Ready to outsource your content marketing needs? Here’s how.
Content marketing plays a crucial role in any successful marketing strategy. However, marketers feel the effects of this time-consuming process. In fact, 45% of marketers say they spend about half of their time creating marketing content in a typical workweek—and more than a third are spending about 75% of their total time on content work.
If you can relate, you know how overwhelming content marketing can be, especially as your business grows. You need to ramp up your content production to reach more readers—easier said than done, right?
For those feeling buried in blog posts, emails, landing pages, social media content, and everything in between, there is a solution—the option to outsource content marketing. Seeking talent and skills elsewhere may be the ticket to sustained growth.
What is outsourcing content marketing?
Outsourced content marketing is when you hire external professionals or agencies to handle some or all of your content marketing activities. Some companies hire out their entire digital marketing services, seeking assistance with everything from creating content and running social media accounts to setting up ad campaigns and conducting market research.
As a marketer or business owner, you know the value of content. Whether you want to build a loyal social media following, increase traffic, or boost your SEO rankings, you can reach those goals with content writing. However, high-quality and relevant content writing takes immense time, effort, and skill.
SMBs are beginning to outsource content creation to third-party agencies to address this challenge. Doing so frees their time and energy to focus on other big-picture tasks.
Benefits of outsourcing content marketing
Content creation is a lengthy task at the heart of any content marketing strategy. Your content should reach the right audience at the right time, so you must consider content scheduling, content strategizing, and data analytics.
Consider the following advantages of outsourcing content marketing.
Saves time and money
It's hard to justify the hours spent creating and managing content if you're trying to grow your business. Content marketing outsourcing helps take those tasks off your plate while providing the expertise you lack in-house.
As Jason Wise, chief editor at EarthWeb, notes, "Outsourcing allows for expertise that might not exist in-house. Content marketing agencies have a team of professionals specializing in different areas such as SEO, copywriting, social media, and more. They bring in-depth knowledge of the latest trends, techniques, and tools that a small business might not have otherwise."[1]
Secondly, content outsourcing is cost-effective. It saves businesses from the expenses associated with full-time salaries, benefits, and training costs. Plus, you pay only for the services you need, making it a flexible solution.
In addition to saving time and money, outsourcing gives you:
The ability to focus on other business operations, driving growth.
The opportunity to improve SEO, your ranking, and website traffic—especially if SEO strategies are outside your wheelhouse.
/ Tip
If you don't have the budget to invest in outsourcing, be more particular about what you want. Do you need help writing blog posts and social content? Start there, and as your ROI improves, invest in more operations based on what makes sense.
Publish new types of content that are on-trend
You should invest in varying content types to meet your audience's different preferences and learning styles. However, you may not have the bandwidth or experience to do so.
Gartner's 2022 Tech Marketing Benchmarks Survey revealed that growth organizations (those that reported an increase in revenue the past year) tend to use more content types than non-growth companies.[2] The types you choose will depend on your business. An agency with experience and its finger on the pulse will know what's on-trend, leveraging tactics to boost your ROI.
/ Tip
Before you choose a content marketing agency, develop a clear content strategy outlining your objectives, style, target audience, preferred metrics, and content topics. An agency can help you in these areas, so you should be open to their recommendations. However, being part of the process is equally crucial.
Finding a content marketing agency
The benefits of outsourcing your content marketing needs are vast, but how do you know if this is the right step? How do you find an agency that fits your needs?
Before searching for an agency, consider the following questions:
What are your team’s weak points? High-quality and authoritative content can be challenging to write, especially when optimizing content for SEO. Can your team craft engaging content that ranks in search engines? If these aren't your strengths, outsourcing can help you ensure quality content that converts.
What is your team’s bandwidth? You may lack the time it takes to create content, especially while your team is busy with other marketing campaigns or strategies. If you cannot give content marketing the time and attention needed, consider outsourcing at least some of your ongoing tasks and operations.
Remain mindful of key qualification criteria
If your goal is to create and incorporate more content types at scale, it's a good idea to leverage an outsourced content marketing agency. Taking this step will ensure scalability, flexibility, and depth.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 62% of technology marketers outsource at least one content marketing activity. However, they struggle to find partners with adequate topical expertise (65%) and who understand their audience (41%). So, to find the best fit, ensure the right content marketing agency offers expertise that aligns with your needs.[3]
To guide this process, ask questions across these categories:
Contextual: Ask about the agency's experience with niche industries, its understanding of trends, and how it approaches understanding its clients' targets, objectives, and audience.
Technical: Can the agency strategically create content, taking content to the next level? Ask how they stay updated on best practices and use content throughout the customer's journey.
Functional: Gauge how authentic the agency's claims are, asking questions such as: What is the most complex project you have completed? What marketing strategy do you most often implement? How do you adapt to industry trends, and how does that influence how you recommend tools, processes, and technologies?
Operational: How an agency coordinates externally and internally can make or break a partnership. Ask how the agency measures client success, handles mistakes, communicates changes, and incorporates additional costs.
Analytical: You'll need access to analytical information to determine your ROI. Ask what tools the agency uses for digital and website analytics, how they measure performance, and how they plan to improve your SEO ranking. Plus, how do they determine keywords and targets?
Cultural: Does the agency clash with your core values? Ask where they plan to be in five years, whether there are any topics they refuse to cover, and what you can expect from each phase.
What about AI content?
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can support your efforts if you feel pressured to churn out a lot of content quickly and consistently. While AI software isn't perfect, it can be an effective component of today's content marketing strategies. Over 80% of marketers say that AI and machine learning (ML) copywriting is as good as human-generated content, and 88% say this approach saves their company time and money.
One consideration is the time it takes to implement an effective AI strategy, as 69% of marketers say it took their company 6+ months to implement AI or ML technology. Also, the type of content matters. Almost half (49%) of marketers say AI or ML software is most successful when creating short-form, easy-to-read content. However, it is not overly successful when aiming to produce accurate, error-free content.
When looking at the areas most companies leverage for AI, the most popular use case is email marketing, followed by advertising, data analysis, personalization, and audience targeting. The key is having realistic expectations—it's not the best approach for all companies and use cases. You will require some level of human intervention to audit and make adjustments.
Ready to outsource content marketing? Here's what's next
Open communication is paramount if you're ready to start speaking to agencies about their packages and processes. Be upfront about your expectations, and let them know you want to be involved, especially at the beginning. Once the agency has a better idea as to who you are as a brand and what you aim to achieve, you can take more of a backseat position, switching your attention to other business operations.
Do you need more guidance on whether you should outsource content marketing? Be sure to check out these Capterra resources: