If I’m trying to save money, what is the best area of my business to outsource?
The following answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs.
1. PPC
Paid search is one of the easiest things to outsource. Most companies don’t need a full-time paid search expert on their team. Outsourcing this is pretty easy and will save your business money in the long term. I personally like 3Q Digital, Hanapin Marketing, Adogy and Wordstream to manage my paid search. – Murray Newlands, Influence People
2. Document Formatting
If you create a lot of presentations and spreadsheets, consider outsourcing the formatting of this to a college student or remote employee who can handle these repetitive tasks. I especially recommend creating step-by-step screen capture videos to explain precisely what needs to be done. –Sathvik Tantry, FormSwift
3. Anything Outside Your Core Service or Product
You may think you’re saving money by trying to do everything yourself, but it’s a false economy. Focus your staff hires on people who perform your core business. Everything else — accounting, payroll, marketing, etc. — can be outsourced. – Mary Ellen Slayter, Reputation Capital
4. Anything You Hate Doing (and Aren’t Very Good At)
There is nothing more frustrating than “trying” to do things well that I am bad at and don’t like. Do what you love, and what you are gifted in. Outsource the rest. It is an expense, but this expense will allow you to be more effective building and generating revenue because you are inspired all day doing what you love. – Matt Shoup, MattShoup.com
5. Payroll and Benefits
Few people are payroll, tax and benefit experts, so it’s best to hire those who are. We’ve found that having one company manage both payroll and benefits simplified our life even more than two separate companies. It’s nice to have payroll automatically adjusted when benefits change — that used to be a manual process to make sure deductions were right with payroll and adjusted with each change. – Angela Harless, AcrobatAnt
6. Human Resources
We use a company called Zenefits to take care of many of the traditional human resources functions. This allows us to spend our timedoing what we do best. – Jason Kulpa, Underground Elephant
7. Content Creation
The best area of a small business to outsource is probably content creation for your blog or website. Plenty of freelance writers are available via sites such as Guru or Freelancer — just be sure to hire writers with industry-specific experience, and pay them commensurately. Remember, if you offer 10 dollars per article, you’re going to get 10 dollars worth of content quality. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
8. Prospecting
Hire a virtual assistant to put together a spreadsheet of prospects. Provide them clear instructions by creating a set of ‘prospect criteria’ (i.e. post Series-A SaaS companies with at least 10 employees that target the Healthcare industry), provide a few ‘prospect outlets’ (i.e. AngelList, Product Hunt, etc.) and recommend a few ‘prospecting tools’ (i.e. BuiltWith, Sales Loft, etc). – Ross Beyeler, Growth Spark
9. Social Media
It takes so much time and can be easily outsourced — just be sure to conduct adequate training in the voice of your brand before giving up full control. – Alexis Wolfer, The Beauty Bean
10. Administrative Support and Personal Assistants
Nowadays, there are much more cost-effective options than hiring someone to handle the routine duties of your business. Virtual assistants can help you in a variety of ways, and even seemingly small tasks can add up to save you a bunch of time over the course of a few months. – Phil Laboon, Eyeflow Internet Marketing
11. Software Development
The best area to outsource is software development because it can be the most expensive. However, you should only outsource development through a service such as Elance if you have a dedicated developer in your company. If you have a developer, he or she can outline specific feature requirements to ensure you get what you’re looking for. – Eric Schaumburg, eventr.io
