How to Know If You Should Hire a Content Marketing Agency

Building a business isn’t easy. We know. We’re building one too. As business owners, we’re always open to hearing about any products or services that will help us take our business to the next level, which is why we want you to know about content marketing. 

Specifically, we want you to understand how to know if you should hire a content marketing agency to create and manage marketing assets like your website’s service pages, blog content, and your business’s social media presence. 

In other words, can our content marketing services help your business build and grow?

What Is Content Marketing?

Let’s start at the beginning, just in case you aren’t sure what we’re talking about when we reference content marketing.

Content marketing is sharing valuable content in different forms (service pages, email newsletters, blog posts, social media, etc.) through various channels (your website, email, and social media accounts, for example) to help the audience answer questions or solve problems. 

In short, content marketing is when you help people by providing them with valuable information they need, helping them trust you and want to do business with you. 

What Is a Content Marketing Agency?

A content marketing agency is a group of marketing professionals who guide you through content strategy, creation, publication, and distribution. The agency’s team gets to know your audience, products or services, and goals. Then, we create strategies to guide the production and publication of content to get your business noticed. 

Our goal is to represent your company while serving your clients’ information needs. 

We use research and content to attract more people to your website and help you generate leads, thereby growing your business.

How to Know if You Should Hire a Content Marketing Agency

We have a little confession to make. We think most companies would benefit from hiring a content marketing agency. Sure, there are exceptions. But, for the most part, people use Google when they look for a product or service. In fact, more than half of people use Google for research when making a purchase. 

That means you want your company to appear in those search results with helpful information to solve their problem or address their concerns. That information should point them to your brand as their solution.

People also expect business content on social media. About 90% of people follow at least one brand on social media, getting regular content and reminders of their favorite brands and what they do for them.

They also want to receive email information from businesses they like — 86% of people say they want emails from brands they use. 

You need to show up in search, on social media, and in people’s inboxes. Failure to do so is a missed opportunity for a lead. 

Still not convinced? Below are details on how to know if you should hire a content marketing agency.

You Have a Website

It won’t do you any good to hire a content marketing agency if you don’t have a website for your business. In fact, if you try, they’ll tell you that the first thing they need to do is help you launch a site. 

If you don’t have a website yet, we strongly encourage you to get one. More than 70% of companies have a website. Honestly, we’re surprised the percentage is that low.

It sends up all kinds of red flags to today’s consumers if they can’t find your business online. And they will look. Make sure they discover a website that’s your best salesperson when they do.

Since half of people are going online to do research before making a purchase, you want an online home base for them to visit. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on those customers.

And, the better your website is and the higher it ranks in search results, the more traffic you’ll get. More traffic means more potential customers.

You Want More Business

If you are in the amazing position of having too much business, you don’t need to hire a content marketing agency. But, most business owners are always looking for new customers and constantly trying to grow their business. 

People can’t even consider your product or service if they are unaware of it. One of the benefits of content marketing is that it makes people aware of your brand. 

Awareness of your brand means it’s an option for purchase consideration. Also, speaking directly to potential customers means a better chance of conversion. 

In other words, content leads people to a purchase.

You Understand the Value of Content

The need for content marketing continues to grow year after year. About 90% of companies use content marketing. Content marketing works because people want helpful, informative content that helps them make decisions, including about how they spend their money. They don’t want advertising. 

In addition, content marketing costs 62% less than other marketing tactics, but it creates three times as many leads. 

In short, content marketing gives you more bang for your buck.

You Don’t Want To Do It Yourself

So, here’s the truth. You might be able to do your own marketing. Assuming you’re a decent writer and know a little bit about SEO and social media, doing your own content marketing is totally an option.

But here’s the thing … you might not have the expertise you need about the various platforms and how to stand out on them. Not only that, but you may not have the time. It takes an average of four to 10 hours a week just to produce and post regular blog content. That’s just blog content! Don’t get us started on the full-time job of posting to and engaging on social media. 

The bottom line is this: Your time is valuable. I can do my own landscaping, too, but it will take me about twice as long as a professional crew, and about half of it will die because I’ll plant things in the wrong place or not care for it properly. It’s better for me to hire a professional to come out once a month to clean everything up and make it all look nice. Then, I can spend my time where I excel — like creating content marketing materials for your business.

You Don’t Understand SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is improving the amount of traffic your site gets from search engines. The goal of SEO is for people to search for solutions to their problems and find your brand. 

SEO is about targeting keywords or terms that users enter into a search engine and ranking your website for those keywords. Users will then click through to your website, discover your brand, and hopefully become customers.

But you have to understand how SEO works and how to implement its best practices for SEO to work for your business. It takes a fair amount of study and special training to understand SEO. 

And becoming an SEO expert is probably not one of the items on your business-building to-do list. 

Luckily, content marketing agencies employ experts to implement SEO for you.

You Don’t Have the Budget To Hire a Full-Time Marketing Team

One option we haven’t explored is the idea that you could hire a full-time content marketing expert or even a whole team. Some companies certainly do go this route, but they typically are larger and have the workload and budget for a full-time person.

Many companies either don’t have the budget to hire someone full-time or don’t need someone for that amount of work. If you can hire someone to focus solely on your company, that may be the way to go. That’s a decision about how best to use your company’s resources that you have to make. But remember that hiring one person isn’t the same as hiring an agency with a team of professionals.

Hire Content Journey as Your Content Marketing Agency

Now that you have a better understanding of how to know if you should hire a content marketing agency, are you ready to take the next step? We’d love to have a call with you to determine whether Content Journey is the right fit for your content marketing needs. You’re under no obligation to hire us after the call. It’s a free, information-only discussion. So, go ahead and book a call!