Why You Should Outsource Your Content Marketing

Content marketing is the here and now of digital marketing. According to Mashable, 62% of companies outsourced their content marketing to an agency, or combination of agencies in 2013. However, many companies are still having the debate as to whether to let something so integral to their business be outsourced.

At this point, it’s worth noting that our view is slightly bias as a company that does provide content marketing services. However, we always strive to be data led and objective in our recommendations - and all of the signs point to the fact that outsourcing your content marketing makes perfect sense.

Our view is that content marketing should be outsourced, but in a very close partnership between agency and brand. Naturally, the business needs to be heavily involved in all aspects, as the business understands the brand positioning, other marketing activities, relationships that can be leveraged, and other factors. But the agency should bring extra skills to the table, a new way of thinking, specialist experience, and should be driven by performance.

If you’re an in-house marketer you naturally want to keep an element of control over your content. You are best positioned to fully understand your brand, however an agency may have added expertise in the following areas that can push your content marketing to the next level:

1.Data analysis

2. Strategy

3. Design & development

4. Creative writing

On top of this, you would expect your agency to have a plan in place to scale any element and be flexible around your campaigns without any issues.

The core of the partnership between agency and brand is the content strategy. This should be a plan based on a combination of data, creativity, and ambition. The strategy should sit at the heart of the relationship, and be a collaborative document.

The strategy should inform the content marketing schedule. Using data to determine best days, times, categories, blog titles & authors, the brand and agency will be able to create a calendar based on science, that therefore has a higher chance of performance than one created on gut instinct alone. Setting up in this methodological way will allow you to test and learn as you progress through the schedule, allowing you to optimise your strategy on the fly and for future iterations.

This emphasis on data is fairly uncommon on the in-house side, whereas in strong agency environments the data comes first. At Datify, we plan for optimisation of every element of a content marketing strategy to ensure that we can drive strong results for clients.

Outside of the data world, agencies will have less of an affinity to your brand, and can therefore see it in a different light and come up with new creative angles. Also, as your agency will be working across different brands, learnings from multiple clients can be applied and new ideas can be used to ensure that your content marketing campaigns are a success. It is very hard to be consistently creative about your brand when it is your sole focus, whereas an outside perspective can make all the difference.

On top of the expertise elements of using an agency, you also have the issue of manpower. Agencies can be a lot more flexible with hiring talent and scaling their operations amongst their teams to fit your needs as you grow, or have quiet times outside of campaigns. This added flexibility is ideal, meaning that brands don’t have to hire more and more people in-house to focus solely on their content marketing.

In conclusion, we think it makes complete sense to outsource your content marketing, but only where you can work in partnership between agency and brand to drive success together.