If you are wondering whether to do all of your content marketing in-house, or employ a content marketing service for at least part of it, you need to make sure you understand exactly what is involved in effective content marketing. Then you can decide not only whether it is possible to achieve solely with your own staff, but also whether it will be cost-effective.
How would using a content marketing service help you?
There are two main advantages to using a content marketing service.
Save Time
Specialists can always perform tasks more quickly and efficiently than someone who has not been trained for them. So writing blog posts, creating email campaigns and other content marketing tasks will take you longer. If those activities are taking time away from managing your business or cultivating new business, then it may be more cost-effective to use a content marketing specialist.
Increase Effectiveness
Even if you have the staff available to write blog and social media posts, for instance, can they or someone else research and use keyword phrases for maximum effect? Even the most interesting content won’t help very much if it’s not showing up on the first few pages of search engine results.
What can content marketing specialists do for you?
There are various services that a content marketing agency could offer. Here are some of the most common.
Create Content Campaigns.
Just as you would have different advertising campaigns, so should you have content to complement them. They could take various forms, such as emails, blogs, and social media posts, ebooks, and more. A content calendar would be created to make sure the proper content was published at the most opportune times.
Integrate Your Marketing Campaign Materials
Every ad you place should have its own landing page that provides more information and more persuasion than any single ad can contain. The content marketing agency would be responsible not only for creating those landing pages, but also for making sure that the ads and content match in both message and optics.
Regularly Provide Effective Content
Effective content is not only high-quality, it must also contain carefully researched keywords and phrases that are placed where they will do the most good. The content can take many forms. In addition to blog and social media posts, there should be a significant amount of visual content, as well. Images, infographics, videos, and more can all be at least as effective as any copy text. So they should be used liberally.
Optimize Your Website
Search engine optimization has never been more important. Even title tags and meta descriptions can be crucial in bringing new visitors to your website, where there will be more in-depth content to convert them into paying customers.
Link Building
One of the most important criteria that search engines use to rank websites is what they term “authority”. And one of the most important factors they use to determine a website’s authority is how many high-quality websites link to it. These links to you from other websites will not only bring you potential customers you might not otherwise have gotten, but they also convince search engines that the content on your website is valuable to people who are searching for information.
Build an Email Campaign
There are any number of ways that email content can help generate revenue for your business. There is direct mail, notifying people of new products or services, sales, and other information that could translate into sales. There are drip email campaigns that are sent out at specified intervals, giving you multiple opportunities to make a sale. Even the content of the emails sent to remind someone about what they left in an abandoned cart on your website can often bring them back to finalize the purchase.
The Results Are Worth It
Not everyone knows how to do content marketing effectively, or even wants to, and there is nothing wrong with that. It can be very time-consuming. In fact, even the biggest companies like Twitter form content partnerships. Simply put, a content marketing service has the skills and experience to achieve the results you want, which leaves you free to focus on your core business activities.