SAQ #10 – Can You Automate or Outsource Your Online Marketing?

You’ve made it to the final SAQ (should ask question) in this series and I hope you have implemented some of what you’ve learned so far. Today we’re discussing how much of your online marketing can and should be automated and/or outsourced. Coming from an online marketing consultant the answers may surprise you.

So check the final video of the series and let me know your thought and questions. I look forward to our continued conversation.

Bye for now,

Brian J Devine

You can always read the transcript below if you would prefer:

Hello, its Brian Devine here, your online marketing consultant. We are going to be covering the very last question, question number ten of the should-ask questions list. And that question is, “Can I automate and outsource all of my online marketing and still be successful?”

I really want you to be asking that question. because the answer, believe it or not, is yes and no. You can outsource and automate all of it. The question is, will that be effective? So that’s where the question sort of shifts to, no, you probably don’t want to automate and outsource all of it.

So how do we make this the right ratio? I am going to go ahead and say you probably want to do about 30% to 40% of it on your own and then outsource/automate all of the rest. And we did talk about in lots of the other questions that we answered earlier how to outsource a few of those things, but let’s talk about what you really want to focus on.

Let’s start with your blog. You want to have a blog. Please take the time to do it, find somebody on your team who is willing to make that happen or outsource it, let us do it. Sesame Communications can do it for you. There are companies that are going to make that work.

However, I want you to really consider what the value is of your voice in this online marketing system. So that’s where the answer kind of shifts to no, you have to be able to put your voice into this social media.

And what’s happened is in the online world we have reached this place where everything is transparent. No matter what you are doing or saying in your marketing, because people can post anything online at anytime, at any moment, anything that actually happens in your office is fair game. We live in this world of transparency where if you are not out there promoting yourself in your own way, it doesn’t work very well.

So I have put a few of these posts on my blog brianjdevine.com. You can take a look at some of the posts, but what I have been finding is that some of these offices that have been outsourcing this kind of marketing, this blog marketing or this article marketing, it’s very clear that they are outsourcing it.

Because when you start reading it you realize, “Wow, this wasn’t written by a doctor, nor was this written by anybody in the United States, nor is it written by somebody of any real understanding of orthodontics or of the practice or of the area that they are in.”

So that’s why you want to step back and say, “OK, I can automate certain things using the RSS feeds and all of the WordPress plugins, but there is still a certain amount that you want to make sure that you’re doing on your own so it’s in your voice and that you are in control of that conversation.

So think of all of your online marketing as a conversation between and your visitor, you and the viewer, whether its video, articles, blog posts, your website. Whatever it is, it really is this conversation and the ability for people to now make comments on it makes it a two-way conversation, not just a one-way.

So that’s why, yes you can automate it, yes you can outsource it, however, you still want to be involved at a certain level. Now, if you as the doctor just say, “I don’t have time. I can’t possibly handle anymore, especially if it is going to feel like uncomfortable marketing,” then find somebody on your team that can help you do it.

And if you can’t find somebody on your team to help you do it or you’re not confident that you have somebody that can do that, give us a call, we can help you because it’s really just a matter of you taking a few minutes, and I mean a few minutes, to make a comment on something. And now we have new content to build your online presence.

Maybe it’s about taking a few minutes during your week to say, “This has been interesting to me and I want to share it.” And we put that all over the place, and there are things like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube. All of these places where you can just spend a few minutes to make sure that your voice is involved, and then you can have everything else outsourced and automated.

So hopefully that gives you some more food for thought. I’ve covered 20 of the top questions that either have been asked or should be asked. So if there’s anything else that you need or if there are any other questions that you have, let me know what they are.

Feel free to go to brianjdevine.com. Go to orthovideosnow.com and see what we’re doing over there. And if you would like to take advantage of everything that we offer, give me a call, shoot me an email. Put your email and name in any of those forms and we will get in touch with you to see what might work out. I look forward to it.

Have yourself a great one. Let me know what we can do to be of service.

That’s it for today, bye for now.