What is a Content Marketing Agency and Why Do You Need One?

Content marketing is one of the most powerful ways to build your brand and connect with customers online. But it’s also time consuming! If you aren’t sure how to optimize your content and your strategy, you risk dedicating a lot of time in exchange for mediocre results. In fact, SEMRush reports that only 19% of businesses felt their content marketing was “very successful” last year.

Image Source: SEMRush

This is why many businesses choose to hire a content marketing agency to handle it for them.

So what is a content marketing agency? In short, they work with you to execute a content strategy that earns you search rankings, organic traffic, and new customers. They help to ensure you get the highest possible ROI from your content.

If you’re considering hiring a content marketing agency, you’ve come to the right place. The sections that follow will cover

Quick Takeaways

• Content marketing earns 3X more leads and 6X conversions than traditional marketing at a 62% lower cost.
• More than three-quarters of high-performing content marketers had a documented strategy behind their efforts.
• Content marketing agencies support businesses in both content creation and strategy.
• Hiring a content marketing agency can actually be more affordable than executing content marketing internally.
• Content marketing agencies typically provide frequent, detailed performance reporting

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the creation of consistent, high-value content used to drive organic traffic to your website and ultimately earn new customers. While content itself is nothing new — brochures, catalogs, flyers, guidebooks and other traditional marketing pieces all fall under the category of marketing content — digital content created for search engine optimization (SEO) has more power than any other kind of traditional marketing.

Here’s why: it’s authentic.

SEO content naturally attracts the right users to your website and your brand. It provides value to those users before they ever make a purchase, and it builds trust in your brand that leads to stronger customer relationships down the road. It demonstrates your expertise and value proposition, and it helps you establish your brand reputation. Ultimately, it drives more traffic, leads, and conversions to your website, resulting in more sales and revenue for your business.

The numbers speak for themselves: research shows content marketing generates 3X the leads and 6X the conversions of traditional marketing methods, all while being 62% more cost effective.

Image Source: Blogging Wizard

Sound too good to be true? When some clients hear about these benefits, they think it is!

But it’s not out of reach — content marketing really can unlock so many new opportunities and transform the way your brand connects with potential customers online. You just have to know two things: how to get started, and how to execute a content strategy the right way.

That’s where content marketing agencies come in.

What is a content marketing agency and what do they do?

Content marketing agencies create content for businesses that attracts new customers through SEO. This content usually includes blog articles but could also be things like ebooks, infographics, videos and more. They work directly with their clients to learn about their target audiences and develop content ideas to resonate with them.

Most content marketing agencies (like Marketing Insider Group) offer a more comprehensive set of services along with content creation — things like keyword research, SEO audits, content calendar development, publishing, and frequent performance reporting.

These services are the major benefit of hiring a content marketing agency over freelance writers or even hiring your own team in house. With an agency, you get content, expertise, a customized strategy, and support in executing it. This strategy piece is so important — brands that have a well-developed, documented content marketing strategy consistently perform better than those that don’t.

In 2021, 78% of marketers who reported their content marketing efforts were successful had a documented strategy. Conversely, 81% of those that were unsuccessful did not have one.

Image Source: SEMRush

Of course, hiring a content marketing agency is an investment. It still requires some time investment on your part to build and maintain your strategy, and there is the obvious ongoing cost for services.

But for businesses in need of content marketing support, the ROI far outweighs the time and financial expenses. Let’s look at 7 reasons to consider taking the leap and hiring an agency.

7 Reasons to Consider Hiring a Content Marketing Agency

Focus on your core business

Running a business is a full-time job — and so is creating high-volume, high-quality content on a consistent basis. When you try to do both, unfortunately both often suffer. No amount of content marketing in the world can make your business successful if you can’t stay focused on providing a great product. When you hire a content marketing agency, you can be confident your strategy is being well executed while you handle the most important part of your business: serving your customers.

Cost savings

This one might sound hard to believe at first, but it’s the truth: hiring a content marketing agency can save you money, especially if you’re choosing between an agency and hiring a new in-house team to handle content.

Hiring in-house requires paying salaries and benefits, providing office space and equipment, and managing a team. Once you hire your team, it’s hard to grow it or downsize quickly. On the other hand, you pay a content marketing agency a set ongoing fee to handle everything for you.

You can easily scale your efforts up or down as your budget or business demands, so you’ll never have to spend more than what you need to execute your strategy.

Publish frequent and consistent content

Frequency and consistency in publishing are two of the biggest factors in determining how much traffic your content will drive to your site. But did you know getting the best possible SEO results requires publishing 11-16x per month? HubSpot found that companies publishing at that frequency earned 3.5X more traffic than those publishing less often.

Image Source: HubSpot

If you consider that it takes about 3-4 hours to write an average blog post, you’re talking 60+ hours every month just on writing. When you’re handling content marketing in addition to other business responsibilities, it’s easy to fall off schedule.

When you hire a content marketing agency, you’ll never experience a lag or gap in your content publishing plan.

Add SEO expertise to your content

Search engine optimization is more than just keywords in 2022. Google’s algorithms are smarter than ever, and they’re looking for content that both checks the right SEO boxes but also provides real human value. A content marketing agency has the expertise and experience to help you strike the right balance.

Keep in mind, too, that Google ranking factors constantly evolve (Google updates the algorithm thousands of times every year) and you need to keep up with it for your SEO to work. Hiring an agency means confidence in knowing your content aligns with the latest SEO standards.

Access to the right tools and resources

Agencies use a number of technology tools to power your content marketing  — SEMRush, Ahrefs, Google Analytics and more are all used for things like keyword research and performance analytics. In addition, agencies have full teams of writers and SEO experts who contribute to your content strategy and creation.

When you hire a content marketing agency, you’re investing in more than just content. You’re also gaining access to a range of resources that help inform and scale your strategy and boost your results.

New perspectives and ideas

Bringing in a new content marketing team gives your brand a fresh perspective on the tactics and approaches that have likely become second nature to you. Agencies are both objective (they use data-driven research and reports to build strategy and measure results) and creative (they come up with new ideas for blog topics and other content pieces). They can give you honest feedback and partner with you to come up with new and exciting ways to earn results.

Detailed performance reporting

Performance reporting is the main way content marketing agencies demonstrate their value and effectiveness. This being so, you can expect frequent and detailed reporting that shows you your content marketing performance against KPIs and your overall return on investment from the agency.

The value of getting data-driven insights on a regular basis can’t be emphasized enough. It helps you capitalize on what’s working, pivot your strategy when needed, and prove the value of your investment to company leadership.

Thinking about outsourcing content creation?

If you’re a business owner or leader, you probably don’t have time to spend hours every week writing content. It’s why more than 70% of businesses today outsource their content creation. The team at Marketing Insider Group can help. Our team of writers and SEO experts can deliver you optimized, ready-to-publish content every week for one year (or more!).

Check out our SEO Blog Writing Service or schedule a quick consultation to learn more!