Running a business is no easy feat, and marketing alone is a full-time process. If you’re finding it difficult to balance marketing with business management, consider the benefits of outsourcing content marketing. Choosing a third party to handle your content creation can increase efficiency, lower costs, and save you valuable time.
If you’re wondering what outsourcing your content marketing looks like or how it will benefit your business, read on!
The basics of outsourced content marketing
Content marketing is an expansive field that covers many tasks, from basic content creation to intricate graphic design. How you go about outsourcing content marketing depends on your individual needs.
What a content marketing agency provides
Outsourcing content marketing involves having a third party create content that meets your marketing needs. This third party can help with a range of tasks, such as:
- Writing
- Editing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Design
- Social media management
Not every business owner knows how to write and edit engaging content that incorporates SEO techniques to increase website traffic. And not all businesses can facilitate improved writing skills for their employees, whose other responsibilities are more of a priority.
Having a content marketing agency or professional handle your content creation can save time and help you reach a wider audience. Even if you’re confident that you can create good content, it doesn’t hurt to hire a separate agency for editing and proofreading your work.
Why outsourcing content marketing is an important business solution
The estimated cost of finding a new employee is over $4,000 USD per person. Outsourcing your content marketing instead can be a cost-effective solution in the long term. You won’t just save the time and money that you would otherwise spend on the hiring process. You’ll also save on an assortment of other costs of having a new employee, like:
- Health insurance
- Visa fees
- Gratuity
Outsourcing to a third-party content creator won’t require these costs. Plus, you can also pay as you go. Instead of giving someone a salary, you pay for the exact amount of content you need.
How businesses can choose a content marketing agency
When it comes to outsourcing content creation, there are a few important factors you need to consider to help you choose the best marketing agency or people for your needs. These factors include:
- Budget
- Audience
- Quality content
There is not one universal price for outsourcing content marketing. Costs can vary depending on the expertise of the writer, the extent of your needs, and your desired quality. Some of the top content creators might charge as much as $1.00 per word. Knowing your budget can help you target your search for the right fit.
Furthermore, if standing out is your goal, look for a writer specialized in writing for your industry or your target audience. Some writers have specialties or niches, so look for one that aligns with the right experience. For instance, if your target audience is moms, you might prefer someone who writes for parenting sites.
A marketing agency can help connect you with the right writer. These agencies typically test all of their writers for quality before hiring them. Moreover, many of them give you the opportunity to review their services by submitting writing samples. This lets you review the work and decide if it is quality content before making an investment.
Ways a content marketing agency can help your business
To be an efficient content marketer, you need to be able to do more than create an interesting blog post. You need to know how to craft the post in a way that will get the attention of target audiences and increase website traffic. There are several reasons why you might want to rely on a professional to do this.
Engage your audience
Incorporating keywords that will boost your website in search results is a great technique, but it only scratches the surface of creating engaging content. Content marketing is designed for engagement—to reach your target demographic and increase the size of your consumer base. There are several techniques content marketers use to achieve this:
- Reference big names
- Reference target demographic
- Create shareable content
By referencing big names in your industry, you can get the attention of major companies whose client base already meets your target demographic. In turn, these companies might share your content with their clients.
You can also develop a bigger client base if your already-existing customers share your content. For this to happen, your content needs to be interesting enough in substance and easy to read in design. Including the names of some of your top customers in the content (such as through a shout-out) might encourage them to share it.
Develop a content marketing campaign
A major reason to outsource your content marketing is because an agency can help you create a content marketing campaign. Unfortunately, 63 percent of businesses don’t have an official strategy, but creating a strategy is key to developing your audience and increasing website traffic. Determining the right techniques involves identifying your target audience and figuring out what content will appeal to them.
You don’t have to just cross your fingers and hope for the best. Experienced content marketers will prove the efficiency of their results through key performance indicators, or KPIs. They determine the success of your marketing based on factors such as:
- Page rank
- Sales
- Website traffic
- Revenue
- Social media performance
If your content creator is not getting you the promised results, you’ll know about it. These indicators will help you figure out the next steps you want to take. You might want to work with the content creator to adjust the content, or you might want to find a new person altogether. If you’re outsourcing your content marketing, you’re not forced to stick with one person or company.
Follow content marketing trends
To conduct the best marketing, you need to be aware of content marketing trends. However, it takes time to learn about each of these trends and how they affect your marketing. Instead, you can just hire a content marketer who already has that expertise.
The types of content that people want to read is constantly changing. So it’s important for a content creator to be aware of current affairs and avoid writing anything dull or overly controversial. For example, people tend to be interested in authentic, vulnerable pieces as opposed to strictly informative ones.
