10 Reasons to Hire a Content Marketing Agency

A content marketing agency can produce quality results while giving you time to focus on product development. Hiring talent from the right agency can boost your content marketing efforts. Ultimately, with a more refined content marketing strategy, you can stand out from your competition.

What is a content marketing agency?

Simply put, a content marketing agency is an organization composed of experts who can head your content marketing efforts. In order to understand what a content marketing agency does, we need to start by defining what content marketing is.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the strategic use of creative and informative material to promote your company’s core product or service. For example, you can produce podcasts or blog posts to increase awareness of your brand. In time, brand awareness creates quality leads for your brand.

The goal of content marketing is to capture attention from people who stumble upon your content. This content is designed to lead these curious people to your website. Eventually, every content marketer hopes to transform these leads into paying clients.

So, what does a content marketing agency do?

A content marketing agency will help, first and foremost, with the creation of quality content for your brand. A good agency will also help you distribute this content to the right audiences. Finally, an agency helps you evaluate the success of your content marketing strategy and adjust your future strategy.

• Strategy

The first thing a good agency will do is to sit down with you and understand your business goals. Without doing this, they can’t pinpoint exactly what you need help with. Once they know what your goals are, they formulate a content marketing strategy designed to help you meet those goals.

• Content creation

The experts at a content marketing agency will also create different types of content, in line with your content marketing strategy. In order to organize the distribution of this content, they’ll develop a content calendar. That way, everyone on their team knows exactly when each piece of content is supposed to go out. On the off-peak months when you’re not paying the agency, you can also distribute some of the content on your own.

• Content distribution

Content distribution is one of the things a content marketing agency is good at. In order to do this well, they start by identifying where your audience hangs out. They then target those platforms in their distribution strategy.

• Evaluation and restrategizing

Once your content is out there, it’s important to evaluate the outcomes of this content. How effective was your content marketing? Did you meet your business goals? What needs to be tweaked in the future?

Why should you invest so much in your content marketing?

Content marketing might seem like a lot of work with little return on investment. On the contrary, research by Demand Metric shows that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional advertising. What’s more, it generates 3X as many leads as traditional advertising.

It’s true that content marketing requires more time, effort and patience than traditional marketing. However, the results are far greater. For this reason, investing both time and money in content marketing is worthwhile.

Content marketing will help your brand in a few ways:

• Build relationships with your clients

Rather than bombard your target audience with annoying advertisements, good content marketing strives to find out what your audience needs first. Once this is done, then you can create content that addresses your audience’s needs.

By giving your audience what they need, you create genuine relationships based on trust. These people start to see you as an expert in your niche and rely on you to educate them over time. Furthermore, people who trust your brand are more likely to turn into paying customers.

• Boost organic traffic

Good content marketing boosts your SEO. An impressive SEO score, in turn, means that your content will rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). When your content features in relevant search results, people are more likely to check out your website and learn more about your brand.

Higher organic traffic could lead to higher quality leads. This is because people who find you by searching for a solution to a problem are usually interested in hearing about how your particular solution can help.

• Build brand awareness

If you nail your content marketing strategy, then you can boost your brand awareness. The better your content is, the further it will travel (through social media shares and word-of-mouth advertising). As your content travels further, it promotes your brand and helps establish a presence in your industry.

• Remain top of mind

Good content marketing will help you remain top of mind with potential consumers long after they’ve seen your content. This means the people in your audience keep thinking of you and considering your products or services after they’ve seen your content.

When someone is already thinking of you, it’s usually easier to convince them to buy from you.

• Develop a distinct and memorable brand identity

Content marketing is also designed to build a specific brand identity that people recognize. The elements of a good content marketing strategy should work together to build a unique but cohesive personality for your brand.

If your clients can confidently explain who your brand is and what it does, then you know you’re doing something right. Good content marketing helps build a brand that they feel they know well. Moreover, clients who can talk about you confidently are your best brand ambassadors.

• Ensure higher conversion rates

Good content marketing should not only generate high-quality leads but also convert a high percentage of these leads into customers. By turning more leads into paying customers, content marketing boosts your sales and supports your bottom line.

• Appeal to a wider audience

People love to share good content with family and friends. Think about it for a moment – when you see something that you find entertaining or educational, you’re likely to forward it to someone who will appreciate it. For this reason, it’s important to invest in producing quality content which people will appreciate.

If your content matters to people, they will share it widely. With quality content, you’ll eventually draw a bigger audience.

