Controlling your organization’s content doesn’t necessarily mean producing it all yourself. When you outsource some or all of your content, You have the capacity to oversee your content while embracing more powerful roles in your overall strategy.
Don’t make the mistake of imagining yourself as Tom Sawyer, watching others do all the work while you relax and have fun. The savviest outsourcers are still directing their content and prioritizing the big-picture planning and tasks that make the whole enterprise successful.
More Time in the Director's Chair
True, when you outsource, the agency is the one rolling up its sleeves to perform the research, the writing and the design—certainly the bulk of the work when it comes to a meaty white paper or an intricate interactive E-book. But the strategy remains firmly in your hands.
All the time they’re devoting to the content itself is now yours to devote to promoting that asset with the best audience, channels and tactics—orchestrating a much larger campaign with an expanded array of content—testing and experimenting to find that sweet spot where content really resonates.
More Content, More Often
Even an incredibly efficient team will hit limits when it comes to the volume of quality content you can produce. You can only push a writer so far before their work suffers from the burnout. The more you’re focused on hitting that word count or that target number of assets, the less likely that content is to move the needle with your audience. More often, you’re just scratching at the surface of a really great topic.
You need more writers. Outsourcing to an expert B2B agency allows you to scale your content without sacrificing quality. The best agencies will have access to a battery of writers well versed in your industry, your solutions and your audience.
More Flexibility
Marketing isn’t a cost, it’s an investment. You must focus on getting a return on that investment. The alternative to outsourcing to an agency is to fill the position in-house—and that still comes with a price tag. When you do the math on the price of an in-house writer, don’t forget to include all the hiring costs—including health insurance, training, equipment costs and vacation tind it me.
That typically puts agency invoices in a different light.
But flexibility is about more than budget. Investing in an agency rather than a writer gives you access to a broader range of talents. You might use a writer experienced with DevOps to reach your solution’s users and another writer altogether to change hearts and minds in the C-suite.
It’s not just about the writing, either. The dollars you allocate to writing in the spring can shift to design in the summer and strategic planning in the fall—or nowhere in months when you don’t need the support. You may find well yourself spending fewer dollars for greater results.
More Perspective
Zoom out from any black-and-white writer or writing team, and you’ll find all the nuanced shades of a broader perspective. When you tap the expertise of an agency team, they bring a fresh outside viewpoints that can be lacking in the day-to-day of your organization.
Consider how your content pans can benefit from a broader range of talent and by including a deeper bench of new angles and concepts. Those new angles are likely to come from content producers with experience gleaned from additional clients and industries. They’ll know what’s working for organizations of different shapes and sizes.
Think about these things when you select an agency to work with. They may bring even more perspective by way of strategy expertise or insights on important content trends.
More Quickly
We often work with clients who bring us in for a quick launch or a tight turnaround. The deeper bench of an agency spreads out the number of shoulders carrying the load. In cases where you’re eager to piggyback on a breaking trend or publish content in time for a new product or service launch, your agency can hit the ground running.
An agency can help get through short-term crunches while you plan to scale for the longer term.
More Formats
The majority of in-house content teams turn to a handful of content formats again and again. It’s what they’ve done, and it’s what they know. Agencies have no such limits. Staying on the cutting edge of new tools and formats is their bread and butter.
You don’t need a security team to vet the latest interactive content platform, there’s no need to burden your IT department with technology troubleshooting and you don’t need for all hands on deck to produce a polished animated video series. Your agency should have the expertise to expose you to the full gamut of possibilities, from social videos to immersive digital experiences. No more focusing on your wheelhouse when you can benefit from someone else’s.
More Strategy
The time you free up for yourself to focus on strategy isn’t the only way to beef up your strategy with an agency. Agencies like ours work side by side with clients all day long to develop sometimes very intricate strategies that guide their content to success. Tapping their expertise will give you a jump start on success with something new—influencer or ABM strategy, persona development and messaging, gap analysis and more. Work alongside professionals who can execute strategies you haven’t thought of or tried yet.
More Is More
Whatever you want more of, it’s possible to achieve when you work alongside an experienced content marketing agency. We can help you publish quality content that inspires your target audiences. Tracking the results you achieve will help you prove the ROI of working with an agency so that you’ll have the option to re-create that success again and again.
What do you need more of? Contact us for a complimentary discussion about your marketing challenges and how we can help you with content strategy and content creation.
Holly Celeste Fisk
Holly Celeste Fisk is an accomplished marketing pro with 20+ years of experience in B2B and B2C. She’s responsible for Content4Demand’s internal marketing efforts, managing everything from content creation and email marketing to events and sponsorships, blog publishing, website management and social media presence. When she’s not working, you’ll find her sliding into third at softball, buried in a book or practicing her Italian.
