TL;DR: Yes. A content marketing agency can make your life easier by promoting your business.
You’re looking to ‘level up’ your content marketing. We get it.
The world consumes more content than ever, and you want more inbound leads for your business.
You’re considering turning to a content marketing agency to make money moves. But where to start?
If you’ve created and implemented a content marketing strategy before, you know all too well how much goes into developing that strategy. The research needed to achieve content marketing success is enough to increase anyone’s blood pressure.
First, you have to develop a strategy. This involves keyword research if you’re interested in SEO benefits.
However, the bulk of it involves creating a plan to outline the goals of your content, personas, the content formats you’ll use, the channels you’ll distribute, and so much more.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Beautiful, ain’t it?
Back to business. So what will the right content marketers do on your behalf?
Keep reading to learn why partnering with a content marketing agency optimizes your marketing efforts.
Looking for a potent content marketing strategy to transform your website into a lead generation machine? NSC is eager to get started!
Get in touch now for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation and learn how we’ll draw more eyes to your business.
What is a Content Marketing Agency?
Successful content marketing demands dedication; it’s not a one-and-done creative service.
You need to be in it for the long haul.
As an entrepreneur, founder, or marketer, burnouts are all too common. There’s simply so much to handle that adding another hat into the mix can be ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back.’
You might find some business apps that make handling the workload easier. But sometimes, saavy apps aren’t enough.
This is where the right team of professionals will help.
Rather than awaiting an inevitable burnout, biding your time, spending time that could be otherwise spent improving your business in other ways – or better yet, spent with family – you have a team that creates and implements a strategy on your behalf.
Agencies live and breathe content marketing. Everything in a content marketing strategy, from email marketing to video production and social media marketing – a marketing team loaded with experts offers services to implement and enhance your content strategy.
So when it comes time to build a content marketing engine, hiring a team to lead the way saves time better spent elsewhere.
Can Month-to-Month Agencies Provide Quality Services?
While potential clients might worry that these services won’t reach their standards, hiring a team that has many clients and fully understands content strategy produces measurable results.
Some agencies require long-term commitments. But clients jumping into bed with another team’s services isn’t always the best move.
This is where the services with a monthly commitment really shine.
Month-to-month agencies offer more value to clients by proving themselves month after month through quality services.
Without the hefty commitment, you’re not married to the outsourced team. So if the marketing services don’t meet your expectations, it’s as easy as canceling and finding a new provider.
But how do these interactions work exactly? What can you expect throughout the month?
The month begins with a scheduled strategy call. This keeps your marketing partners in the loop with any new happenings worth focusing their services.
For example, if you’ve released a new product or are adding to your services, video production to be shared via social media marketing could be the move to spread awareness.
After the strategy call, the team creates a strategy for the month. This includes angels, topics, themes, channels content will be published on, and more.
Oh, and the best part? The quality stays high because that marketing team has to earn your business month after month.
Benefits of Partnering with an Agency
1) Better Ideas (and More of Them!)
Are you really driving the success of your company by choosing an idea and running with it?
Of course not.
Focusing on a single idea is stagnant. Just because you think an idea will work doesn’t mean it’s not important to analyze every aspect of your company.
An analysis can reveal a lot about your brand. Brain-dumping ideas after gathering this information helps with coming up with on-brand ideas.
Choosing a creative content agency to work with means you can focus more on your business while expanding your idea pool. Coming up with fresh content ideas is time-consuming, and we all know how time drains affect productivity.
As a founder, it’s easy to get engulfed in your brand. This is why it’s good to have a creative content agency that can take a step back and look at the brand objectively. The right team will highlight flaws, suggest creative improvements, and plan every move in alignment with your brand’s goals.
Is this on-brand? How should we word this to appeal to your target audience?
The questions content marketers ask themselves while creating your content guide encourages high-quality content production your target audience will appreciate.
2) Brand Guidance
Do you already have experts guiding your brand? You might have someone who specializes in advertising or perhaps a team member working on public relations.
