For what they do, training wheels are a useful thing. Before a kid can ride a bike on their own, the training wheels mean they won’t fall off. But eventually, they will be unnecessary and will restrict where the bike can go, so they need to come off. Judging that moment is tricky. The child may need to go cautiously and will have some early errors, but as they pick up confidence, they’ll move faster and more freely.
As in learning to ride a bike, so in business. Early on, you’ll need a lot of help to iron out the areas of weakness. But as time goes on, you need to be able to throw off the shackles. By calling in consultants to help you with the things you cannot do, you may get through some tricky early moments. But the more you can do in-house, the more freedom you’ll have. Not only that, the more money you’ll save.
Branding: You Know Your Value, So Underline It
In the early days of a business, it’s okay to hire brand consultants to make your company stand out. But as time goes by, you should be more confident in the merits of what you are doing. As you seek to build your profile, you may want to go back to those consultants.
But think for a moment: what is branding? To paraphrase https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/branding it’s how you tell customers who you are. You know that stuff – so why not take this task on yourself? Admittedly, you may still need to hire a graphic designer if you don’t have one in-house. But it’s always useful to have a graphic designer on staff anyway.
IT/Networking: Take The Strain Out Of Integration
Anyone who has worked in a business with its own dedicated systems knows how necessary their function is to an office. If they flow smoothly, so does the business. If they require constant tinkering, then work hours are lost and money is spent fixing and testing them.
Imagine having to hire consultants every time there was a problem in the systems. Costs like this, and the downtime that resulted, could be ruinous to a business. Not to mention the angry phone calls from clients who don’t seem to understand that when the system is down, you can’t do a lot for them. Using services like https://adeptia.com/products/b2b-integration.html, you can integrate systems more smoothly. And support is a phone call away, not a long diagnostic visit.
SEO: A Learning Curve Worth Following
To be a successful business these days, your website needs to be on point. And as anyone will tell you, this means it needs to be done with SEO in mind. There are countless consultancies that will help you with this in the early days. But do you want to hire a consultant for that, every time?
You can learn how to do SEO yourself. It takes time, but there is a lot of information out there on how to do it. Failing that, it is worth hiring someone full-time as a digital coordinator. Every business these days needs an online presence, and having someone in place to do it properly is worth the cost.