Marketing – Why You Should Outsource Your Content Marketing

From the smallest SME to the largest multinational corporation, marketing teams of all sizes have to juggle hundreds of balls on a daily basis. With back to back meetings and reports to write, time has become a precious commodity and sometimes the most essential tasks get pushed down the ‘To do’ list.

When There Are Not Enough Hours In The Day

In this fast-paced digital world, content is king. But good content creation takes time, and when you’re stretched for time, it can be difficult to find the headspace to research and write good material – even though it’s the single most effective mechanism for engaging customers and prospects.

Let’s remind ourselves why good content matters. It:

• Attracts the right traffic – optimised content shared across social media channels will help you reach new audiences by ranking higher on search engines.
• Shows you care – your audiences want to know you understand and care about their needs, their values, that you want to give them a great brand experience.
• Enhances your brand – Whether you want to be seen as a technical expert, a thought leader or hedonistic and carefree, your articles, blogs and promotions allow you to build a relationship with your target audience in a less direct way – giving relevant, thought-provoking information in a timely way that generates brand warmth.
• Builds personality – you are more than your company name and brand promise. You’re a collection of personalities that are absolutely unique. Great content will capture the essence, the quirks and the expertise of the people within the business, as well as extolling the virtues of your products and services.
• Generates leads – this is really what it’s all about. According to Demand Metric, good content generates three times as many leads as traditional marketing. You can quickly understand what works for each customer segment and focus on high-value customers.

Faster, Easier, Cheaper

It’s not just about saving time, although that’s a pretty amazing reason. There are 5 additional reasons why you should outsource your content marketing:

1. Keep ahead of industry updates – your agency will be bang up to date on regulations around data security, opt-ins and technical developments, which means you don’t run the risk of falling foul of any change in marketing legislation.
2. Avoiding tunnel vision – you know everything about your product, but this can sometimes cloud what will strike a chord with your audiences. A good agency will help you distil the important messages for each segment so there is a clear, focused message that concentrates on the benefits without getting too cluttered.
3. A team of experts at your disposal – instead of having one over-stretched content writer who has a long task list and dares to go on holiday occasionally leaving you a bit unstuck, your content marketing agency is available year-round and has a team of experts able to write, design, distribute and evaluate campaigns pre, during and post-launch.
4. Access to leading analytical tools – there are so many marketing automation and reporting tools available it’s hard to keep track, and the cost of buying and maintaining them can be astronomical. Your agency will have these tools available to analyse and evaluate campaigns on the go and make recommendations for future activity – all included in the fee.
5. It’s not just writing – design, infographics, interactive content and particularly video content created by a team of creatives helps build a rich, varied and engaging dialogue with your audience.

Busting The Myths

Despite 62% of companies outsourcing content, it’s surprising how many frazzled marketing managers object to bringing in external help. Here are some of the main objections:

“They don’t know our business” – No, not yet, but that’s a good thing. A fresh perspective from a team who’ll see your message from a customer point of view will make sure that industry or company jargon is chucked out, and poignant, relevant content is in.

“It’ll take as much time to brief them as it would take to do it myself” – Roughly translated this means, “I haven’t even got a spare hour to brief them” which is all the more reason to make that time now and reap the rewards down the line.

“It’s too expensive” – If you’re hesitant to outsource because of budgetary concerns, consider this: keeping content creation in-house means that you will have to hire, train, and pay at least one team member solely for that purpose. Companies that want to save money often turn to outsourcing in order to get more bang for their buck. Working with the right agency and agreeing set targets means that you will have as much (if not more) control as you would if they were in-house. If this is the case, outsourcing might be a smart strategy.