• Attract top talent

Content doesn’t just help you appeal to potential clients. It also helps you recruit top talent when you’re hiring. If potential employees have seen quality content from your brand, they’re likely to think of you as a thought leader in the industry.

Job hunters who want to build a career that they’re proud of will also want to be associated with a brand that knows what it’s doing. With good content, you can convince these job hunters that you’re a trusted authority in the industry.

Ultimately, creating quality content will help you attract applicants who are invested in working for your brand.

Now that you know how a good content marketing strategy can benefit your brand, you can understand why you need to hire skilled content marketers. Most businesses opt to hire in-house content specialists. However, there is also the option of hiring a content marketing agency for short-term campaigns.

Content marketing agency vs. in-house content marketers

Why would you go for a content marketing agency when you could hire your own specialists full-time? While content marketing should be a continuous mission, some brands simply don’t have the budget to pay full-time content marketers. This is especially the case for small brands.

Hiring full-time content marketing specialists who don’t do anything else can get expensive for a small brand. For this reason, rands that are trying to save money will opt to pay a content marketing agency instead. This agency can help them to implement specific content marketing strategies every few months. A good content marketing agency can even create enough filler content to tide you through a few months before you need to hire them again.

Aside from being more economical than an in-house team, a content marketing agency can offer your brand other advantages.

10 reasons to hire a content marketing agency

1) Helps you save time and money

Hiring a content marketing agency can help you save both the time and money that you would spend on in-house content marketing. We’ve already talked about why an in-house team can be an expensive option.

Beyond costing you a lot of money, hiring in-house content marketers can be time-consuming. For starters, think about the kind of time you would need to spend training your new hires. By the time these people understand your brand image as well as your standards, you’ll have lost a lot of time that you could’ve spent on something else.

This is not to say that a content marketing agency won’t need time to learn about your brand standards. On the contrary, they too need to be introduced to your brand. However, the people at content marketing agencies are used to a more fast-paced schedule as well as short turnaround times. For this reason, they’ll know exactly what information they need from you right from the get-go.

The experts at an agency will ask you for exactly what they need and nothing more. They won’t waste time obsessing over useless details. All in all, they’ll pick up on the necessary information much faster than your in-house content marketers will.

2) Gives you access to experts

Hiring a content marketing agency will give you access to a team of experts who have worked with different brands across different industries. Most established agencies have been around for at least 2 to 3 years. In other words, they have a lot of valuable experience which you can benefit from.

Given their experience in the field, you can safely assume an agency will come with specialized knowledge about content marketing strategies. The content marketing experts at an agency will also have an understanding of what works for brands of different sizes. Working with an agency with a good track record is, therefore, a guarantee that you will get quality results.

3) Equips you with a variety of strategies and tactics

Since a content marketing agency hires specialists in different types of content, partnering with them will give you what you need to make use of different approaches. An efficient agency will be able to develop different strategies for your goals. You should expect this regardless of whether you’re trying to boost sales, improve your SEO or improve your demand generation content marketing.

Any good content marketing agency should be able to adjust to your goals and hit the ground running. After all, an agency is backed by SEO experts, long-form content experts, and experts in visual content who should be able to understand your problem quickly. Beyond understanding your problem, they can suggest an actionable solution as well as a plan of action.

4) Helps you be consistent

Professional content marketers will develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy for your brand. In a good strategy, all the elements should fit together and complement one another. If you produce quality content that aligns with your brand image, then you also build a consistent brand image.

With a consistent brand image, your target audience will recognize your brand easily. Consistency also helps them to recall important aspects of your brand story.

5) Gives you access to professional content marketing tools

Content marketing tools can help you not only produce better content but also generate better-quality leads faster. When you hire a content marketing agency, you’re likely to have access to some content marketing tools.

What’s more, an agency can either offer premium tools to you at a discounted rate or for free. This is because a business subscription for these tools usually allows agencies to create accounts for their clients. Since they usually have multiple clients at a time, they can afford to offer you low rates for a subscription.

Beyond giving you access to discounted or free content marketing tools, an agency will train you on how to use these tools. This training can come in handy when you’re in between sessions with the content marketing agency. Rather than let your platforms go silent, you can use these tools to keep producing content until it’s time to pay the agency again.

6) Helps you develop a customized content marketing strategy

A content marketing agency will take time to understand your brand as well as your business goals. By doing this, they can build a content marketing strategy that works for your brand at this specific moment in its current environment.

