Content marketing is an effective way to grow your audience, increase engagement, raise your brand profile, and drive conversions, making it an essential element of business growth. 

Content marketing is a proven marketing strategy that can achieve resounding success.

In this article, we explore 10 tell-tale signs that it’s time for you to start working with a content marketing agency…

 

What is content marketing and why is it important?

Content marketing is a way to answer your audience’s questions and help build trust and credibility in the service you have to offer. When successful, content marketing can develop relationships, improve conversions, and generate leads.

You can use content marketing to:

• Educate your audience about the products and services you have to offer
• Build credibility and trust with your prospects and customers
• Drive conversions

Creating content that is considered valuable to your audience will drive organic traffic growth. Content online sticks around for a while, so the content you create will continue to drive organic traffic for months and years to come.

Content marketing works, that’s why 82% of marketers actively use it as part of their overall marketing strategy.

 

The benefits of content marketing include…

• Raising brand awareness
• Achieving higher search engine rankings
• Increasing conversions and generating leads
• Attracting and retaining your audience
• Generates industry authority
• Creates a community of brand advocates

 

10 signs you need to start working with a content marketing agency

 

1. You want to do more marketing activity

It’s likely that you’re creating content internally, but maybe not as often as you’d like. Plus, you need to think about how many people you’re reaching. Logically, content marketing is two parts: content and marketing.

So you need to think about how you’re promoting it and how it harmonises with all your other marketing processes, such as search engine optimisation (SEO), social media and email marketing.

Giving you a headache just thinking about it all? Well, you don’t have to. A content marketing agency can focus purely on the task at hand. They deliver what you need, so you can get on with your day job.

 

2. You don’t have copywriting skills in house

Writing good content is one thing. Targeting it directly to your audience and adding in the right SEO, while keeping it all readable and appealing, is another skill entirely. 

A content marketing agency will have the skills to get your content just right for your target market. And right first time. Which means you’re much more likely to see results, faster than if you try to learn how to do it all yourself.

 

3. You want inbound leads 

These are the leads that come to you, without too much effort on your part. But you do need to get your content to work hard. This is what attracts your audience, drives them to your website and ultimately persuades them to contact you.

It stands to reason that it needs to be the right kind of content for your audience: engaging, informative, interesting. The best content marketing leads with what the target audience classes valuable.

 

4. You want better quality leads

Did you know that around 60% of the buyer’s journey is made online, before an enquiry even reaches your sales team. This stage is known as the ‘zero moment of truth’.

Creating content that piques your audience’s interests, answers their questions, and demonstrates that you can meet their needs, encourages them to buy your product or service. Always remember: if you don’t put the right content out there, your competitors will. It’s important to strive to make yours better and you’ll stay ahead.

Potential customers who have already seen your content, or found you from your content marketing strategy, are well along the buyer journey. They’re of higher quality than other prospects as they are actively looking for what you have to offer – after all, its what they typed into their search engine. They’re looking for what you offer, they like what they’ve seen so far… all that remains is to make the sale…

A content marketing agency can help you to establish the key stages of the buyer journey within your industry and highlight the key questions that your prospecting customers are asking.

To find out more about the stages of the buyer journey, read our article Zero moment of truth.

 

5. You don’t have a content publishing schedule

As we’ve established, content marketing works in bringing the right customers to your door. But amazingly, a third of companies still don’t take content marketing seriously.

As with all areas of marketing, it’s an investment. A commitment. Such a commitment that you’ve got to be in for the long haul. This type of marketing takes time to filter results through, as it’s all about building relationships with your audience. And that doesn’t happen in a day…

Chuck out inconsistent comms on a vague ad-hoc basis and you’re hardly proving yourself a catch. Create a proper schedule and stick to it… now that’s more like it. You’ll start to become a familiar face and your prospects begin to build their awareness of you, seeing you as a reliable and dependable source.

Plus, posting regularly can really benefit your SEO. Search engines will come back to review your content, marking it as fresh and relevant if it’s new or updated and indexing you for a bucket load of new keywords.

This is a lot to take on and it does need a special skillset, which is where a content marketing agency can help, keeping you consistent and credible.

 

6. You don’t know who your target audience is

It can be tempting to just try to make sales regardless, but realistically, not everyone is your target audience. Send random content out to the wrong people and you might as well shout into the abyss.

Every single business has a target audience. This group of people is known as a company’s ‘buyer personas’. Understand who they are and what they’re interested in, and boom — you know exactly how to create content for them. Content that’s relevant, valuable, interesting, and engaging.

A content marketing agency can help you develop your buyer personas, they’ll be able to help you understand their demographic, their pain points, and their goals. Understanding your target market is imperative to keep your content tailored and on track.

 

7. You don’t know what your audience searches for

People type all kinds of words into search engines and unless you know the key search terms and phrases your target audience is using to find the services or products you offer, you won’t be able to incorporate them into your content. 

It’s not about guesswork, either. What you might try could be completely different to what others use. This is where a content marketing agency can help. They can show you the specific key search words and phrases your target audience uses in your industry. From here, you can create a content plan that responds directly to these searches, as well as prioritising your content based on competitiveness, ranking and traffic.

A content marketing agency will also be able to tell you what keywords your competitors are ranking for, so you can understand what content is getting them in prime position on Google. Combine this knowledge with what you know about your target audience and you have content marketing gold.

 

8. You’re not putting your target audience first

Yes, target audience again. Because they are absolutely key to your strategy. Businesses often manage content marketing in-house, which can mean it’s not always aligned to your audience. A common mistake is sending out company-centric comms. ‘We’ve done a brilliant thing’. Well, good for you but what’s in it for them? Save that for your press release.

Good content marketing is about putting your audience first. Keeping your content benefits led and putting the needs and wants of your audience first, will keep them engaged. 

 

9. You’re not repurposing your content

Repurposing content is a great device to help your existing content work harder. Creating new content takes time, but resharing the same thing over and over looks tired.

Once you’ve created a piece of content you’re happy with, think about how else you could use it. Could a blog become an infographic? Could a user guide become an eBook?

When you share via social media, make sure your posts are different and with a call to action relevant to the specific content style (read the full blog, download the infographic etc).

It’s a great way of getting the same information out there without looking like you are.

 

10. You’re not measuring ROI

Return on investment (ROI) essentially lets you know whether your content is doing its job. It can also show you the types of content your audience likes and responds to, so you can give them more of the same (and less of what they don’t like).

A content marketing agency can give you ROI reports, so you can see exactly what impact your content is having and how — such as traffic, or sales or brand awareness.

 

Want to talk about content marketing for your business?

We can help!