Picture this.
A client or potential client calls and asks, “I know this isn’t your normal type of work but can you <name any slightly related task that a layperson to your field would think ‘is close enough’ and insert it here>.
There was a time when my response to this question would be “Sure! It’s not something I normally do, but let me take some time and figure it out.” And you know what? You know just how much time that would take to try and “figure something out?” Let me clue you in: a very, very long time.
We rarely want to be in a position to tell a client “no,” right? But here’s the thing… we would be in a worse position if we tried to tackle an area of business we don’t yet know and we used our client as a guinea pig.
Here’s an example:
We used to handle social advertising in-house. I even had a weekly meeting with someone from Meta’s Ad Manager department and she helped me craft campaigns and improve the creative for our clients’ paid social. Her name was Barbara. She was a gem to work with. At some point though, Facebook’s “customer service” decided it was time to pull the plug on my calls with Barbara and have me start over with someone new. Hey Facebook – don’t do that. We didn’t gel as well, he was really just trying to get my clients to spend more money, he didn’t care at all about their needs and objectives. So I stopped those meetings and eventually Ad Manager grew into such a behemoth of a beast that running ads in there was completely out of my league. So I had two options:
- Find a paid course to learn how to run specialized campaigns. This would not be inexpensive, would take a ton of time and there’s no guarantee I’d understand it any better.
- Bite the bullet and outsource it.
I chose option 2. I reached out Jason Falls, a longtime mentor, and asked “who do you know that can work the way I do – flexible and malleable by client but who really specializes in advertising on social?” He didn’t take a breath without introducing me to Nick at Avocado Digital and from that day on, he has managed all ads run by our clients and the ROI is there.
So. you might be thinking, “but how did you have the extra cashflow to pay him?” I had a small amount of time inside of our retainer to cover my administration time on the ads. That now goes to Nick each month (I pass it through from the client to him). Sure, there were a few months there when Nick needed time to get things set up and needed to speak with the client directly to get the right permissions set, and I paid that out of pocket because it wasn’t my client’s fault that Meta had gotten so cranky and I needed someone else to help our team out. It was worth it. It was a temporary time when we were paying out more than was coming in on that line item, but now it’s all under control and working well.
The same is true for web development, SEO, PR, etcetera. Sometimes we even outsource graphic design. Just because you are outsourced, does not mean you are a jack of all trades. Stick to what you’re good at.
Why try to be mediocre at something when your client is looking for excellence and specialists exist that can provide that excellence?
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