Tammy Barton, Founder and Director of MyBudget
If you run a business, you’re probably aware of the importance of digital marketing. With digital platforms becoming more a part of our daily lives, maintaining an online presence for your business is crucial.
In fact, consumers use a wide range of digital tools and platforms when they’re looking to buy products and services – even if they’re looking for businesses to deal with offline. That’s why many small businesses are turning to digital experts to help them reach more customers online.
Here, we talk to founder and director of Australian financial services company MyBudget, Tammy Barton, about her experience with outsourcing digital marketing. Keep reading to learn how digital marketing has helped Tammy scale her business and how you can find more customers with the right digital strategy.
Tammy Barton: The very first time we outsourced digital marketing was back in the Yellow Pages days, in 2006. They had a product called ‘Click’, a simple model where you paid $1 per click, a little like pay-per-click on today’s Google Ads.
Tammy Barton: Digital marketing is crucial to any business. It provides the ability to reach a global marketplace and understand an audience, while allowing consumers to engage with your product or service. This goes a long way to developing brand trust and loyalty.
Essentially, we were able to track responses to our marketing efforts immediately, which was really helpful. This is really important as it allows a business to get a good sense of the return on investment (ROI) on its advertising dollar.
Tammy Barton: Once you reach a certain size, you should have dedicated internal resources.
A major advantage of in-house digital marketing is that your employees are already familiar with your brand’s mission, goals and vision. They are also aligned with your business’s processes and procedures. When you have an in-house team, you’re also able to contribute to brainstorming sessions and get progress updates on a regular basis.
However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call on outside resources. We currently run a dual-sourcing strategy with in-house capabilities in certain areas and outsourced ones in others.
Tammy Barton: While we use external agencies to help with social media ads strategy, we look after our own social media posting to ensure that authenticity and tone are consistent. Controlling your own social is also a good way to stay connected with your clients and marketplace, to gauge what they are saying and feeling about your product or service.
Tammy Barton: Picking the right partner is key. You need someone who understands and cares about your brand (for us, alignment of values is very important).
Further, companies have their own particular strengths, so don’t rule out using different ones for different projects.
Lastly, it’s important that you know what you’re looking for in a partner. Ask yourself: “What skills are missing from my business?” Then be sure to work collaboratively, with clear expectations to make sure all parties are on the same page.
Tammy Barton: Absolutely. Digital marketing can help you be hyper-targeted, collect wonderful data and track your return on investment (ROI). People are on devices all the time, and we need to ensure we’re speaking to them in that space consistently and in a way that resonates with them. At the end of the day, this is what digital agencies do.
Hiring an external agency to carry out your marketing goals can also free up space to focus on other aspects of your business.
This article does not necessarily reflect the views of Telstra or its staff.
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