Outsourcing Marketing

[Fido Dido]

Has anyone had any luck outsourcing marketing?

I'm especially interested in anyone who has done this through elance or an equivalent.

I need a brochure putting together, with flyers, concept and content. I had a look through elance but the mind boggles as to whom to offer the work too.

So I thought I'd see if anyone here has had any experience in outsourcing marketing like this and if anyone could recommend company’s/people they have used before.

Thanks

[Sven]

I'd say marketing is something you need to do yourself. I mean, you may be able to have the actual work done for you but YOU are the one that needs to be responcible for all of it.

This probably means that you must be able to do everything that you want to outsource yourself, otherwise you will not be able to judge the quality.

[kamakiri]

I kind of disagree here. Outsourcing marketing materials is always a good idea. I have all of my fliers done professionally, and the difference is huge.

As an example, the woman who does my fliers currently charges me roughly $300 for the design, and I have a printing house that prints them for about 3 cents each. That low printing cost is because I do 30-40,000 at a time every 2-3 months.

I could probably do them myself now just from the Adobe 'osmosis' from being around flier design for so long, but my time is worth more doing other things, and doing things like fliers stresses me out. I am just not good at the small details. I tend to over revise, where as if I out source it, I get the first draft, make changes, approve the changes and make more, and usually at that point I have a pretty good final product.

I do agree with Sven about marketing in general though. Marketing plans and execution are the keys to success, and must be done by you.

[webgal]

You can outsource the graphics part. But the marketing part you have to be involved in. It's not a handoff. Even if you do outsource marketing, it can be overwhelming.

Below is a link I uploaded. It's a word doc of a one page marketing plan. It's just a primer but gets you thinking in the right direction. You also need to have a "branded" look. Your ads, brochures, website all need to hang together with the same look and message.

http://annemoss.com/pdf/one-page-marketing-plan.doc