The DIY Marketing Trap

Identifying the right time to transition from DIY marketing to hiring a professional can transform your business growth trajectory and free you to focus on your core expertise. Consistency, strategy, and measurable results mark the difference between amateur and professional marketing approaches.

• Post at least three times weekly on social media to benefit your SEO and maintain visibility
• Shift from reactive posting to strategic marketing that aligns with your overall business goals
• When business growth outpaces your marketing capabilities, it's time to delegate
• Word-of-mouth isn't enough - your digital presence needs to reinforce referrals
• Stop losing valuable time on marketing research instead of money-making activities
• Professional marketing is a collaborative partnership, not a complete handoff
• Clear communication of expectations and industry understanding are essential when choosing a marketing partner
• Beware of red flags like promises of instant Google ranking or followers without strategy
• Budget between $500-1000 monthly for effective small business marketing

Ready to stop spinning your wheels with DIY marketing? Visit themktgbroker.com to schedule a free consultation and discuss how we can help grow your business.

Chapters

• 0:53 Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour
• 2:06 Seven Signs You Need Marketing Help
• 5:32 What Hiring a Marketing Pro Means
• 11:02 Get Clear Before Hiring
• 12:46 Red Flags When Choosing Marketing Help
• 15:10 Taking the Next Step

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

What's up, guys? It's Shelby here with the Marketing Broker, so excited that you have decided to tune in to the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. This is the podcast that I use to share my skills and knowledge that I have gotten over the last 10 years being in marketing, and you get all of it for free. Today we're going to talk about why, or how you should be prepared to hire a marketing pro, just like me. So what do you need to know? What are the signs, what are the symptoms of your company needing you to take the next step, to go from DIY marketing to you know what? I think I'm going to hire a marketing pro to do my digital marketing online. So let's dive right on into this. We have a few signs that you may be ready to hire a marketing professional. I make sure that during my consultation calls, we go through these signs so that way I know that my potential client is ready to hire me, and or maybe on the cusp of it, and then we can kind of educate them to see what the next steps should be, or maybe they should continue with their DIY marketing or something like that. So let's think about the first thing here. You're very inconsistent on social media. If you are not posting three times a week, you are not helping your SEO. Three times a week, you are not helping your SEO. Some people think you know what I post once a month. I post once a week. No, we have got to stay consistent. We have to do three posts per week on social media so that way our people can find us and we are actually feeding the search engines how we need to. The next thing that you may, or I should, call it a symptom the next symptom that your business has in needing a marketing pro is you're reactive and not strategic. So, instead of making a plan and making a content plan and having a marketing strategy in place, you're just more like oh dang, okay, I see this trend, I'm going to go post it now. Oh, okay, okay, my competitor did this, so now I'm going to go post it now. Oh okay, okay, this, my competitor did this, so now I'm going to do something similar to it because they got a lot of engagement on there. No, we have got to be strategic with your social media and your digital marketing so we can stay ahead of the curve Now. Yes, trends are a little bit of a reactive thing. Oh, I see this popular, I'm going to add this in. But when we do consistent content and we're posting with hashtags and we're posting with educational stuff, we want to make sure that's strategic and in line with all of our other things. What sales are rerunning this month? What do our email newsletters look like? We want to make sure that it's all very consistent.

Speaker 1: 3:08

The next symptom is your business is growing and your DIY efforts cannot keep up with it. My goal as your marketing professional, as your digital marketing consultant, I want you to focus on what you do best and that's whatever you offer with your business. Are you a roofer? Are you a salesperson? Do you create clothing? Do you design houses? What do you do best? I want you focusing on that so I can show everybody how great you are, be able to keep consistent stuff on digital marketing on social media platforms, so that way, you can focus on growing your business even more. You don't want to have to be sitting there at night at midnight going dang it.

Speaker 1: 3:51

I have not posted on social media in like a month. Like that's not okay. And also, if your business is growing, please do not stop posting on social media. Just because you're busy doesn't mean you're gonna be busy six months from now. I know this to be true in my own life. I will literally not post on my own social media because I'm so busy building my business or my business is busy, and then all of a sudden I hit a dead spot and I'm like, oh, dang it, I need to go back to social media, like no, we need to make sure that we stay consistent so that way people can always see us. And if you're busy and booking out six to nine months, I mean hell yeah, can we hate on that? No, we can't hate on that. If you're booking six to nine months, I mean hell yeah, can we hate on that? No, we can't hate on that. If you're booking six to nine months out for your services, then that means you're worth it and people will do it.