Some companies even have an email marketing expert on-hand to ensure all emails are on-brand.
However, hiring In-house gets rather pricey, especially in the San Francisco Bay area.
According to Salary.com, Brand and Content Marketing Manager salaries in San Francisco, CA usually range from $118,200 and $157,600.
That’s a big expense and a serious commitment.
Outsourcing your content marketing to a team of experts means you’re getting expert opinions at a fraction of the in-house price. This is the collective experience you can rely on – without the hefty price tag of salaried employees.
With more brains to focus on your brand, your brand will expand. You’ll also have a cheer section for any successes your brand experiences.
Establishing a relationship with a marketing agency means the content comes from deeper within. The content is more likely to stay focused on your brand and your audience because their team understands your brand, mission, and values.
For example, after creating content for SPP.co for over a year, we understand the ins and outs of this SaaS company better than any other content marketing agency.
SPP found that its target audience was more interested in technical content relating directly to its software.
After learning about its audience’s needs, we began creating content specific to SPP’s software based on this insight. We created content to educate SPP’s clients about the software and its features.
It’s important to create content with Google’s search engine results in mind. But the content is primarily for people.
Content should always focus on what’s best for your brand’s long-term success. Whether publishing textual or video content, working with a team long-term will help guide your brand.
3) Strong Brand Content
Having a team of content strategists planning your brand’s content means producing really great content. Quality content creation involves understanding a brand’s audience and promoting thought leadership through on-brand content.
Someone strapped for resources might have to settle for a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. However, when it comes time to build a strong brand and reputation with incredible content, strategic implementation goes a long way.
Branding as a thought leader in your industry means becoming a lead-generation magnet.
You attract curious visitors to your site by publishing authoritative content.
At NSC, we don’t simply create content; we learn about your brand, analyze your audience, research your competition, and make targeted decisions based on these analyses.
You’re looking to rank in search engine results. Or perhaps you’re interested in increasing the quality of your leads. Maybe you want to become an authority in your niche.
Regardless of your content goals, dominating the competition and reaching your audience is possible with a team of content strategists and creation experts leading the way.
4) Content Production Efficiency
Fulfilling a content marketing strategy means having a steady flow of content creation. While distribution is essential, having that constant flow of value-driven content will help your brand gain recognition as an authority.
Imagine – you’re marketing your website and your blog is empty. Who’s really going to trust your business after seeing that?
A company that’s not specializing in content creation will have difficulty fueling a strategy in-house. These companies typically have to hire freelancers, which makes maintaining a common voice throughout their content challenging.
Sure, you can have a Style Guide in place. But unless you have a top-notch editor on your staff, keeping the voice consistent will be tough.
Some companies attempt to add the pressure of content creation on a full-time staff member’s workload. The problem here is that while a company has professionals in-house, adding content creation to the mix decreases the quality of a person’s work.
For example, if you ask one of your sales reps to create content, that takes time away from selling your products or services.
Simply put, when you drop content creation on a staff member’s workload, the time can be better spent elsewhere.
Also, specializing in a subject doesn’t necessarily mean a person will create engaging content.
Just because your sales rep knows your product doesn’t mean he or she knows content.
Let’s not forget about the time and expertise it takes to brainstorm, create, publish, and promote each piece.
You’re an expert in your field. But having a team of experts responsible for creating and marketing content ensures you’ll reach your audience without impacting the quality of your deliverables.
Content Marketing: Culminating Your Digital Presence
So are digital marketing agencies capable of providing a winning content marketing strategy?
Perhaps. But it’s important to know that content marketing is unique in comparison.
For starters, content marketing includes a wide range of content. But basically, your content strategy should include a variety of content types, the channels you plan to publish on, any paid advertising you plan to do, and more.
You can include social media marketing under this umbrella of services too. Clients looking for these services could also request SEO as part of their services package.
Regardless of whether the location of the client is in Boston or New York City, these location-independent services can generate additional revenue by selling potential clients a program that includes content marketing services.
