If you’re just beginning your small business marketing, the choice between paying to hire a professional to do your small business marketing is a hard one. You probably feel compelled to do everything yourself. Not only will that save you from paying someone else’s fees, but you’ll also have more control.

But to be successful in your small business marketing you have to be forward thinking. Doing your own small business marketing today may hurt you in the long run, even if hiring a professional today seems like a financial stretch. Here’s why:

1.Doing your small business marketing yourself – from your taxes to your graphic design – may seem like it’s saving you money, but it may not be. Think about what you would be doing if you weren’t trying to figure out TurboTax or Microsoft Publisher. Would the alternative bring you in more money in the long run? If so, then by all means, hire a professional.

2.Think about your impression of other small business marketing materials. You’ve probably seen your share of cookie-cutter websites, logos that were constructed in Paint, business cards that were printed out and cut at home. What did you think of those businesses? The adage may be that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but the fact is that we do. Your prospective customers will judge you by your small business marketing materials. So if you don’t have the expertise to make your small business marketing materials professional, by all means hire someone who does.

3.Even if you do have the talent to create professional-looking small business marketing materials, trying to create your website on your own can be risky business. Unfortunately, the world of html, java script, and flash is a complicated one that’s most often best navigated by professionals with experience (and computer science degrees!). Website creation packages like Publisher, DreamWeaver, and FrontPage may advertise that they’re easy to use, but unless you’re very tech savvy, you may end up creating more problems (like a website that’s not search engine friendly – the small business marketer’s worst nightmare!) than solutions.

Fortunately, in today’s global world, you don’t have to limit yourself to your own town – or even country – to find a professional to help you with your small business marketing. And while you may not want to hire a tax professional in India to prepare your taxes, there are a lot of service providers in other countries willing and able to do high-quality small business marketing work at a fraction of what you’d pay a U.S. provider.

That said, doing your own small business marketing yourself (some of it at least) is not always a bad idea. Creating your own contact lists, for example, is one small business marketing activity you can easily tackle on your own – saving you hundreds or thousands of dollars over buying the list from a firm. Fortunately, the Internet offers a wide variety of good advice for do-it-yourself small business marketing.