Marketing agencies employ a large number of experienced people and work with multiple businesses. As a result, they are well versed in what type of content works and what doesn’t.
Advantages of outsourcing your content marketing
When you pay for the services of a content marketer, you’re getting more than just their posts. You’re also getting their SEO expertise, their style, and a unique perspective on topics. Here are some of the benefits of outsourcing your content marketing.
Increased content levels and brand awareness
If you choose to work with a marketing agency, it can produce a large amount of content for you at once. So instead of publishing website content at your own pace, you can create multiple posts at a time by having several writers work simultaneously. Then you can either publish them all in quick succession or stagger publication over time, depending on your marketing strategy.
Being able to use multiple writers also lets you cover a larger range of subjects. Instead of trying to decide between two topics, you can have two people write about both.
The more content you publish, the more shares you will get. If you can expect one post to receive 100 shares, then with five posts you can expect around 500 shares. As a result, you can quickly increase the popularity of your website.
You can also publish more content across your social media platforms, which is a great way to increase your follower count.
Variety in writing
Some companies employ full-time writers to handle all content creation needs. While having an employee can be helpful, it limits the variety that you get with outsourcing content marketing. Working with a marketing agency that connects you with different writers gives you the benefit of multiple perspectives. This improves the content in several ways:
- Changing up the style
- Incorporating unique ideas
- Offering different expertise
There’s only so much one or two writers can do. Working with a wide range of writers offers different styles that keep your content from becoming too repetitive. It also provides a wider range of ideas and exposes you to people with all sorts of expertise.
Working with multiple writers also gives you the chance to figure out what works and what doesn’t. If you have just one writer, you can’t be sure if their writing style and ideas are the best for your business. In contrast, if you work with many content marketers, you can see firsthand which techniques are increasing your website traffic.
Time and efficiency
Content creation involves more than just coming up with words and throwing them onto a page. It’s a time-consuming process that requires conducting research, finding reliable sources, and incorporating SEO keywords.
Similarly, running a company involves more than just digital marketing. Business owners must stay on top of finances, product management, and a wide range of other tasks. As a result, 60 percent of business owners struggle to create content because they’re busy.
Handling marketing needs on your own is like trying to do two full-time jobs at once. Outsourcing content marketing saves time. Plus, having an experienced writer dedicated to that one job will improve the quality of the content.
Opportunities you can pursue when you save time by outsourcing
If you outsource your content marketing, you’re saving tons of time. You no longer need to spend hours each day studying digital marketing and attempting to do it on your own.
With all your saved time, you can finally focus on running your business—or pursuing other marketing techniques. Either way, you are ultimately optimizing your marketing strategy.
Engage with your new following
A central element of digital marketing is trying to grow your audience through content creation. This process will go by faster if you have a substantial client base to communicate with in the first place. You can accomplish this by executing a content marketing strategy for social media, such as by growing your Instagram following.
Increasing your follower count on social media—such as on Instagram—takes time. In addition to posting interesting content, you must directly interface with your target demographic by following and commenting. If you have someone else taking care of the actual content that attracts new followers, you can focus more time on engaging with them. This in turn will bring in new followers.
Pursue new F2F marketing opportunities
Outsourcing your content creation isn’t just a great technique for digital marketing. It also gives you the time to focus on other marketing techniques such as in-person marketing. This face-to-face (F2F) marketing includes some of the following:
- Door-to-door sales
- Marketing fairs and events
- Business conventions
- Hand-delivered samples
Getting personal with your target audience is a great way to increase your client base, but it requires time that you might not have if you’re focused on content marketing.
Find new B2B marketing avenues
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is a technique that involves marketing a product to another business. For example, an automobile might get its tires from a specific brand. This can help your business in several ways:
- Connecting you with another business’s audience
- Getting you the approval of another established business
- Giving you valuable industry relationships
B2B marketing involves cultivating relationships with other businesses and convincing them to team up with your and use your product. If you’re spending all of your time on digital marketing and content creation, then you’re missing out on a great marketing method that could help you reach more people.
Outsource your content to the experts at Elite
Running a business is hard. You have to worry about finances, employees, and product quality. Plus, you have to publish engaging content that keeps your audience coming back.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do it on your own. Not only does outsourcing content marketing save you time and money, but it also improves the quality of your content and gives you the opportunity to focus on forming important business relationships.
Elite Editing offers writing and editing services that can help meet your business’s content creation and content marketing goals. To find out more, contact Elite Editing today!