Modern Marketing 101: Some Jobs Require A Pro

by Randy Murray on July 30, 2014

Here’s a little story that may help bring a marketing issue into focus:

Yesterday my wife and I decided to tackle a little home improvement project: replacing the existing front door hardware handset and locks.

Simple, no? How hard could it be?

It turned out to be very, very difficult. After three hours we had it installed and functioning, but the fresh paint job on the door was destroyed and the handsets were crooked. It looks like crap. And now we’ll have to hire someone to come and do it right. It might require a new door slab.

The hardware we ordered is beautiful, but there were no instructions and none online. About two hours into the job we realized that they were intended to be installed by trained and experienced professionals. The cost of professional installation would have been cheaper than what it will cost us to fix the mess.

What marketing job are you trying to do on your own where you really should be bringing in pros? I write for businesses, mostly big ones, and a lot of them call me in after trying and failing to launch and maintain content marketing programs, write white papers or web site copy, and more.

And time and time again my clients tell me that working with me is faster, cheaper, and more effective that trying to write something important on their own, even though I charge a premium commensurate with my experience and abilities. I look every expensive by the hour, but a great value by the results.

It’s so easy to waste time and money. “How hard could it be?” should be a warning sign.

It is almost always less expensive to hire a pro and get things done right. But go ahead and screw up on your own to prove that to yourself. How hard could it be?

Modern Marketing 101: Some Jobs Require A Pro by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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