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"Imagine a really nice wedding cake. Are you imagining it? Good. Now imagine how that cake would turn out if you tried to recreate it in your own kitchen. \nYou should be envisioning a finished product that, depending on your baking abilities, ranges somewhere from a total wreck to a cake that you could eat but wouldn't enter into a professional cake contest.\nThat\u2019s because you (presumably) aren\u2019t a cake specialist. Pastry chefs are trained professionals who have the knowledge and tools at their disposal to create the best possible product \u2014 one that you\u2019re willing to pay for and one that you\u2019ll be proud of showing off.\nNow, if you\u2019ve started your own company, chances are you\u2019re the type of person who is willing to roll up your sleeves and get things done yourself. But there are some areas of marketing in which the experience of a professional \u2014 administered at the right moment \u2014 can really make the difference between a polished, awesome product and a complete mess. \nHere are five types of marketing professionals your startup should consider hiring.\n\r\n1. Copywriter\r\n\nKids, don\u2019t try this at home. Copywriting is no joke. Left to your own devices, you run the risk of accidentally neglecting key points even if you are a good writer.\nYou won't have very long to capture new visitors\u2019 attention. The same goes for FAQs. You understand the product, so it can be difficult to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn\u2019t. An outsider\u2019s perspective can really help identify the gaps in your content and then help to create that text.\n\r\n2. Copyeditor\r\n\nOkay, so you\u2019re bootstrapping and you don\u2019t have the resources to hire someone to write all the site copy for you. Understandable. But even if you write everything yourself, you should strongly consider hiring a copyeditor. You\u2019ve put months, or potentially years, into creating a product you\u2019re really excited about. Don\u2019t take a chance on diminishing its impact by having typos on your site. You\u2019re likely too close to your own work to notice mistakes, so pay someone else to do it. \n\r\n3. Facebook Marketer\r\n\n\n\n\n\nFacebook is a largely self-serve advertising platform, which means that customers have ample opportunity to create unstructured campaigns that won\u2019t have the best possible ROI, and there likely won\u2019t be an account representative involved to help optimize.\nIf you aren\u2019t intimately familiar with the platform yourself, hire someone to get you set up. Have them take you through various different segments to target, and get their feedback on images, copy, and landing pages to test out. Work with them to set up a system for monitoring which campaigns are most successful as you mix and match different creative and targeting. If you want to see results from Facebook advertising, you\u2019ll have to make it work for you, and this takes not only work-hours but also some knowledge of the platform.\n\r\n4. SEO Consultant\r\n\nDo you know how to structure your URLs so that they\u2019ll be best positioned to garner search traffic relative to your competitors? What about how to populate your meta tags and keywords?\nYeah, me neither. That\u2019s why I work with SEO consultants; getting into this type of nitty-gritty is their specialty. SEO is the kind of thing you want to get right the first time. Changing site architecture to make it SEO-friendly down the line can quickly become a hassle. Spend a couple of hours up front with a consultant who can help you make sure you\u2019ve got everything set up properly. You\u2019ll be glad you did.\n\r\n5. Email Marketing Specialist\r\n\nRemember the part about getting things right the first time in SEO? The same thing applies to email marketing. Once you\u2019ve put in the time and energy to design and build an email template, you don\u2019t want to have to migrate everything over to a different provider if you realize your current solution doesn\u2019t scale.\nIf you think that email might be an important part of your business \u2014 whether through newsletters, alerts, or promotional messages \u2014 it\u2019s worth it to talk to someone who knows the different platforms and can help you find what works best. Anyone who has had to migrate and clean lists of thousands of contacts will tell you that it\u2019s a task best avoided.\nAs an entrepreneur, you probably have an excellent set of useful core competencies yourself. If you\u2019re strapped for cash, see if you can barter your services. A front-end designer might create a simple personal website for a copywriter in return for his or her services \u2014 provided the work hours necessary for each project make it a square deal. \nWhat marketing services are you willing to pay for, and what have you paid for that you wish you hadn\u2019t? Let us know in the comments below.\n\nInterested in more Business &amp; Marketing resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics. \nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, danleap"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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