DIY AT HOME - Beware of DIY! $$$

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If you are smart, you have decided that marketing is a great way to survive the recession. But if you think that as a business owner it is a smart idea to do it yourself, you should think again.

I am a marketing consultant who has 22 years experience of all kinds of clients, industries and communication channels. You may be an accountant, a life coach, a retail entrepreneur ... Let's acknowledge what our skills are! By concentrating on what you do best, you will be far more successful than if you dabble in areas you know nothing (or little) about. Why should a solicitor have the skills to create an integrated marketing campaign? I could not draw up a commercial contract, and I would not try!

So whilst you might be able to have a stab at marketing your business, there is the very real possibility that it will not be successful. Worse than that, an ill thought out, poorly expressed campaign can actually damage your business. When you bring in an expert, you can rely on a level of quality and professionalism to make the campaign work.

Do you think it will save you money to DIY? Well yes, you will not get an invoice from an external supplier, that's true. But a poor campaign is money wasted, money you can not spend again. But look at it another way - what is your potential hourly earnings rate? Every hour you spend doing your own marketing is an hour when you are not learning that - and as a non-expert, it will take you longer than it would take a professional with experience in the field.

Doing it yourself gives a poor impression of your business in itself. Either your core business does not keep you busy enough, or it does not make you enough money to run it professionally. Yes, in the early stages, this is understandable, but as time goes on you should be making use of out sourcing to streamline your efforts.

The final thing to remember is that the ideas are more valuable than the execution in a lot of cases. This gets forgotten, but in the same way that you know your own business, a marketing person knows theirs. Stealing the ideas to put into action yourself is not good karma!

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