How to Know If You Should Hire a Content Marketing Agency
Building a business isn’t easy. We know. We’re building one too. And as business owners, we’re 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.
In other words, can our business help you build yours?
What is a Content Marketing Agency?
A content marketing agency is a group of marketing and writing professionals that guide you through content strategy, creation, publication, and distribution. The agency’s team gets to know your audience, products or services, and goals. We then create keyword strategies to guide the production of content.
Our goal is to represent your company while serving your clients’ information needs. We write and publish the content for you based on that research. Then we help you understand how to distribute the content.
The idea is that we use website 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. That means you want your company to appear in those search results with helpful information to solve their problem or address their concern. Failure to do so is a missed opportunity for a lead.
Still not convinced? Below is 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. But if you don’t have a website yet, we strongly encourage you to get one. Nearly 90% of companies have a website. It sends up all kinds of red flags to today’s consumers if they can’t find your business online. And they will look.
More than half of consumers say they go online to research products and services before making a purchase. You don’t want to miss out on those customers.
You Want More Business
If you are in the amazing position that you have 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 cannot 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.
Companies with a blog have more than 55% more web traffic than those without.
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 and content as a marketing strategy continues to grow year over 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.
You Don’t Want to Write It Yourself
So here’s the truth. You could do it yourself. Assuming you’re a decent writer, writing content for your own business is totally an option. And who better to write the content than the person who knows the most about the company?
Writing your own content sounds like a win. It can be difficult, especially initially, to pay someone to do something you can do yourself. But here’s the thing. You won’t do it. Ok, maybe you will for a while. And you’ll have good intentions to post regular content, but it just won’t happen. Building your business will get in the way. It’s tough enough for full-time writers to carve out time to write content. It’s nearly impossible for someone trying to run a business of their own to make time to write.
Hiring a content marketing agency is a better option because you’re guaranteed a certain amount of content every month, and you don’t have to spend your time writing it. Also, you don’t have to worry about writing quality when you hire experts.
If you really are excited about writing your own content then we suggest checking out Digital Marketing Kitchen. They do a great job of teaching writing tactics mixed with SEO, which we talk about below.
You Don’t Understand SEO
Search Engine Optimization 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 a customer.
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 Content Writer
One option we haven’t explored is the idea that you could hire a full-time content marketing expert. Some companies certainly do go this route, but they typically are larger companies with enough work for a full-time person to do and can afford to hire one.
Many companies either don’t have the budget to hire someone full-time for content writing or don’t need someone full-time. 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.
Let Content Journey Help
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!
