executions (probably poorly), your competitor is out playing golf with your customer. He’s telling the customer all about product upgrades and service efficiencies while his expertly managed marketing program is delivering new leads to his sales team. One of those new leads happens to be another long term customer of yours.

Whether it’s for legal services, taxation, HR staffing, training or marketing, doing it yourself means going it alone and that can be dangerous. Lacking the support of caring professionals with the proper training and tools to address your challenges can put you at a major disadvantage. On the other hand, having an savvy expert marketing consultant working on your behalf ensures that a consistent quality message is being communicated to the right audiences at the right times. This helps you focus on your core business and enables you to better meet the needs of your customers – the product/service needs as well as the need to maintain good relationships.

The reason most business owners ultimately call 2DiFore Marketing Solutions is because word of mouth referrals dry up for whatever reason. They need more qualified leads to come in. They often say “Once we sit down with the customer and have a conversation, we almost always win their business!”  So, that’s your job – to work with customers and keep winning new business. Our job as marketing consultants is to help convince those prospective customers they need to talk with you so you’ll get to have more of those winning conversations and keep growing.