The question of how to delegate effectively is a fair one.
Many business owners are overwhelmed and unsure of how best to lighten the load. For some, namely sole proprietors, the challenge is even worse.
If that’s you, you know what I mean. Every hat is your hat. Every job is your job.
And for the person who is stretched thin, marketing is a legitimately challenging task. Many hope for referral marketing machine to kick in to reduce the time they spend prospecting, but for some, this never really happens. At least not for a while.
This is why every small business owner should learn how to delegate effectively for marketing success.
But I don’t have a team!
Well, this is where you’re both right and wrong.
Today, we live in a different world than the world of just 10-15 years ago. Many of the large companies you interact with on a regular basis work in an entirely distributed (or, remote) workforce.
Consider the example of YNAB, the financial education and software company that has been helping people break free from debt, get on a budget, and transform their lives since 2005.
Back in 2016 when this article was written, they had over 40 people working from home!!! They have grown a lot since then, and still maintain a distributed workforce.
The relatively short article claims all you really need to make this work is intention and attention.
Could it really be that simple? Seems to be working for them!
But this doesn’t help your problem, right? They have a team, but you don’t, right?
Let me ask you this: Why don’t you have a team?
To have a team, and therefore to delegate, all you need is a handful of trusted contractors whose services you call upon as needed.
Yes, that’s really all.
In fact, that is exactly what I do, here. A dirty little secret? Skyview Marketing is a one-man-show. Except when it isn’t!
I work on a regular basis with graphic designers, website developers, copywriters, and administrative professionals that help me get more done in less time, get work done that lies beyond my comfort zone and/or expertise, and—frankly—do work I just don’t want to do myself.
And there are no rules, here. It might be that I work with all of the above professionals in any given week. Or, it may be that I do everything myself for a few months, and when business really picks up, I delegate things out. Or, it may be that I take on a project that requires a specialist to achieve certain goals.
So the first step is to begin cultivating a mindset of delegation. This isn’t necessarily easy, even if is simple. In my opinion, it’s much harder to build a mindset of delegation than it is to actually delegate work.
But doing this work now to cultivate this mindset will repay dividends when it comes to growing your business.
Marketing
The point of this blog post is now to teach you how to delegate step-by-step. Rather, it is to show you how you can delegate in order to improve your marketing efforts.
Again, this starts with a mindset shift. When you delegate, you are buying time. When you think about it, this is something incredible.
Time is the one thing that we cannot get more of. We all get 24 hours each day. However, when you delegate, you can actually extend yourself (or better) and buy time to get more things done.
Here are some ways to use that time:
- Do your networking and marketing while you delegate the work. Probably the most common way to make use of delegation is by allowing others to work through tasks while you
- Delegate marketing work that is directly tied to income. Cliff Ravenscraft tells the story in one of his Virtual Assistant Podcast episodes about how the first task he assigned to his assistant at the time, Andrea, was following up with parties who had expressed interest in ordering podcast equipment from him. In a sense, this was psychological trickery—but in a sense it wasn’t. The work wasn’t necessarily hard. It was sending emails! But someone had to do it, and someone was him until he delegated the work. It was easy for Cliff to justify his expense because of how much work he knew he’d have to do to make these sales if not for Andrea.
- Delegate marketing work that boosts brand awareness. Marketing for awareness purposes can be one of the most frustrating things ever. Why? Because it’s a long-game and, to be honest, can feel like a waste of time. I love to write—but that doesn’t mean I love taking the time to write. In most cases, it’s not exactly easy to create a one-on-one correlation between writing a blog post and making a sale, especially now when sales funnels are more complicated than ever. This is why, from time to time, you will see a blog post that was written by “Team” instead of me. One of my writers can create useful content that will live online for years to come and create brand awareness for me down the road, while I spend my time now working on projects that are directly profitable.
- Finally, delegate marketing work that is tedious. Cold-calling and email list-building—these are both common forms of marketing, although the former was more common in days past than it is today. They have one thing in common, though: There’s lots of “tedium” involved in making them work. Cold-calling involves building prospect lists, following up with prospects, managing those relationships, etc. List-building involves managing the list, creating new opt-in’s and opportunities for connection, etc. You can create the content in these funnels and deliver the final service, but delegate all the tedious in-between activities that make it all come together.
While this is nowhere near an exhaustive list of what you can do, hopefully I’ve inspired an idea of how to make this work in your own business context.
Take this and run with it! Use it to create processes in your business that can bring in prospects and help you grow.
To your success!
— Steve
