matthewwoodward.co.uk http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/grow-business-outsourcing/

Outsource These 6 Tasks To Grow Your Business Rapidly

You know that feeling when you a make a big (ish) sale online?

(If you haven’t yet, here is an AWESOME post on how to make your first one)

Magical right?

Here is a screenshot of a recent one of mine:

A grand total of $1,097.00 (don’t ask about my pricing strategy ;)) for a Play Store App Promotion service, hardly alife changing event but significant none the less.

And can you guess what made it that much sweeter?

I personally put zero time into the marketing and delivery of this sale (directly).

But how? (I hear you cry!)

By effectively building a team of awesome virtual team members.

I like to call it Efficient Outsourcing.

And in fact, in the 18 months or so that I have owned this business a week rarely goes by when I invest more than2 hours into it’s operation.

And yet it still churns out an average of $1k net profit per month (that is after I have paid the wage of the virtualteam member running the business).

Last week we looked at a selection of time hacks for marketers but in this blog post, I will explain exactly how wehave outsourced our online businesses and most importantly…

How you can too.

What You Will Learn

The tasks that you should not be doing if you want to grow your business

The formula for outsourcing any task in your business effectively

A step by step guide to outsource any tasks (including templates)

Have you read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber?

If you haven’t, go pick it up from Amazon here and cancelyour plans to go bowling tonight.

It is simply a MUST read for any entrepreneur.

However, if you don’t like reading here is my 30-secondsummary:

You can group every task you complete within your businessinto one of three categories:

1. Technician – Writing sales copy, handling customerqueries…

2. Manager – Recruiting, reviewing performance of team…

3. Entrepreneur – Defining strategy, researching newmarketing channels…

Michael basically says that in order to be successful in a smallbusiness you must shift more of your time from the Technicianto Manager to Entrepreneur categories.

And it is from the Entrepreneurial position that you are able tocreate a system that will operate without your direct input.

And now, your next non-mandatory piece of homework for this

assignment

But again, I am feeling kind so will share what I believe to bethe most important concept from the book:

Employees – Work In A System

Self Employed/Contractors – Are Systems

Entrepreneurs – Build Systems

Investors – Invest Money In Systems

Pretty simple right?

So I would urge you to close your eyes RIGHT now and behonest with yourself:

Which category do you currently spend most your time in?

Because this post Is all about building your ability to becomemore of an Entrepreneur, to build a system that generatesvalue for your customers AND captures value for yourself andyour shareholders WITHOUT your direct involvement.

This releases your time to do whatever you wish:

To sit around eating pizza all day, to go hiking or to startanother business…

The Efficient Outsourcing Formula

After spending five years in outsourcing: three in the corporate world and two in the online marketing world, I havedeveloped the following simple, four step formula to effectively outsource any task or process.

Step #1 – Identify Tasks To Be Outsourced

Spend 1 hour thinking about your business and where within it, you spend you time.

Then simply download this free tool that we use in our online businesses to identify which tasks and processeswithin your business are outsource friendly.

You will need to enter each task you operate in your business in the “Tasks” column and then input a numerical

value between 1 and 10 into the next 5 columns.

The tool will then provide an opinion as to whether this is a task that should/shouldn’t be outsourced in yourbusiness.

Did you know that Matthew himself spends 3 hours logging into over 200 affiliate accounts every month manuallyto get the numbers for his income reports?

That is a perfect example of working in the system rather than building it and is a task that he should beoutsourcing – bad Matthew!

Step #2 – Perform The Tasks To Be Outsourced

This is the crucial step that most people miss.

Once you are aware of the tasks that should be outsourced within your business it is vitally important to have agood idea of how the task or process is performed yourself.

This enables you to both optimise the process and to understand how much time needs to be invest to achieve thedesired end result.

Step #3 – Create Working Procedures

And for my third and final book recommendation: Work The System by Sam Carpenter.

It’s an awesome story about how Sam turned his small business around from chaos to a well-oiled machinethrough the use of documentation.

Each process you outsource must have an associatedWorking Procedure – a document detailing exactly how theprocess is performed in either written, image or video format.

Here is the Working Procedure template we use in ourbusiness:

And here is an example of a completed working procedure for the creation and posting of social media content forone of our online business.

For bonus points, you can use Screenflow to create videos of you/your team members completing the process.

Step #4 – Train Your Team

If you are the person that has created the Working Procedure for each process in your business then it is yourresponsibility to train the person who will be taking the responsibility in the future.

To do this, we perform both:

Forward Job Shadowing – You operate the process whilst your team member observes

Reverse Job Shadowing – Your team member operates the process whilst you observe

It is only when all four of these stages are complete that you can step back and allow the process to operateindependently of yourself.

One of the biggest mistakes with outsourcing is a lack of training and the expectation that everyone knowsprecisely how you want things done.

The better the training you provide, the less time you will have to spend managing people.

6 Online Marketing Tasks That You Should NOT Be Doing Yourself

So now you aware of why you should be outsourcing AND also the step by step process to outsource any taskefficiently, let’s get into the 6 specific online marketing tasks that you should NOT be doing:

#1 Managing Your Social Media & Content Strategy

Every online business needs a social media and content strategy, as let’s face it, content is the language of theinternet and your social media accounts are the megaphones (if used effectively).

Furthermore, a content strategy cannot be effective without a well thought out social media strategy (and viceversa).

