Many entrepreneurs want to do everything themselves. And who can blame them? Their necks are on the line if something isn’t done right. But a good entrepreneur knows her strengths and weaknesses. A good entrepreneur knows when to delegate and what to delegate.

If you are trying to start a business and you don’t have time to create your own marketing materials, or you don’t know the first thing about how to go about creating marketing materials, you should consider outsourcing.

Before you outsource your marketing campaign, you need to decide on a target market and you need to know your budget. Then you’ll know who want to hire based on expertise, and you’ll know who you can afford to hire.

Here are the basic types of outsourcing support you can use to help create your marketing materials:

Marketing Agency
A full-service marketing agency can provide many services to you, and probably many things you’ve never even considered. A marketing agency can do your Public Relations, design everything from brochures to your Web site, buy your media placement, write all of the copy for your marketing materials and can recommend a good full-service printer or a more specific brochure or postcard printing company.

A marketing agency is probably your most expensive option because they staff experts that only work on one aspect of marketing – the copy writer only writes, the designer only designs. And agencies charge by the hour, much like a lawyer. You could have four or five staff members working on your account at once, which means hourly rates of $100 to $300 are not uncommon. But, you get multiple brainpower and professionals with all levels of experience working on your marketing campaign.

They’ll take care of everything – even advertising placement. You won’t have to do a thing, except sign your approval. Depending on the size of your campaign, you’ll need at least $100,000 to use a marketing agency for a full marketing campaign. Keep in mind, though, that you can hire an agency to just do one part of your campaign.

Freelance Copywriters and Designers
Using freelancers can be somewhat cheaper than using a marketing agency. Of course some established duos or trios comprised of copywriters, designers and perhaps an artist might function like small marketing agencies. Anymore, with so many people having their own Web sites, it can be easy to find a writer and designer that can work well together, and that have many years of
experience. It’s also possible to find people with expertise in creating marketing campaigns for your industry.

You can place a free ad on Craigslist.org or on a freelance job board, like Elance.com. On Elance.com, you post your project and freelancers bid for your business. This makes it even easier because the freelancers come to you.

Media Buyers
If you don’t use a full-service marketing agency, you’ll probably need help in creating a media schedule and buying schedule, that places your ads in magazines, newspapers, TV stations, and wherever other media you want to see your ads in.

Media buyers negotiate rates and contracts on your behalf, and they generally make a commission of 15% for their services. This commission amount is pretty standard for marketing agencies too.

Marketing Coach
There are plenty of marketing gurus out there that work on a consulting basis. These people will look at your marketing budget and goals and figure out a strategy for you to follow to meet those goals. Coaches won’t do the work for you; just advise you on how to find marketing agencies, freelancers and media buyers along with printers and many other resources you’ll need for your marketing materials.

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