3 Things You Should Outsource in Your E-Commerce Business

Why did you start your own online business?

Of course, it’s because you wanted to bring an exciting idea to life.

Of course, it’s because you wanted to make some money.

Most of all, however, you were thrilled by the idea of maintaining a flexible business that lets you find that work/life balance.

That’s one of the best things about running our e-commerce business – you’re not tied down to regular working hours, but you still have an opportunity to develop a successful brand.

Unfortunately, the activity of maintaining an online business is not as laidback as it initially seems.

Many people start because they think it’s easy, but end up giving up on the idea once they fail to achieve great results from the very beginning.

The word out there is that 90% of new online businesses fail within the first four months after they were launched.

Whoa!

You don’t want to be one of “those” business owners, right?

You want to be successful, so you’ll take things more seriously.

When you take things seriously, you realize that an online store requires much more work and dedication than you initially assumed.

As it turns out, you’ll still need a team to help you deal with all tasks.

Otherwise, you’ll be left with too much work and you’ll be doing most of it in a superficial way.

What things should you outsource, exactly?

For an e-commerce business to work out, here are 3 Things You Should Outsource in Your E-Commerce Business:

Table of Contents

Content Marketing

High-level content marketing could easily consume over eight hours per day.

Think about it:

You need at least one hour to search for a new topic and keywords to target.
You’ll spend at least three hours to write and edit a single long-form post.
You’ll spend at least half an hour promoting it on different social media platforms. Then, you’ll keep checking out comments and responding to them throughout the rest of the day.
What about guest posting? You’ll need two hours to search for blogs that would accept your guest post. You’ll have to contact the webmasters and arrange the terms.
Then, you’ll spend three more hours to write and edit a long-form guest post.

If you do this alone, you’ll hardly have one post per day.

That won’t make your marketing campaign that effective.

You need your brand name featured in as many posts as possible.

Content marketing also involves creating descriptions for visual content on Facebook and Instagram.

How do you cover all those responsibilities on your own?

There’s only one answer to that question: you don’t!

“It doesn’t just take a person; it takes a whole team to take care of the content marketing process,” – says Kerri Wilson, “You have to be an experienced writer to produce engaging content, which would hit all the right spots with your audience.

Plus, you need to be experienced in marketing, so you’ll plan the campaign and measure its effects.

You need some graphic design skills, too!

Content has to be accompanied with great visuals.

Even if you are all these things, you’ll still fail to produce content on a regular basis and maintain a business at the same time.”

So it’s best to outsource this part of your work.

You can hire a marketing agency, writing service, or freelancers to work under your instructions.

Accounting and Financial Analysis

Sure; you could use accounting software.

That’s cheaper than hiring an accounting firm.

But is it easier?

Not if you have to do it all by yourself!

Having good software does not make you knowledgeable about the requirements and regulations regarding taxes.

When you’re not experienced in accounting, you might easily face IRS auditing due to improper tax filing.

You may also miss out on deductions.

Plus, bookkeeping is a time-consuming task, no matter how easy DIY software ads make it look like.

An accounting firm might be a bigger investment, but it’s worth it if you plan on maintaining a successful business.

The firm will also cover financial reporting, analysis and planning tasks.

These reports will definitely drive your business further if you know how to use them to your advantage.

Customer Service

Be honest: can you really sit all day in front of the computer, answering questions of current and potential users?

Customer support is a 24/7 job! If you do it yourself, you’ll hardly have any time and energy left for any other tasks related to your business.

Each e-commerce site absolutely needs a great customer support system!

Did you know that more than 50% of Americans have given up a planned purchase because of bad service?

That’s how important this aspect of your business is.

If someone contacts you for more information and you fail to deliver a personalized response, you’ll lose that potential customer.

Moreover, you’ll lose many other potential sales, since one happy customer would purchase again and would recommend you further.

If your e-commerce business has little or no staff, you’ll be left with email or Facebook messaging as the main customer support channels.

That would leave people waiting for answers, so they will definitely have an impression that your customer support is not effective enough.

Most of them expect instant answers.

You may solve this matter in two ways:

Hire customer support agents, or
Outsource this task to a service that will cover the tasks of managing and monitoring email, real-time chat, voice calls, phone calls, SMS communication, and all other aspects of a customer service.

Outsourcing will cost you money, but it usually costs less than hiring employees and paying them to do this 24/7 job for you.

Needless to say, you’ll gain tons in return for this investment, since your online business will instantly become more credible in the eyes of consumers.

Chatbots are another option to consider.

Still, you must realize that they cannot solve complicated issues; so many customers will still need to be connected with an actual agent at some point.