If you are starting your own business or you already are a small business owner, no matter how capable, smart, knowledgeable, or experienced you are, you can’t do everything on your own and get the results you want. Therefore, in order to succeed, you need to seek professional help for the things you can’t do on your own, be it accounting, branding, content writing, web design and development, printing, or other activities.
Once you decide in which areas you require help, find suppliers or employ people that can do or provide you exactly with what you need. But be careful to choose the right people or companies.
How to choose the right professionals?
In order to find and choose the right people or companies that can help you succeed with your business, always look for professionals that can for sure do or supply what you need.
When looking for people to employ or freelancers to hire, look at their CV (resume), make sure they have enough experience (at least 5 years would be recommended, but it depends on what your requirement is), and pay attention to their values, such as reliability, commitment, positive attitude, loyalty, hardworking, and other similar values. Ask for references from previous employers or clients, and reference work.
When looking for companies to provide you with products and services, find potential suppliers and try to shortlist three of them. Then, evaluate in more details the following aspects:
- Reliability: Does this supplier look reliable? Can you count on them?
- Competency: Are they able to do the job?
- References: Do they have any references from other customers? Do you know anyone who recommends them?
- Quality: What is the quality level of their products and services?
- Price: Are their prices too low or too high? Is the price worth the quality provided?
- Payment terms: Are they accepting payment at delivery, completion, or 30 days (or more) of credit? Do they require advance payments?
- Communication: Are they responsive? Is it easy to reach them and ask questions?
- On-time delivery: Are they delivering their solutions on time? Do you suspect they might not respect deadlines?
While finalising your suppliers’ selection, check if they offer any discounts for long-term contracts and repeat orders. Then, make your final decision. However, if you are not satisfied with any of those you found, search further.
If you want to learn more about how to choose professionals to support your business and which professionals you should have, the Mompreneurs Online Business Handbook covers this part in more details, in addition to many other guidelines, tips and templates for your online business. This is a practical guide to start a successful online business from home, which I prepared by putting on paper my knowledge, experience and know-how, to help you and guide you step by step throughout the business concept, planning and setup processes of your new online business.
Why choosing an experienced marketing agency?
Nowadays, a lot of business is conducted online. As such, having a professional online presence is extremely important. That’s why you need to find a suitable marketing agency to help you with all your branding, graphic design, web design and development, and other digital marketing requirements.
When choosing your marketing agency, you need to make sure that they will be replying and taking action promptly, while providing you with quality designs, website, and landing pages with regular website support and maintenance.
For your branding requirements, you need a professional graphic designer or a marketing agency. However, consider that a freelancer graphic designer might not be the right person to help you with the brand name. In this case, an agency would be more suitable.
If you decide to have a website or e-commerce as your business platform, find a good marketing agency that can develop it for you. Make sure to receive a proposal (quotation) for the website design and development, as well as the price and details for the yearly hosting, support and maintenance. Sometimes, the yearly fee is much higher than the design and development part, so be careful. It would be great if you have a friend that understands these things to have a look at the proposals you receive, in order to help you make the right decision. However, if you have a limited budget, rather go with a simpler website prepared by a professional agency, than with a more demanding website developed by a freelancer or a friend. Although there are exceptions, depending on only one person to take care of everything, particularly the yearly support, is usually not a good idea. What if they get sick or are on holiday just when your website is down? Think about it before you decide.
Digital marketing is another important aspect to consider for your small business. You can have a great solution, a proven business model and a professional website, but if no one knows about your solution, you will not make any sales. If you have never done digital marketing, it is better you either hire a digital marketing specialist (even part-time), ask a freelancer digital marketing professional for help, or a marketing agency. You really need to get this part right, especially for your first promotion.
Lastly, but also extremely important, you need to have a good content. This is valid for your website or landing page, your social media posts, your emails, and any other piece of promotional material you need to have. If you are not experienced in content writing, find someone who is. You might even find a digital marketing specialist that also does great content writing. If not, you can find professional content writers online.
What if I cannot afford a marketing agency?
If you are just starting your own business, you might have limited resources to pay the top marketing agency in the country. And don’t worry, you don’t need to. You can find a small agency in your home town or elsewhere in your country, or even look for agencies in other countries. As long as you speak the same language, everything can be done remotely by email, phone, and online meetings. The global COVID-19 crisis has just proven that.
Keep in mind that there are countries providing quality solutions for lower prices. For example, agencies in Eastern European countries can cost half the price (or less) than those from Western Europe. But be careful not to look only at the price. You still need to make sure they provide you with good quality solutions.
In any case, contact a few marketing agencies asking how they can support you based on your limited budget. You should be able to find an agency that can prepare what you need, or most of what you need, within your budget. There will be probably some limitations and trade-offs, but it is always better to have a professional taking care of your marketing than doing it wrong and don’t get any results.
And if you are thinking to just ask your friend or a student to make the website for you and take care of hosting, maintenance and support, because he can do it for EUR 200, please, think twice. There must be a reason if the price is so low. If not done properly, the website might still look good in the beginning, but if it is not on a safe server, and is not being properly and regularly updated and maintained, you risk for the website to go down, get a malware, or have other issues.
In summary
To summarise, think about which products and services you require from other professionals or businesses, and then look at your options. Within the suppliers’ identification, evaluation and selection process, consider the points presented earlier in this article.
It might happen that one of your suppliers does not perform as well as you thought, or maybe they shut down their business. Don’t worry. If you are not satisfied with one of your suppliers, just go back to your previous shortlist and choose another one. There are many suppliers for the most different products and services you might need. So don’t worry, you will find a good one for your business too.
And if you are looking for more tips to help you with your new business, take a look at the Business Start-Up Tips for Beginners article on the IB4SME Blog.
To help small businesses in these challenging times, at IB4SME we have prepared a turnkey website and promotion package – WEB4SME, available only for the first 20 orders.
