Content marketing is not an option anymore. TODAY, every B2C and B2B need a clear content marketing strategy.
Content helps to generate organic traffic, engage users and improve search engine rankings. According to the CMI Benchmark report 2021–
- 60% of marketers advocate that content marketing is helpful in generating demand/lead
- 70% of said that content marketing is useful for educating their audience
- 60% say it allows them to build loyalty among existing customers
Clearly, content marketing is essential to grow your business online. But, it is not that easy to deploy a successful content marketing strategy in today’s competitive environment.
Content marketing is a multilayered marketing stream with ever-changing trends and rules. Thus, without the proper technical and creative knowledge, you can’t build a winning content marketing strategy for your brand.
But I don’t have time to focus on content marketing while running my business?
There is no need to panic. Content marketing agencies are available for the exact same reason. Professionals content marketing agencies like Marveta are here to help busy businesses. They provide technical content writing services so you can better focus on growing your business.
But how can I find the best content marketing agency?
Just follow this content marketing guide to find yourself a perfect content writing partner today.
Why should i hire a professional content marketing agency?
It is a common myth that content marketing is all about creating content and publishing on your website.
In reality, content marketing involves market search, audience analysis, research, SEO, content creation, distribution, and much more. And doing all this required certain skills and knowledge that a professional content marketing agency possesses.
Besides this, hiring a content marketing agency can benefit you with:
Reduce your marketing cost
Yes, content marketing firms can reduce your marketing cost. Hiring an agency will be a lot more lucrative than the cost of managing an in-house team.
Agencies only charge a lump sum amount for the service that you have hired them for. You don’t have to pay any additional employee benefits to agencies, unlike in-house employees like health care, vacations, etc.
Get professional support
Hiring a reputable content marketing agency will allow you to build a custom content marketing strategy. They have already hired top writers, SEO experts, and other content professionals to help you out.
Leverage industry experience
A lot of research goes behind creating a content marketing campaign. You have to monitor the latest content marketing trends and techniques to stay ahead of your competitors. And that requires experience and time.
So, here hiring a professional content marketing team can connect you with people who have years of experience in the industry. They have connections and knowledge that can enhance the reach of your content in no time.
Explore new ideas
It is a huge possibility that your competitors’ content marketing strategy will not work for you. Despite having the same products or audience, two businesses can’t gain equal results from the same content marketing strategy.
Thus, having the best content marketing partner will help you customize the marketing strategy for your brand. Agencies have different tools and techniques that can help you experiment with different content ideas to establish a unique brand identity.
Easy to scale
The best thing about content marketing agencies is that their services can scale as you want. You can increase or decrease your content marketing efforts with a simple request.
For example, if you want to increase your content load to promote your new product for a month, your agency will have sufficient bandwidth to do so. In contrast, you can’t expect such a swift turnaround from your in-house content marketer.
Provide measurable results
No business wants to invest in solutions that show no results. Therefore, agencies ensure to provide complete content marketing KPIs to businesses. The key performance indicators help B2B, and B2C businesses know the ROI of each content piece.
They will also determine key performance metrics for every content marketing campaign.
High-tech tools
For a small business, it might not be feasible to acquire different content marketing tools to drive maximum results. But for a professional content marketing team, it is part of their operations to use premium content marketing tools.
So, without spending an extra penny, you can leverage several tools to create high-quality content after hiring an agency.
How to choose the best content marketing agency?
Indeed, content marketing agencies can help you improve your content marketing strategy in no time. But the main problem is finding the right content marketing partner that can understand your brand and its needs.
On top of it, several content marketing agencies are available nowadays. Alone on the Clutch, around 16,656 content marketing firms are registered. So, finding a perfect content marketing company in this wide pool is not easy.
But it is not impossible either. If you use the preset criteria, you can easily find your content marketing partner. Here’s what to look for in your content marketing agency:
1. A good market reputation
First of all, ensure that the agency has a good market reputation. For this, you should check reviews and ratings given by their previous clients. This will provide you with relevant information about the company and its work ethics.
You can take your investigation a step further and connect with the people who have left reviews about the company to retrieve more information. Today, in the world of social media, it is easy to find anyone’s email address or contact details.
Most companies have testimonials sections already on their websites. The way we have on Marveta—
However, if the agency doesn’t have on-site testimonials, you can explore third-party websites like Clutch, G2, Capterra, etc. Besides this, Google reviews and LinkedIn profiles are also the best places to snoop some information on different content marketing agencies.
2. No blackhat content marketing strategy
Content marketing is a highly competitive area today. Around 4.4 million blog posts are published every day.
Thus, it is a challenging task to make your content shine among all the amazing content out there.
