These guides answer the three questions owners ask before handing their marketing to someone else. What should I hand off? Is it cheaper than hiring? And what should happen once I do? Each guide gives you a method, a worked example you can redo with your own numbers, and the mistakes to avoid.
They are written for trades, home-service and independent local businesses in Greater Victoria, but most of the advice works anywhere. Use them with us, with another provider, or to brief a new hire.
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The first 90 days with a done-for-you team, week by week
Month one is cleanup and tracking, month two is the first real campaigns and content, and month three is when you can start judging the numbers. Here is what each stage should look like, and the signs that it is going wrong.
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Hire a marketing person or hand it to a team? Do the sum first
Compare the full cost of a hire, not just the wage, with the full cost of a team, not just the fee. Then compare what each gets done. This guide gives you the worksheet and a worked example you can redo with your own numbers.
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What to hand off to a marketing team, and what to keep
Hand off the repeatable, technical and time-hungry tasks. Keep the decisions, the customer relationships and the raw material only you have. This guide sorts every common marketing task into one of those piles.
What to hand off to a marketing team, and what to keep
Read the guide. It sorts every common marketing task into two piles: work a team should take over completely, and decisions or raw material only an owner can supply.
You will learn why most hand-offs fail on a fuzzy split rather than a lack of skill, which seven things should always stay with you, and the five safeguards that keep you in control when someone else does the work. It includes a before-and-after table of a typical owner's marketing week, so you can estimate how many hours a month you would get back.
Read this one first. Every other decision depends on knowing where your part ends and the team's begins. If you only have ten minutes, skip to the keep list; it is the part owners most often get wrong, usually by holding on to routine approvals that slow everything down.
Hire in-house or go done-for-you? The cost maths
Read the guide. It gives you two worksheets: one for the full cost of hiring a marketing person and one for the full cost of a done-for-you team.
The hire worksheet covers the lines owners forget, such as payroll costs, tools, training, the owner's own management hours and the gaps when someone is off or leaves. The team worksheet covers fee, GST, website work, tools and your remaining time. A worked example uses round, illustrative numbers to show the arithmetic, and a scoring exercise helps you compare what each option would actually get done.
It also sets out honestly when hiring in-house is the right call. If your business has a full role's worth of marketing work and someone to manage it, a hire may serve you better.
The first 90 days with a done-for-you team
Read the guide. It walks through the first quarter week by week: the hand-off call, the takeover month, the first campaigns and content, and the month when the numbers become worth judging.
You will see what each monthly report should contain, why a baseline matters so much, and a seven-question scorecard to run on day 90. A list of warning signs tells you when a provider is not doing the work, whoever that provider is.
How to use these guides
A practical order:
- Read what to hand off and write down your split.
- Fill in the cost maths worksheets with your own figures.
- If a team wins, use the first 90 days guide as your checklist and hold the provider to it.
For the services behind these guides, see the services page. For plan prices, see the pricing page. And if you would rather talk it through than read, the contact page explains how to reach us by call, text or email.
What we will not put in a guide
We will not publish salary surveys we cannot verify, invented case studies, or promises about what your rankings will be. Where a guide touches on payroll, tax or legal questions, we point you to your accountant, lawyer or the relevant regulator. Our case studies are results from our HVAC work and live on the results page, clearly labelled.
Frequently asked questions
Are these guides only useful if I hire Victoria.Team?
No. The worksheets, checklists and warning signs work with any provider or with a hire. We wrote them so owners can make a good decision either way.
Which guide should I read first?
Start with what to hand off and what to keep. It sets the split between your work and the team's, which every other decision depends on.
Do the guides include real Victoria data?
Where we cite regional facts, they link to official sources. The worked examples use illustrative round numbers, clearly labelled, so you can replace them with your own.