Too many times, as small businesses, we fail to think about paying for marketing services. As Forbes points out, sometimes that can be a fatal flaw in our planning.

While keeping a lid on marketing expenses is critical, at some point you have to pay up if you want to drive sales.

While competitors invest in online and traditional marketing, some business owners insist on doing it themselves — especially at professional firms. If you fall into that trap, consider this analogy.

You and your wife are building a new house. It’s your dream home and you’ve spent months drawing the plans yourself without assistance from an architect. You then start pouring the foundation, one bag of concrete at a time without a cement crew. The foundation is a little crooked, so building the frame yourself gets complicated quickly. Plus the rooms don’t quite line up right since you changed the floorplan at the last minute without updating the architectual plans.

This scenario doesn’t make sense does it? Doing your own marketing doesn’t make sense either. As professionals we think we can do it all ourselves. Architects think they can do their own accounting. Accountants think they can do their own legal. Lawyers think they can do their own marketing. And while yes, in theory anyone can spend $95 and build themselves a website, it’ll look just as ugly as the house you built on your own.

So whether you hire Flat Creek or one of our clearly sub-par competitors, bring a marketing professional to the table as you talk about your organization’s future or as you look for ways to sustain growth. It will be well worth the investment.