A medical transcriptionist working in a medical transcription outsourced environment. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Top 3 Outsourcing Needs for Small Business

Small businesses tend to focus solely on a set of skills in their niche, usually due to a lack of time, resources or man power, which means little-to-no in-house teams to perform specific skills, such as marketing, design, content creation, social media management, strategy development, etc. The list goes on, but small business owners most likely can’t keep track of everything themselves.

The solution to these overwhelming needs is outsourcing. Outsourcing and freelancing allows small businesses to not only operate properly, but to succeed in the long run.

The following are three top outsourcing needs for small businesses that assist in and determine the functionality, look and outreach of small businesses. With a combined effort, these outsourcing needs define their overall success and integration.

Management Consultation

Management consulting integrates businesses efforts, unifies strategies with missions, values and operations, and assists in implementing tactics to succeed in with these strategies and efforts.

· Strategies: Small businesses sometimes need a little nudge in the right direction and the best way to do that is to create strategies that will lead them to where they need to go. Strategies that keep them motivated to stay up-to-date with short term demands of their business and determined to meet long term goals. Outsourcing consulting services that manage these strategies give business owners the inspiration, drive and focus needed to flourish into independent business operators.

· Tactics: Strategy fulfillment is determined by a proper plan from a consultation management service and on the tactics implemented to reach certain goals. Many tiers of tactics exist in strategy fulfillment. For instance, a set of tactics are used to create integrated strategies that utilize the competitive advantage of a business, while recognizing its limitations. Once these strategies are formed, then another set of tactics are implemented to reach goals and achieve strategies.

Design

Technological creativity limits businesses to design their own logos and websites and forces them to outsource such needs.

· Logo: A business’s logo is critical for brand identity and personality. It’s typically the first thing potential customers and searchers see upon finding your business, which is why it needs to make a strong impression. It needs to be clean, effective, eye-catching, relevant and, most importantly, unique.

· Website: When people locate your business online, a well-designed website will determine if they stick around or not. Everything from the color to the information, the layout to accessibility and navigability. Many small business owners won’t have the skills to design great websites and these days great websites are the norm on the online world.

Content Marketing

Many traditional forms of marketing can be performed by business owners, such as choosing the right radio station or television network to broadcast their commercials or putting up a billboard in the local area. However, many other forms of marketing like content marketing, which is almost essential for acquiring and captivating an audience online, are extremely difficult for businesses to perform on their own.

· Content Development: Content creation is almost just as difficult as design. It requires an ample amount of effort and continuous adaptation to speak to an audience and provide unique, fresh material that keeps them engaged and coming back. Writers, videographers and online marketers are outsourced more frequently than other freelancers.

· SEO: It’s one thing to generate content, but to get people to find it is another story. Search engine optimization increases traffic to a website, blog or a specific piece of content, giving businesses better, “natural” exposure to relevant audiences.

· Social Media: A simple, cheap and effective way to talk to an audience. Social media is often taken for granted by laggards or disbelievers, but it does wonders when keeping a business’s brand in people’s minds.

In an age where competition is high and business upkeep is too vast too handle on its own, outsourcing and freelancing is the simple, effective and sometimes more affordable way to get things done. That outsourced need may be to develop a strategy through a consultation management service, to create a logo through a graphic designer or to generate and market content through a content developer, a search marketing specialists and a social media manager. Either way, outsourcing gives businesses, particularly small businesses, a greater to stay focuses and succeed in the long run.

About the author

Erica Peters is the owner of Managers on the Go, a consultation and project management company out of Columbia, Mo. Erica is currently working on her MBA.