When do you think you need a content marketing agency?
According to me, the most probable reasons are:
- When you face challenges is churning out enough content
- When you don’t know what works for you
- When you don’t have expertise in-house to produce a variety of content
- When you’re looking to produce content that engages but don’t know how to do it
- When you don’t know how to measure your performance
There could be many other reasons but at the moment I could think of these only. If you’ve got any other in mind, please take time to share it in the comment box.
Although a majority of organizations want to produce content in-house, but are, most of the times, in lack of resources that are well versed in different aspects of content marketing. This arises the need of content marketing firms as they cannot only address your content creation needs but can also help you position yourself in the market.
As the above reasons are real and are faced by almost every organization, it can be a smart move to outsourcing your content marketing needs to the experts. However, be really careful as not all content marketing agencies can bring you the results that you’re looking for.
Here are a few tips on how to choose the right content marketing agency:
Know Your Requirements
The first step in the process is to knowing your exact requirements. So, decide whether you’re looking for a B2B or B2C content marketing firm. Don’t underestimate this aspect as there is a great deal of difference between B2B and B2C customers.
The other important thing that you need to know is your current online status. This will help you understand if you need to make content marketing efforts right from the scratch or need to avail advance content marketing techniques.
What type of content you’re looking for is another question that comes to mind. There may or may not be different companies for social media marketing, video marketing or any other form of content marketing. There are production houses that offer all services under one roof. The idea is not to get puzzled but understand what type of content you want to focus on right now.
Ensure the Content Marketing Agency Knows Their Job Well
No matter how small your project is, but shortlist a company that you think knows their job well. This is because your success on internet very much depends upon your content marketing agency. After all, they are the image builders.
Even if you’re outsourcing just the content creation aspect, then also ensure that the agency has an excellent track record. Look for the examples, in fact live examples and see their work that they have done for their clients. There are certain aspects that they may like to keep under covers but then they can always show you some great examples. This is one of the criteria to shortlist a content marketing agency for your company.
Industry Content Expertise
How well a content marketing agency can work for you or your niche industry? Don’t know? Why don’t you check some content templates or samples that they have done for a client with similar business operations? Ask them to list out the content creators with specific knowledge in the field. It’s important to choose a content marketing agency that has worked for similar company because this is how they understand what your customers need and how they can be satisfied.
Do They Do What They Suggest?
Preaching is easy but practicing it shows how convinced you’re about the idea. You never go to a dietician who is fat. Similarly, you can never work with a content marketing firm that doesn’t blog regularly or is unable to grab attention of readers on social networking sites.
Don’t forget to check out their social media pages to know how well they connect with their audience and how successful they are in building trust. Check their blog if they have been regular and are able to get readers. Ask them how they have achieved the results and how they measured them.
Make Sure Not to Get Stuck on a Dead-End Road
Without doubt, it’s all about traffic. Believe it or not, you will really have to work hard to achieve more and more traffic. But how capable is your content marketing agency to bring traffic to your business website? Find it out.
How? By having a look at their current traffic status! If they are doing well in their field, then certainly they must be enjoying good traffic to their business as well. Take time to check how they have moved up on search engine pages and where they rank. This helps you ensure that you won’t get stuck on a dead-end road when you decide to work with them.
Can You Get in Contact with People Who’re Going to Work on Your Project?
It’s critical to know who all are going to work on your project. After all, your reputation on the web is in their hands and I’m sure you will not want to compromise on anything.
Talk to them and see whether they understand the complexities involved in your case or have a clue about how to feed content to your existing and potential clients.
Analyze whether they have the ability to get you through or capacity to handle burden. It can act as an indicator whether you should work with the or not. Remember it’s not the top management who work on your project. It’s their people who work to navigate you on search engine indexes.
Have They Achieved What You Want to Achieve?
How do you think they will help you secure a first page ranking on search engines? They can but only if they have achieved it themselves. So, whatever you want to achieve for yourself on the web, look to it that they have already achieved it for themselves.
Follow these simple rules to choose a content marketing agency for your organization.