So, many content marketing agencies here take a shortcut and use blackhat content marketing strategies to drive desired results. For example, they start dumping large amounts of content online without checking its quality on relevant websites.
All these content marketing strategies might bring results for a moment. But, in the long run, it can reduce the search engine ranking of your website. In fact, plagiarized and low-quality content can penalize your website on Google.
Therefore, make it clear to your content marketing agency that you don’t support any illegitimate ways to rank your content on the top. Ask them to show real statistics and figures to drive results through organic and legitimate content marketing methods.
Make your content marketing firm draw a full plan to achieve certain results in the given period.
3. Check out the service list
All content marketing agencies are not the same. Some companies only provide content writing services with basic SEO support. On the contrary, some companies also provide paid guest blogs, ads, and other solutions.
That’s why you should check out the service section of the company before hiring them. Ensure that the agency offers all those services, which you are required to grow your business.
4. Do they follow content marketing trends
Content marketing is constantly evolving. New B2B and B2C content marketing strategies are coming to the market every day. In this, if your content marketing agency is not following up with all the latest trends, this can be a big setback for your business.
Here look at this content marketing tactics comparison chart by Semrush
Marketers have followed different content marketing tactics in 2019 and 2022. This happens because market conditions and user behavior were different in both years.
So, hiring a trend-following content marketing company in 2022 can help you produce content that can even grow in the upcoming years.
5. Proficient project management skills
Deadlines are a big part of a content marketer’s life. Businesses often need high-quality content on short notice to impress search engine algorithms. If you partner with journalists, authors, and other publications, timely and in-budget content delivery is crucial for you.
To ensure that your content marketing firm can handle tight deadlines, you should check their staff strength. Make sure that they have sufficient staff members and connections to complete projects at the shortest possible notice.
6. Experience in your niche
Ensuring that your content marketing company has sufficient experience in your niche is important. You should check their portfolio to see how many projects they have completed in your industry.
For creating informative and engaging content, content writers/marketers must have some basic knowledge about the industry. Your content will not reach professionals and look amateur on the internet without the proper information.
You should also check out the experience possessed by an individual team member of the agency. You can explore online profiles of different team members to understand how much experience and knowledge they have.
7. Consistent monitoring and reporting
A good content marketing company always provides consistent reports on the different content campaigns. They share detailed graphical reports with businesses every month or week to make them understand how much benefits certain content marketing efforts are generating.
This helps businesses to further make content investment strategies. There are much different content marketing KPIs that can help you understand the efficiency of your marketing campaign, such as:
- Downloads
- Pageviews
- Inbound links
- Shares
- Time spent on the page, etc
However, you should select the KPIs based on your end goals. Suppose you want to increase the reach of your post. In that case, the number of shares will be the best KPI to understand your content’s performance.
8. Competent team
A content marketing company is made by the people who are working in it. If your content marketing agency doesn’t have competent staff members, they can’t provide you with the desired output.
So, you should ensure that the agency has a stable and competent staff. If possible, have an interaction with the company’s head writer or SEO expert. This will provide you with a basic idea about the knowledge and experience they can offer you.
9. Check out previous work samples
Content helps to build a unique brand identity. If your content tone or structure is not up to the mark, it will create a negative brand image.
Therefore, you should check previous content marketing examples of the company to check whether they can produce high-quality content as per your standards. From grammatical errors to readability, check every aspect of the content before hiring a content marketing agency.
10. Inquiry about their partners
Do you want your blog post to get published on high DA websites like Forbes, Ink, New York Times?
Then, that requires connections. Your content marketing team must have connections with editors, authors, journalists, and other blogging sites to get your content published on popular websites.
So, you should ask your content marketing agency beforehand about their market connections. You can also check their website to know which companies and brands they are partnered with.
11. Clear pricing structure
You must have a particular content marketing budget in your mind, which is a good thing.
However, if you don’t want to exceed your budget limits, ask your content marketing company to provide a clear pricing structure. They should share a proper rate card, including how many monthly blogs, social media content, and other content they will provide you with in any set price range.
A good content marketing company like Marveta can customize the content marketing plan as per your budget. So, budget is not an issue for content marketing because you can fit it within any budget limit.
Ready to hire a content marketing agency?
There you go, people! You are now ready to hire a competent and professional content marketing agency to customize your content marketing strategy in 2022.
It is very important to have the right content marketing partner by your side because it will impact your business’s overall performance and image. If your content marketing partner is not on the same page as you, it can waste all your content marketing efforts and resources.
If you want to quickly hire the best content marketing agency, connect with the Marveta team today, and we will swiftly make your content shine.
