A content marketing agency can help you get quality traffic. But how do you determine the right agency for your business? Before you choose an agency, take a few minutes to understand how successful content marketing works.
1 What are the benefits of content marketing?
The benefits of content marketing include more leads, customers, and revenue! That’s not all. Content marketing is also a great way to open tools in your industry. Case in point: I used content marketing to build an audience and publish my first book, Project Managers At Work.
Content marketing is unique because it involves answering questions and helping people before they buy. When customers find you through a search engine, they are more likely to buy. Even better, content marketing is an excellent way to get more leads without spending hours on cold calling and cold email.
Outsourcing growth to content marketing agencies is one of the best ways to increase web traffic and consistently lead over time. Your in-house staff can focus on other areas like creating sales scripts for the sales team.
2 What some examples of content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategy used by all kinds of companies. I previously wrote a post about eight content marketing examples from companies like ClickFunnels, PhoneWagon, HubSpot, and McKinsey. Since B2B purchases involve significant money and risk, content marketing is an excellent way to develop trust over time.
While I focus on B2B marketing strategies, a content marketing agency also works wonders with consumer brands and products. For example, fiction authors like Brandon Sanderson (a New York Times best-selling author) give away content like free chapters and bonus material. In the pet supply market, Purina publishes a wide variety of content on pet care topics for cats (e.g., a guide to grooming a cat).
In terms of types of content, content marketing usually includes blog posts, photos, social media updates, videos, and audio content.
3 Why partner with a content marketing agency?
It is valuable to partner with a content marketing agency because you can achieve results faster.
Training your employees in the art of content creation, search engine optimization, and social media platforms takes time. Further, your in house marketing team might have a different area of focus, like running Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or other marketing channels. Instead, a content marketing agency saves you time so your employees can focus on other marketing strategies like working with channel partners.
4 Are you using the right questions to develop your content strategy?
A content marketing strategy is your GPS to getting more organic traffic and growing your customer base. Without it, your marketing campaigns are likely to fail.
Creating random types of content and hoping for the best is not good enough. Instead, it is more effective to resist the urge to jump into content creation immediately. Instead, start with content strategy questions like:
- What client goals are we aiming at? Specifically, it is best to aim for lead generation goals like growing an email list.
- What are the prior content marketing efforts? Before developing new content marketing opportunities, I like to understand a company’s previous content marketing programs and experience.
- Who do we want to attract to our business?
- What questions are clients asking the sales team?
- Who else is publishing content in our industry? Why are they popular? A content marketing strategy needs to consider both direct competitors and indirect competitors (e.g. an industry news website)
5 What types of content do you need?
Content marketing agencies can help you with multiple types of marketing and content creation. Some popular options to increase organic traffic include:
- Blog content creation: your content development efforts generally start with your blog because blog content is one of the best ways to drive customer engagement. A mix of marketing content, long-form content, and newsworthy content all contribute to an influential blog.
- Visual content marketing: for example, an original infographic can be an excellent way to generate links,
- Video production: YouTube is one of the most popular search engines globally, even in B2B areas. IF you are looking for content ideas, start by looking at your website analytics. Your original, high-quality web content can serve as the foundation for video production.
- Online publications: unlike a blog, online publications are more like a magazine. For example, potential customers for McKinsey can read McKinsey Quarterly. In particular, McKinsey does excellent work in design and carrying out original research.
6 Is your social media marketing built on the right foundation?
For social media marketing to work, you need content. Why? Ultimately, your business goal should be to bring people back to your website. As we saw earlier in 2021, Facebook can shut down access to an entire country. The same problem can happen with other social media platforms.
You can indeed use social media ads (e.g., Facebook Ads, Instagram ads) to grow. However, there is still value in growing your organic following and traffic. To achieve that goal, you will need to post content worth sharing. To have a chance of a viral video, I recommend going back to the content strategy questions laid out above.
7 How do you decide between in house content marketing Vs. a content marketing agency?
The most effective B2B content marketing involves content marketing strategists from a content marketing agency and input from in house marketing staff. An in house writer can also play a role in providing feedback to a content marketing agency with the proper guidelines.
Tip: Client feedback like “I like it” or “I don’t like it” from an in house team is useless for a content marketing agency. Instead, provide feedback based on specific customers. For example, your customers might prefer to receive content in high-quality PDF files rather than blog posts. In that case, you might decide to offer a content upgrade (i.e., a PDF of related content and resources) to drive more traffic from your blog content.
8 What goes into a complete content marketing campaign?
Running a full-scale content marketing campaign for a client, including content distribution, printable infographics, video blogs, and other branded content, takes time and money. If you ask your content marketing team to do just one piece of content to save money, you’re unlikely to see meaningful results. Even expert content creators need time and repetition to ramp up their content program.
As a guideline, I recommend running a content marketing campaign for a minimum of three months. That will give you enough time to measure conversion rates, see a search traffic increase, and get leads.
Request A Free Content Marketing Review Today
Want to know quick wins to get more leads from your content marketing campaign? Contact me today to request a free consultation. In a laser-focused 20 minute free consultation, we’ll discuss your content strategy and develop at least two specific ideas you can implement this month.