So, to build an audience of die-hard fans that love (and share) your content you need to consistently invest time ina number of tasks consistently day in day out.

Managing content production

Scheduling content

Keyword research

Researching content pieces

Ensuring social content is native to each network

Creating a posting schedule

Reaching out and interacting with your audience

Ensuring leverage of niche relevant hashtags

Time, which for you…

Could be better spent elsewhere.

This is your first opportunity to engage the four-step formula for outsourcing outlined above…

And to help you on your way-

Here is our social media posting schedule sheet

Here is our content schedule sheet.

Want to learn more about our content and social strategies? I send out my best actionable and bootstrappedmarketing tip each Wednesday and you can jump in here.

#2 Keyword Research

There are parts of the keyword research process that SHOULD NOT be outsourced and those that definitely can.For example, you must define the high level strategy, though the time spent to gather data in the category youtarget, is a great candidate for Efficient Outsourcing.

It is also crucial to track ranking for your targeted keywords over time to enable you to measure the results of yourSEO efforts. This is the template we use, feel free to make a copy and then download.

#3 Filtering Emails & Managing Your Calendar

Waking up to a pre-organised and filtered inbox and calendar is a wondrous feeling.

It leaves clarity of mind, which you can use to direct straight into your most important tasks that morning.

However, in order to set this up with your virtual team member you need identify strict guidelines:

Folder structure and guidelines

Structuring calendar invites

Time availability

Emails to unsubscribe to

Emails to reply to

For the following tasks:

Replying to/unsubscribing from and categorising emails

Collating content for your consumption

Monitoring Google Alerts for specific keywords

Scheduling and setting up appointments

To do list creation

Finally, it is important to note that outsourcing email and calendar management is definitely a learning process andthe greatest time rewards will be experienced after a number of months working with your virtual team member.

#4 Managing Your Email Lists

Growing your list is a crucial task for every online marketer, and guess what?

These time sucking activities do NOT classify as “List Growth” tasks:

List hygiene

List segmentation

Subject line analysis

Scheduling auto responders

Simple replies to customer requests

No, these tasks come under the category of “Email List Management”, and fortunately, these tasks are idealoutsourcing material.

Thus as your list grows, you are able to continue to focus on the high leverage “List Growth” tasks, enabling furthergrowth.

#5 Customer Service

As social media amplifies the effect of word of mouth marketing, it is of paramount importance that your customerexperience is flawless.

Now, you may feel that as business owner you are able to provide the best customer support…

And you are probably correct.

However, is that the best use of your time?

Would your customers prefer that you spend 4 hours per day addressing menial support tickets or developing thatvalue new product they have been waiting eagerly for?

Ok, so as ever, let’s follow the four step formula for Efficient Outsourcing, perform the “Customer ServiceRepresentative” role for a couple of days, create the Working Procedure and then hand over to you enthusiasticvirtual team member.

#6 Recruiting & Managing Virtual Team Members

It is likely that after you have effectively outsourced the above 5 tasks that you have been able spend significantly

more time working “on” your business as opposed to “in” your business, which unsurprisingly leads to growth.

So what next?

You need to grow your team.

We personally like to follow the old adage: “Hire Slow, Fire Fast”.

As “getting the right people on the bus” is of paramount importance to the success of any business.

Thus, it is best that you as the business owner, has the final say on each hire you bring into your business, thoughthat does NOT mean you have to perform the following tasks that consist of a robust recruitment process:

Advertising vacancies

Screening candidate CV’s

Initial interviews

Designing and distributing test tasks

Candidate communication

BONUS – Social Media Buzz

Ok, here is a sneaky little bonus…

Over the past 2 years of failing miserably with social media, I have finally found the secret.

Not that it is a really secret, in fact, it is blazingly obvious, it’s just that I was too selfish to realise.

For me, the key to being effective on social media is by reaching out and making an effort to develop relationshipsfirst, not waiting, selfishly posting your own links for people to come to you.

And if you do this consistently over time, you will build real, genuine connections with people and will ultimatelygain a following.

So how do you do this?

By taking small steps each day to reach out and appreciate other people’s content.

e.g.

Liking, commenting and sharing on Facebook

Favouriting, retweeting and replying on Twitter

Liking, commenting and following on Instagram

Liking, commenting and sharing on LinkedIn

And you can probably guess what I am going to say next…

Yes, some of these tasks do not need to be completed by you (I do NOT advise completely outsourcing yoursocial media presence).

You can instruct your virtual team member to complete a number of actions each day on each social mediaplatform and over time, you will be amazed at the increased engagement you have with your own posts.

WARNING – I would be hesitant with to outsource commenting on any social media network until you arecompletely confident of your virtual team member’s judgement and tone of voice.

Wrapping It Up

Ok, so we have been through:

The tasks that you should not be doing if you are looking to grow your business

The formula for outsourcing any task in your business effectively

A Step by step guide to outsource each tasks (including relevant templates)

Awesome right?

You simply cannot beat the feeling of getting your first “zero direct time” invested sale!

Because trust me when I say that the initial time invested into efficient outsourcing will definitely be worth it.

However, if you do not wish to wish to spend your valuable time on recruitment, you could pop over to Virtual

Valley and hire an awesome Virtual Team Member in 5 minutes and 7 clicks (yes we timed this as we havespent months built a fully curated database.