Every business owner knows that keeping a company going takes a serious investment. Time, energy, and of course money, are all required to grow your business and make it stand out in your specific industry. It might seem pretty obvious that the more you put into your business, the more you’ll get out of it, but is that really true? Business owners must not only invest, but invest wisely, in order to make it. Owners that are unwilling to increase their marketing budget, or create a budget in the first place, will find themselves struggling to stay afloat within a short amount of time.

The question that many business owners face is where to invest their marketing budget – in-house or with an outside marketing provider? Drew Hendricks of Inc.com calls it “every marketing department’s dilemma” when considering whether to keep everything in-house or to send certain projects to an outside party. The fact of the matter is, regardless of what you’re doing, you have to be willing to spend the money to make the money. You can maintain more control over an in-house staff, but you might not have the financial stability to hire the two or three employees that it will take to manage your paid advertisements, search engine optimization, and other marketing efforts. Outsourcing or hiring freelancers means you don’t have to worry about providing benefits and vacation days for full-time employees, but you still receive quality work from experienced professionals.

If you choose to outsource your marketing efforts, you have to be willing to invest enough money to make it worthwhile. In a 2013 Forbes.com article, online marketing expert Joshua Steimle talked about a reasonable budget and the costs related to outsourcing, and that if you don’t have the capital to invest, it might not be a viable option for you at that time. You have to take into account what your competitors are spending and how they’re spending it, and according to Steimle, if you’re not willing to invest at least $3,000 a month for outsourced marketing efforts, you’re going to find it hard to boost your online visibility and increase your return on investment (ROI).
The bottom line is that as a business owner, you have to be willing to invest wisely in effective marketing services. Chalking it up as invaluable simply because you feel that you don’t have the time or money is only going to hurt your business and your ROI. Whether you keep everything in-house, or you contact an outside company to handle your marketing, putting money towards best practices will help your business grow and increase your profits. There are many factors to consider when selecting your approach to marketing and it can take time to sort everything out, but not having an approach at all will prove to be worse than anything else you do for your business.