Are you an overwhelmed online retailer? Outsource these five challenging tasks, and you’ll free up enough time to take your e-commerce store to unimaginable heights this year.
You’ve built your brick-and-mortar business from the ground up. You’ve watched sales go from a trickle to a steady stream—but you’re always busy! Small business owners wear a lot of hats. On top of being the CEO (Chief Everything Officer ), you also need to grow. No sweat!
Instead of being “Chief Everything Officer,” there’s a smarter way for you to be an effective leader, to grow your online presence, and have the downtime you deserve for more vital decision-making. It’s called outsourcing, and 57% of small businesses are doing it. Hint: Because it works!
Outsource these five tricky tasks to experts to save yourself the time, money, and energy you’re sinking into them right now. Stop the busywork, offload these tasks, and expand your empire!
#1: Web Design, Development, and Hosting
It’s common for owners in the retail business to shy away from the often exorbitant costs of hiring a web designer and a programmer. That’s why less than two-thirds of small businesses have a website. Unfortunately, doing it yourself can end up being just as costly and a real-time drain.
You have to learn to code or use design software you’ve never heard of before—and it takes years for a qualified designer to produce an e-commerce website design that looks great and functions well. Chances are you’re going to end up with a buggy, B-grade site that struggles to work!
If you’re not already a secret web design or web development pro, it’s a good move to outsource this task for expert support. After all, you may not know how to code, work in your e-commerce backend, or know how to maintain your site with regular updates. You need technical assistance.
Find a team in the outsourcing business that will support your company’s design, development, and website hosting goals. There are some established platforms out there that have made launching an e-commerce website incredibly easy these days. Just pay a monthly fee, and you’ll get a website and a support team without skipping a beat.
#2: Online Marketing
As an online retailer, you need quality online marketing to grow your e-commerce platform sales. Effective marketing is the lifeblood of a high-traffic, high-conversion online merchant. Yet, 47% of small business owners run their own marketing campaigns. Very few are actually effective.
Half of them spend less than two hours a week on those marketing efforts! Marketing is a full-time job. Most successful online stores have teams of people dedicated to it because it’s so multifaceted. Consider email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and paid advertising.
Within each of these are strategy, performance monitoring, and data analysis. Sure, the internet makes it seem easy to learn how to do these business tasks successfully, but you’ll never get the results a marketing team could get for you. It’s far better to outsource marketing for your business.
There are e-commerce outsourcing companies that specialize in helping you promote your store. You’ll pay them for services, and they’ll report back on your progress. You’ll watch your sales climb as your marketing budget does. That’s how it’s supposed to work! You’ll never look back.
#3: Search Engine Optimization
For your e-commerce website to rank in the search engines, you’ll need to get your SEO up to scratch. When you leverage search engine optimization, your company growth can skyrocket—along with your revenues. After all, it’s organic search that brings you over half of your potential customers—not paid advertising.
Even the pros aren’t sure how it works. SEO is a deeply technical field that is heavily focused on ever-changing analytics data and performance tracking. As a store merchant, it makes sense to outsource your SEO so that it gets done correctly and is consistently beneficial.
When you choose to outsource your SEO, you start to rank for target keywords—and customers looking for your products or services can find them in the search results. It’s something that needs to be an ongoing concern because it changes so often. SEO is not a “set it, and forget it” niche.
From link building to keyword targeting and schema mark-up integrations—an expert team will deliver increased website visibility while growing the quantity and quality of your search traffic. As an online retailer, this means more visitors that buy, engage, and become repeat customers.
#4: Content Creation
People need a reason to visit your online store again and again. That reason is excellent content. As Entrepreneur Magazine puts it, “creating content is hard.”
The best e-commerce stores invest a significant portion of their marketing budget into content creation—to create blog posts, guides, videos, images, whitepapers, and other engaging materials.
There are many good reasons to invest in an outsourced content creator. First of all, it takes technical and creative expertise to create quality online content—it’s not just an article—it’s a marketing strategy, an educational resource, and an SEO tactic. Content creators will write, design, photograph, record, and film for your company.
You have to be so much more than a writer to create a blog post or an article. The same goes for other formats because content creation is cross-promotional. Videos can be used in many places and can serve dozens of different business functions. One photograph can become several social posts.
Some 57% of marketing executives say that quality content development is the most effective SEO tactic. No online business can thrive without consistent content designed to build a community around your brand.
The power of outsourcing content creation lies in how supportive it is to all other digital strategies you use. It’s the most time-consuming of all the digital functions, and it takes a blend of creative and analytical ability. Much like web design and programming, you need years of expertise and skill to get it done on time, within budget, and in a way that helps you realize your goals.
#5: Finances
Your finances, accounting, and payroll activities are a great function to outsource. There’s a good chance you’re using accounting software, and at the end of each month or accounting period, you sit for days at a time organizing your financial statements and records.
Accounting tasks may be taking time away from what you are good at doing. Designing your online store website or implementing your marketing, for example. Small business owners say that accountants are the most important people who support them as they focus on their business operations and growth.
Outsourcing administrative tasks (in finance) that lighten your workload will also give you the benefit of perfectly-balanced books, helpful financial insights, and tax benefits too. It’s true that most small companies do their own finances. But if you dislike doing them and would be better off doing other things for your e-commerce business, it’s time to ditch the task.
As an online retailer, you should keep your eye on the books. But sometimes it’s better if you don’t have to create them yourself! Enjoy fewer mistakes, less hassle, and stay on top of financial opportunities as they happen when you outsource your finances.
Online retailers that outsource these tasks can invest more time and energy into the daily operations of their business. In 2020, it’s better to outsource to experts who will get you results than become overwhelmed trying to do it alone.
