Mistake 1: You Try To Do Everything Even When You Can Afford Not To

This is a big one! It is so because it comes disguised as “money saving” efforts in the early stages of setting up a business. Yes, when you are starting up, you are trying to stretch every Dollar (or dirham and riyal) and therefore you end up taking it upon yourself to do everything. That is perfectly fine and I believe that you should experience this at least once in your life to know what it takes to do all these things (it gives you a sense of what is possible and what is not possible, what is costly and what is not costly). But then when you are able to afford outsourcing or hiring people to do these things, please do it, and then focus on the things you do super well AND yield to you the highest return on your time investment.

Think of the following example: You are CEO of a Fortune 500 who is able to type 60 words per minute. You have a secretary who is able to type 40 words per minute. You have a 2 page document you want to create. Knowing that you are faster, do you do it yourself? Or do you leave it to your secretary and free yourself to focus on something that only a CEO can do well?

I think the answer is pretty obvious.

Mistake 2: Outsourcing to too many agencies

I think it is fair to say that this mistake probably sits on the other end of the spectrum compared to the previous point. From my experience, this happens because there is a subjective angle to it. Sometimes it comes because the business owner does not know that there are options where you can deal with one entity. Or sometimes it comes from the idea of not keeping all your eggs in one basket. This is not a bad approach especially when you are dealing with very cheap agencies. These cheap agencies will have a tendency to squeeze you for money every turn (or request). The approach therefore allows you to quickly switch things around. But it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will keep outsourcing to different cheaper agencies (to mitigate the risk) and then one of the agencies tries to squeeze you for extra cash and you changes things up and so on and so forth.

I am not saying do not keep your options open. What I am saying is do your due diligence before giving agencies your jobs and track their performance (objectively and subjectively). You will get a good idea pretty quickly who you can work with AND rely on to be behaving as a business partner quiet quickly. And more often than not, you will find yourself with one agency.

Mistake 3: Outsourcing To An Agency Who Is Not In The Region (And Therefore Lacks Understanding Of The Region)

This has always baffled me. The interesting thing is that even multinational companies do this. They have their reasons like corporate approvals, Global contracts, etc. In the case of small and medium businesses, it is mainly a cost thing.

A lot of business owners do not have the digital marketing experience and background. They have a background in Beauty Care, Food, Repairs, etc. So they neither fully understand what can be done, nor do they have the time to educate themselves to figure out what can be done. And so they eventually end up crossing paths with an agency who promises a lot of good stuff for a very cheap price. Then the problems start popping up. A simple example is: An agency that, is in country Y, is running ads using images that are related to people in Country Y but have nothing to do with your country and audience. Another one would be getting backlinks from websites that tell google to start ranking your website higher in Country Y. This top ranking in country Y is quiet useless for a Microblading or beauty spa in Jumeirah