8 Things Your Business Can (and Should) Outsource

Small Business Outsourcing: 8 Things Your Business Should Outsource

If you want to scale your business upwards, the key is small business outsourcing. Click here to learn about 8 things you can and should outsource.

Whether your business operates online or in a retail setting, competition is becoming more fierce than ever.

Online there are almost 1.9 billion websites competing for internet user’s business. In retail, there are a virtually uncountable number of brick-and-mortar stores vying for a shrinking chunk of consumer spending thanks to the growth of eCommerce.

Customer and sales scarcity is a big-time threat in today’s marketplace. That means assessing your processes to boost productivity is critically important.

To help you achieve that end, our team has put together this article on small business outsourcing. We have compiled a list of tasks your business may be managing on its own that you should absolutely be paying somebody else to do.

Our hope is that with our guidance, you will free yourself up to invest your greatest resources in the tasks that will provide the largest returns.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is perhaps the most effective way to drive customers to your online business. It’s also one of the most time-consuming marketing efforts as it takes an ability to craft outstanding articles, videos, and more on a consistent basis.

If you’re scratching your head on how you can budget the time to create a killer content marketing pipeline or if you’ve dabbled in doing this in the past to no avail, kick this task out to professionals.

There are a ton of content marketing firms that will produce effective written and visual materials for you. Bringing one of them on as a contractor is well worth the investment.

2. Bookkeeping and Taxes

There are a lot of small business owners out there who, armed with an excel spreadsheet, do all of their own bookkeeping and taxes. Not only is going about managing your money this way extremely time-consuming but it can actually be more costly than hiring an accountant.

Given the risk you run of missing out on massive tax breaks managing your own books or the possibility of getting audited, an accountant is well worth their rate.

3. Administrative Tasks

There is no reason why you should be handling your own appointment setting, low-priority email queries, note-taking, etc. etc. etc.

Basically, anything you are doing that a secretary would do for $10.00 an hour is something that needs to come off your plate. To get started handling this small business outsourcing must, head to your favorite search engine and search “virtual assistant”.

There are many people out there who will be more than willing to take menial tasks off of your hands so you can free yourself up for lifting heavier things.

4. Customer Support

If you sell goods and services that garner queries, compliments, and complaints from customers, there are a lot of organizations that can help you.

Customer service specialists can field all of your customer related needs via chat or even through 100% US-based telephone operations.

With outsourced customer service, your customers can talk to someone faster, get their issues resolved quicker, and that will lead to a higher overall rate of retention.

5. IT Needs

There is nothing worse than dealing with computer related issues that keep your business from running productively. Rather than kicking the side of your computer or spending hours on hold with different product support teams, you should extend your small business outsourcing list to IT.

Outsourced IT teams offer companies a host of benefits. These benefits include lower costs, a centralized resource for all of your tech needs, and multiple people servicing your company which leads to faster problem resolution.

Here’s an example of an excellent Managed IT Services Provider.

6. Social Media Management

It’s no secret that social media offers small businesses a tremendous amount of opportunity to capture client leads at little to no cost. Platforms like Facebook see over 2.2 billion people using its platform on a monthly basis!

To connect with a portion of social media’s user base, you need to publish timely content and engage with your audience on a constant basis. Doing this effectively is time-consuming and is why we advocate that companies lean on external agencies for their social media needs.

7. Advertisements

Advertising on social media or through Pay Per Click platforms like Google can net you a lot of impressions and conversions.

Writing effective ads that capture people’s attention is an art. For that reason, it’s best that you not waste your time creating nominally effective ads and instead, work with an agency or freelancer that can do a better job at a lower cost.

8. Your Weaknesses

While the above list suggests the small business outsourcing of some of the most common tasks organizations like yours get bogged down in, only you know what you need help with.

To that end, write down the tasks that both take up the most time in your day and the tasks you’re the worst at. Then, figure out what the value would be, both monetarily and otherwise, if those tasks could be taken off your plate and done twice as good as you do them.

This exercise often pushes people to not only identify outsourcing opportunities but inspires them to outsource now!

Wrapping Up Small Business Outsourcing Musts!

If you run a small business, you know that competition is strong and growing. To stay ahead of the curve and maximize your operation, you need to start taking small business outsourcing seriously.

To get started, consider outsourcing some (or all) of the tasks we’ve listed above. Doing so will not only improve the quality of those outsourced tasks but will free up your time to do things that will truly move the needle for your organization!

Are you looking for more expertly created content to help take your business to the next level? If so, check out more of our content on Small Business Brief today!