Speaker 1: 4:37

The next symptom is you've hit a plateau and word of mouth has just not enough anymore. I will say word of mouth will always be my favorite and number one marketing technique for any business of any industry anywhere in the United States. Word-of-mouth marketing is fantastic, but if it is not enough, you have got to make sure that we have digital marketing and social media in the background working for you, because now there's a digital way of doing word-of-mouth. When people tag your business and like the ISOs in search of posts, like I'm in search of a sign company, I always get tagged in that somewhere on social media. And when people click on the marketing broker that's been tagged and they go to my page and there's not been anything on there. That's not okay. We want people to see that we are active on social media and it's not just an every now and then thing. So if word of mouth is not getting you exactly where you need to be, let's have that social media in the background so that way it's working for you and not against you.

Speaker 1: 5:45

The next one is you're Googling more than you're doing. Hello, we have AI stuff going out the wazoo right now. Everything that we did for SEO just six months ago and I will tell you this is summer of 2025, when this podcast is being released so everything we did six months ago for SEO is completely different now and we have to learn the AI summary stuff. We have to learn what's actually feeding it. How can we get our website stuff out there? How can we do things for social media differently? Instagram is now feeding into google, and that's a new thing for search engine optimization.

Speaker 1: 6:24

So if you're googling what you should post or how you should post or when you should post, then, bro, just freaking hire someone to do it. It's worth your time. Your time is so freaking valuable as a business owner. Your time deserves to have its own, like unique area in your life so you can actually focus on what you need to to make money. Let's think you spend four hours googling how to create social media posts. You could be spending four hours creating new streams of revenue for your business, and I only know this because my business coach told me the same thing several, several, several years ago.

Speaker 1: 7:03

That leads me to the next one. You're losing time doing marketing posts rather than money making tasks. Yes, social media does make you money, but it takes time, it takes strategy, it takes creativity. You could be like an engineer. You could be someone who hates being creative. Social media is not your thing. Then we got to look pretty on social media. We got to make sure our brand is all over everything on social media, and your brain may not be wired that way, but that's why people like me and my team our brains are wired that way so we can partner together to take that off of your plate. So again, you can focus on money making tasks.

Speaker 1: 7:39

The last thing, the last symptom that you should be thinking about, like when I'm doing social media, I really need a higher pro because you don't know what is working. That's because you don't know how to read the analytics, or maybe you're tired of the analytics changing. You're tired of trying to figure out what exactly this means and that means, and you're frustrated and these numbers are down and there's red on meta and you just don't understand all of it and it gets overwhelming. That's what people like me can do to help you with your marketing stuff. We look at analytics every month. We see what's working and what's not working, and we get to shift all of that stuff for you what's working and what's not working and we get to shift all of that stuff for you so you can again focus on your business and the things that make you freaking money.

Speaker 1: 8:26

So let's think about, or let's talk about, what's hiring a marketing pro, what that actually means, what does it look like? It's not just handing over your Instagram and you get to go all right, deuces, you guys do your thing, I'm going to be over here doing my thing. No, it's a collaborative partnership. When you hire the marketing broker to help you and your business with digital marketing, I want to have a monthly strategy call with you. I want to be able to be in the know with what's going on in your business. If you decide to take pictures on your own or we hire a local photographer in your area, we have a Google Drive so that way, we have pictures and stuff to content, videos to post. All this all the time. I still want you involved as a business owner. I don't want to just take that away and you be in the dark on everything. No, I'm very open and I'm hoping that even marketing professionals in your area if you decide to go with somebody else, then let's hope that they're open and they want you to be filled in on like hey, this is what we're doing this month. What are your? What kind of specials are you running? How can we take this to the next level next month and see if we can make these analytics be even better than what they already are?

Speaker 1: 9:36

I've noticed with my clients the month before we take over versus the month that we do take over. I've had one client in an insurance business increase their impressions and their views on social media by 934% Like that's a huge, freaking number. But also we've increased it since then. They've been with us for about four months and every single month we've increased, increased, increased, increased. But that's how drastic. It goes from not posting on social media to posting consistently three times a week. So I want you involved, I want you to know what's going on on social media. I want you to have a say. Every single client of the marketing broker gets a meeting with me every single month. They get the opportunity to do it. Some people do, some people don't, so it really just depends on what your personality is, but I will always be checking in at least once a month with everybody, so that way we're all on the same thing, same page.

