This is a guest blog post, courtesy of Karen Reyburn of the Profitable Firm.
Recently I was mulling over the amazing positives and the potential disaster that is outsourcing. I’m a huge fan of outsourcing, and use many outsourced workers, freelancers, and strategic partners in our online marketing business.
But someone asked me whether I’ve ever made a huge mistake when outsourcing, and the answer is, “yes”.
So, here are my thoughts on that mistake, and how your creative agency can (hopefully) avoid making it!
The first danger you face when outsourcing is to expect this to magically sort all your problems. You’re swamped, too busy, exhausted, but not quite ready to hire new team members. No problem, you think, I can just outsource it. And you imagine that all these tasks will just tick away in the background while you focus on what you really love to do, whether it’s the creative work or the networking or marketing and sales.
But, as often happens particularly with other creatives, problems start to crop up. Delays. The person you’ve outsourced the work to has other ideas than yours. They work slower, or faster, than you do. They have an opinion on everything – or you want them to have an opinion, and they don’t. You find you’re spending as much or more time answering questions and becoming a manager, not a creative.
Not quite what you wanted.
Well, the same thing happened to me. My biggest mistake was to simply throw a bunch of information at the outsourcer I had hired, and left it with him.
The project was a new website. We needed a template chosen and then the layout and copywriting prepared. We had all the rough strategy work done – our outsourcer was supposed to take all the various bits and pieces and choose a template, set up the basic layout per page, and do all the copywriting for the site.
I did talk to him initially – shared some files and documents, gave him the big picture, the recording of our call with the client, and highlighted what we were looking for. But mostly, I trusted him to use his creative energies – which were substantial, by the way; he’s a very talented worker.
But when the copy came through, it was a disaster. The wording was corporate and stiff, it didn’t match the style of the client I knew very well, and I felt like I could have done better to copy and paste from a demo WordPress template.
Worst of all, I ended up having to do all the copywriting myself, our website team had to spend hours choosing another template, and they had to transfer everything from the first development site to a new one. We took a huge hit on profits for that project.
Fortunately, I learned a valuable lesson about outsourcing. Three things I would recommend you do if you’re going to outsource anything for your creative agency:
The better the brief, the better the work.
I know it feels like you’re spending far more time than you wanted, but trust me when I say that spending even 1-2 hours on a clear, detailed brief will literally save you days of time. If it’s a complex project with multiple elements, you may need more than one brief (or more than one outsourcer!).
Regular check-ins will ensure project completion on time.
Identify several key check-in points. Set target dates. Ask questions, or let them ask questions – even if it’s just a quick email or a 10 minute chat. That way you catch issues before they become issues.
Recap the project when it’s complete.
When everything is done, have a recap discussion with the outsourcer, and talk about what worked, what didn’t work, and how to address it next time. Make sure that they are happy, too. If you get a loyal outsourced worker, it will save you time in the long run.
You may need to try a variety of outsourcers.
Ideally, you grab someone from People per Hour, or Odesk, or Fiverr, and everything goes perfectly.
In the real world, you may have to try four or five people, or sites, or sources. It is well worth it to have multiple outsourcers on the go at the same time. It’s far less expensive than hiring a full time employee, and if it goes well, you will have twice as much of what you’re outsourcing (or it will be done at double the speed). If one of them doesn’t work out, you’ve learned a good lesson.
May your outsourcing truly save you time!
By Karen Reyburn, Marketing Guru for The Profitable Firm