So what’s the difference between digital and content marketing?
Well, content marketing uses content to market your brand. With digital marketing, they tend to focus more on sponsored ads and retargeting. However, social media marketing, as well as several other services, are facets of both.
To make a long story short, it makes sense for a digital marketer to offer content marketing services, regardless of whether or not they’re an expert at providing these services.
But should you really go with a marketing team that focuses on other services?
The answer shouldn’t surprise you. However, a digital marketer can fabricate stories of success. With so many “bells and whistles” included in their programs, they’re encouraging potential clients to overlook that they don’t specialize in content.
Marketing content is a serious business. So it should come as no surprise that a company offering these services should specialize.
While experience in agency digital marketing can make someone an expert on the subject, it’s better to find someone with technical knowledge of content creation and strategy to provide these services.
Do Other Brands Outsource to Improve Their Content Marketing Efforts?
The short answer is yes. But do they outsource enough?
Most brands are outsourcing content creation in one way or another. This includes blog posts, SEO, infographics, lead-generation e-books, marketing emails, product descriptions, and more.
While outsourcing content creation to freelancers is strategic to some degree, it’s not a long-term solution. Building your brand’s audience is where agencies come out on top.
Push the marketing agents and “marketing gurus” aside. Your best bet is to partner with a team that’ll create AND implement your content strategy – and get to know you, your company, your brand, your SaaS, etc. as they do it.
If marketing content is the name of the game, you need a team to stay on top of things. But content creation is just one step of the process.
Any content marketing campaign demands fresh content for Google love. Video production, graphic design, audio content, and textual content all work together to make your campaign a success.
The campaign program in its totality should include someone to analyze the data to see what’s working too.
For example, during an email marketing campaign, you want to know your open rate and click-through rate. This shows what email marketing efforts your audience engages with the most.
With this insight, you can improve your public relations, conversion rate, click-through rate, and more. Progress becomes measurable when you check your analytics.
But do you have time to analyze every aspect of your content marketing progress? If you’re busy focusing on sales, managing your business, and other day-to-day activities that pay the bills, probably not.
Your next project could be coming any day now, and to have a team analyzing and improving your content marketing and lead generation is valuable.
Other brands are outsourcing content marketing campaigns to drive traffic. How are you creating, publishing, and promoting your content?
Can’t I Just Handle Content Marketing on My Own?
Every introvert’s dream is now a reality. You can sit in your room – all by yourself – marketing your business.
Reaching an audience has never been easier with so many tools available. However, there’s more to it than setting and forgetting a magic lead generator.
First, you’d craft a style guide, create a strategy, and highlight the audiences you want to target. This involves an analysis of the competition, keyword research, and then, of course, content production.
Once you’re done creating and editing the content, you can publish it across several channels you mapped out in your strategy. Wait a bit before analyzing the data to improve your strategy.
Even though you could technically do all of this yourself, it all takes time, resources, and, of course, expertise.
Some people would rather develop a marketing strategy for themselves. If you’re an expert, it’s not a terrible idea.
But even if you’ve already created your strategy yourself, partnering with the right team to fulfill it increases your chances of success.
Whether you’re operating a SaaS that should begin focusing on search engine optimization in San Francisco or a law firm in Washington, content marketing agencies make life easier.
Closing on Hiring a Content Marketing Agency
Content marketing services take away the pressure of wearing multiple hats. As you assign experts to handle the strategizing and creative aspects of your content marketing, you’re bringing on a team to attract, educate, engage, and influence web traffic.
The strategic implementation of creative content paired with digital advertising will increase your business’s visibility. However, a strong content strategy still requires analytics to determine how it’s performing.
For inbound marketing, the right content goes a long way. Having a team of experts working alongside you will help you achieve your brand’s content goals.
Looking to scale your content marketing efforts? The NSC team is eager to get started!
Get in touch for a complementary, no obligation consultation and learn how we’ll get more eyes on your business.
