You’ve probably seen the famous quote around before – “If you think its expensive to hire a professional to do a job, wait until you hire an amateur!” but it is ever so true in the Web industries.
At least once a week when I meet with new clients or even existing clients I hear them say that their son, daughter, niece, nephew, next-door-neighbour or other such connection is capable of doing the services that I am suggesting they purchase from me.
I could be wrong… but…
Now I could be wrong – some of these friends and relations might indeed have studied web technologies to degree level, and have maintained this ever-changing knowledge to current industry standards. They might have access to the latest tools and technology to achieve the job in the best possible way, and the experience to learn from successes and failures of past projects. I just doubt it!
In todays world, your exposure on the web if often the first time that any new prospects will come into contact with your company. Are you really prepared to risk the chances of having your business, its reputation and brand and authority damaged by a D-I-Y amateur who (even with the best intentions and will) could potentially damage this and destroy your business?
“My son can do my facebook marketing – he’s really into all that stuff”
I’m sure that your son has a facebook account. Most of the UK population with living parents have one these days but does he really understand how the mechanics of facebook work? Does he understand Edgerank or know how to use the Paid advertising channels? Does he know the differences between facebook business pages or groups or the personal account he most likely uses and how to choose the right ones for the right job?
Can he setup competitions or special offers to drive loyalty to your brand, or encourage people to like your business and share your information with their own networks. If he can then get him to do this for you but if not then be careful…
“My Daughter built a website once and she did some search engine optimisation with this. I’ll get her to optimise my website”
I hope that your daughter kept up her knowledge as search engine optimisation standards change at a very quick pace. Also, “doing SEO” means quite a lot to different people and there are many many ways to be going about this with the best intention but with devastating effect. I even see lots of very skilled website designers “have a go” at performing SEO on the websites that they build and for the most part they get it wrong. Search Engine Optimisation requires specialist knowledge and should definitely not be attempted by an amateur.
“Why do I need to use an email marketing program when sending with Outlook is Free?”
There is a long list of reasons why and i’ll tell you a few. When amateurs send out bulk messages using Outlook or any other email client, they usually add all of the addresses one after the other to the “To” line in the email. This lets everyone who receives the message know who else you are contacting and also shares your email address with all of these people. Additionally there will be no automatic unsubscribe facility to keep your messaging legal and compliant, and no reporting will be available to let you know who has opened and clicked on the information you have sent them. And lets not forget ensuring that the design of your messaging works on all modern browsers and email clients and that the content will not get trapped in any spam filters. Think i’ve said enough here…
So to summarise, it can be much more expensive to hire an amateur to complete website design, Search Engine Optimisation, Email Marketing or indeed almost any “professional service” jobs. The damage that can be done by an amateur is not worth the risk and the costs to put right the mistakes and errors can be huge. My advice – whether you choose to come with Eseyo or not, is to use a professional who knows what they are doing.
