The Real Cost of Doing Your Own Marketing as a Small Business Owner

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Written by Melissa Woods

I’ve yet to meet a new business owner who sees marketing as a non-negotiable from the off. Most people see it as a luxury, and so they try to do it themselves to save money.

But guess what?

Doing your own marketing actually costs you a fortune.

Not because you're bad at it (although you might be)

But because every hour you spend creating content, thinking of hooks, writing captions, writing blogs, sending emails, updating your website.. whatever it may be — is an hour you're not doing the things that actually get you paid.

And that adds up faster than you think.

Here’s the maths that nobody does

Say you spend five hours a week on marketing — that's content creation, social media, emails, website updates, and anything else that helps your business continue to be discovered…

And say you’d like pay yourself more than the minimum wage because this is your business, right?

Five hours at £35 an hour is a modest estimate for most small business owners — that’s £175 a week.

£700 a month

£8,400 a year

On marketing you probably don't enjoy, aren't sure is working, and keep putting off until you absolutely have to do it.

And this is the bit that really stings.

Most small business owners aren't spending five hours a week on marketing. They're spending significantly more. You kind of have to. And a lot of it happens in the evenings and weekends which is not quite the dream you had when you decided to start your own business.

And it's not just about the money

The financial cost is significant. But the hidden cost is worse.

When you're the one doing the marketing, you're never fully doing either job. You're a business owner trying to be a marketer. A marketer trying to run a business. Neither gets your full attention.

Your marketing efforts ends up inconsistent — attempted when you have time, skipped when you don't. Your social media goes quiet for weeks. The email you meant to send never gets written. The blog post ideas live rent free in your head. And you just feel like you can’t keep up.

Here’s what you could do instead

Get a virtual assistant.

When I was building my business, I literally was this person. I couldn’t afford to employ anyone, so I spent thousands of pounds, and hundreds of hours, learning how to do everything myself. And while I don’t regret it, I often longed to deligate certain tasks to someone else who knew what they were doing. And as the years went on, I did have a couple of my own VAs to help lighten the load.

The Big ZigZag retainers start from £175 a month.

For that you get five hours of hands-on virtual assistant support — social media, email marketing, content creation, website updates, Canva graphics, whatever your business needs most.

That's less than most small business owners spend in a single week trying to do it themselves.

And instead of squeezing marketing into the gaps between everything else, you get consistent, intentional, on-brand output by someone who actually knows what they're doing.

The question is can you afford not to have a VA for you marketing?!

If you're spending hours every week on marketing that isn't working as hard as it should be, I’d love to hear from you and see how I can help.

Get in touch →