Speaker 1: 10:36

So before you hire the marketing broker or before you hire a marketing professional, you need to get clear on a few things. What are your business goals? So what kind of revenue, growth or audience do you have? What are your goals in the next year, five years, three years, 10 years, whatever? How do you want your business? What do you see your business looking like? So that way we can create a strategy to help with that. Who's your ideal client? We need to know who that is, so when we're creating content, we are able to word it a certain way. If we're speaking to Gen Zers, it's completely different than if we're speaking to boomers or if we're speaking to millennials.

Speaker 1: 11:15

And also, a big one is what is your monthly marketing budget? People will set consultations with me and go I really just don't have a budget in mind. Well, it's really hard for me because I've got base packages that we can talk about. But I may be able to help your business go even higher and grow even more if we knew exactly what kind of marketing budget you had. So I would recommend anything between $500 and $1,000 a month that you can spend towards marketing digital marketing. That includes social media, running ads, geofencing ads, any kind of photography stuff you need. I think $500 to $1,000 for a very small niche business is a really good start to it.

Speaker 1: 11:59

And the last thing is what are your communication expectations? Exactly what we just talked about. Do you want to be involved? Do Do you want to be involved? Do you not want to be involved? Do you want to talk all the time? Do you want to have a meeting once a month. How do you see this going and be able to communicate that to the people that you interview to do your social media, to do your marketing efforts?

Speaker 1: 12:20

Okay, we all see red flags, right, we think about red flags being in personal relationships. Well, I promise you there are red flags in business and I look for red flags, especially when people are trying to hire me, because I am getting to choose to hire them, just like they're getting to choose to hire me. Don't hire based on a follower count or really flashy graphics. I have a lot of local competitors that will sit here and tell someone that I'm bidding against that. You know we can get you number one on Google in four days or something dumb like that. That's not even possible. These people that call you from Google or any kind of anything like that because I know you already get those calls. If you're a business owner and they're like we can get you number one, you need to make sure that what they're selling you is not just flashy and trying to get you in lengthy contracts, and you want to make sure that what they do is good. That's why you ask for people like recommendations or you ask people for their references. I get asked for references all the time. They want to see what we've been doing and who we've been helping.

Speaker 1: 13:28

The next red flag is avoid anyone who promises number one on Google. Imagine that, of course, I'm really bad at like talking about things before I actually have it written down to talk about. So if they promise you that, bro, like just bye, bye-bye, see you later Because I like to be very realistic about expectations with my clients I'm going to be like this is going to take time. It doesn't happen overnight and it's going to take a lot of freaking work to get there, but I promise you we'll get there.

Speaker 1: 13:56

The last one is make sure they understand your industry and not just the freaking trends. Every trend doesn't work for every industry. Freaking trends Every trend doesn't work for every industry. We take upon ourselves here at the Marketing Broker to learn everything about our industries that we represent. In fact, we have a hog company that does hog traps and we know more about hog traps than we've ever freaking wanted to know. But let me tell you right now I know when the hog season is, I know what they like to eat, I know when they like or like when they go into the traps and how easy it is and what you have to do with them after that. So, even boring things like that, even boring things like insurance, make sure those people know any kind of regulations they need for your company or anything about your industry. They need to know it so that way they can convey the message correctly.

Speaker 1: 14:44

So if you're nodding along, you probably are ready to stop spinning your wheels and you're like okay, fine, fine, fine, fine, I'll do it. I'll do it, I'll hire somebody. Yes, okay, but guess what? You can do a consultation without having to hire right then, interview a few people that you know, interview a few people that you Google and just ask them questions about themselves, about how they operate, about their team, so that way you can feel very, very secure about hiring somebody and very confident in that person. And if that person's mean you're like, hey, hey, hey, I would love to have a free consult with you, just go to the mktgbrokercom, the marketingarketingbrokercom, and you will see a free consultation link and you'll get a personal invite from me and we will discuss all things your business and how we can help you with marketing. Catch you on the next episode.