The Balancing Act in Marketing

Knowing What You Should and Should Not Do Yourself

Entrepreneurs and independent professionals love to do it themselves. I know, I’m one of them. But coming to grips with what you can do yourself, what you should do yourself and what you should stay completely away from is a great learning experience that will benefit your business far better than learning how to execute the best direct marketing campaign.

But many of us entrepreneurs and independent professionals also need to watch how much money we spend so we continue to have a business. But there are ways to cut costs while getting expert professional help.

I have been given the opportunity to write a monthly column for a publication, and in return they have given me a quarter page ad. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the ad, so I opened my trusty Photoshop and proceeded to create the ad with the copy I wanted. The image below is my rendition.

Then I sent the ad I created to my designer to make it better.

Now why didn’t I think of that design? Because I’m not a designer. And, as you can see, the ad created by the designer is, of course, far better than what I could do. Where I saved money was by providing the designer the copy and overall theme for the ad. She applied her expertise and tweaked the copy to make it stand out more.

As a business owner, you can save money in marketing doing the things yourself that you do well and bringing in an expert to do the rest. If you can write, do your own writing for the Web, brochures, articles and other materials and engage designers, web developers and other specialists to take your ideas and make them stand out.