While you can also build your own customized content marketing strategy, an agency is in a better position to do this. After all, an agency has most likely worked with several brands across different industries. Given this experience, they’ll have a better idea of what works for a brand like yours.

7) Gives you the tools and knowledge to evaluate said content marketing strategy

Evaluation is an important part of your content marketing strategy. In order to gauge how successful your content marketing efforts have been, you need specific tools and specialized knowledge. With a content marketing agency, you don’t need to struggle to get either.

The experts at an agency are skilled at every single stage of the content marketing cycle. From strategizing to content creation, content distribution, and evaluation, you’ll be working with people who know what they’re doing.

For this reason, measuring your success will be a piece of cake. When it’s time to evaluate your strategy, a good agency will be able to tell you how well it worked and whether you hit your goals. Moreover, an agency will be able to help you adjust your strategy for better outcomes in the future.

8) Allows you flexibility

When you decide to hire a content marketing agency, you also grant yourself flexibility with your content marketing. You don’t have to work with a content marketing agency full-time. Instead, you can hire their services for a specific number of months a year, at a time when you need additional support with your content marketing.

However, content marketing is a continuous effort and it’s not advisable to churn content out for a continuous 2 to 3 months and then go quiet. Doing this is a recipe for disaster. After all, when you go quiet, you’re no longer top of mind among your target audience. By the time you get back online, people will have forgotten about you and you’ll need to work that much harder to capture their attention.

In order to avoid becoming redundant in your industry, you need to discuss a plan for continuous content creation with your agency. They can help you to create content that you can use in the months when you won’t be hiring them. Alternatively, they can train you and your employees to create filler content for those months when you don’t need full-time support.

9) Allows you to focus on your specialty

By outsourcing your content marketing, you have more time to focus on what you’re really good at. Whether you need more time for product development, hiring top talent or finding investors, a content marketing agency will free that time up for you.

When you focus on what you’re really good at and outsource your content marketing to experts, you can perfect all the different aspects of your business. With experts handling everything, you can build a successful brand and stand out in your niche.

10) Gives you peace of mind

When you subcontract your content marketing to an agency, you can be confident that your brand image is in safe hands. Knowing this can give you peace of mind, which is very valuable to a founder who sees their company as their baby.

Where to find a good content marketing agency

Now that you understand the benefits of outsourcing your content marketing to an agency, you must be wondering where to find these miracle workers.

Finding a content marketing agency that has a good reputation, offers the services you need, and fits within your budget is easier said than done. For this reason, we’ve developed a list of 20 content marketing agencies for you to look through. We’ve also highlighted their areas of specialty to make it easier for you to find the best fit for your brand.

20 content marketing agencies that can help you

Good at SEO

1) Different Digital

Different Digital specializes in premium content marketing for SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS brands. They put emphasis on SEO consulting services including technical audits, keyword research, topic clustering, and editorial planning. They also create custom content strategies for clients. Finally, they offer UX consulting and promotion, and distribution services.

Their clients include:

• People Data Labs
• Avochato
• DODOcase
• LeSportsac

2) Brainlabs

Distilled built a legacy by mastering the art of search marketing. They then merged with Brainlabs, one of the biggest digital marketing agencies in the world. Born of this match is a digital marketing giant that specializes in paid search, social, programmatic, SEO and CRO. If you’re looking for best-in-class digital marketing with a focus on SEO, you need to check Brainlabs out.

Their clients include:

• Bed Bath & Beyond
• Cloudflare
• Godiva
• Papa John’s
• Chelsea Football Club
• American Express

3) Volume Nine

Volume Nine is a top digital marketing agency with a focus on SEO, PPC, social and content. Volume Nine can make sure your target audience stumbles upon your brand during an online search, and drive traffic to your brand from search engines.

Their clients include:

• Helen of Troy
• Bobo’s
• Volkswagen
• Backcountry
• Vitamin World

4) Fractl

Fractl specializes in building organic traffic to their clients’ sites. They use technical SEO, site audits and optimization strategies to help brands achieve first-page rankings on search engine results pages.

Their clients include:

• Avvo
• Discover
• Porch
• Indeed
• holidaycottages.co.uk

5) Elephate

This award-winning content marketing agency can help you to capture media attention and boost web traffic by creating valuable and shareable content. By making your content more valuable to both your target audience and Google algorithms, Elephate can boost your online visibility.

Their clients include:

• Oponeo
• Vox
• Sizeer
• Triverna

6) Siege Media

The team at Siege Media specializes in analyzing search data to find opportunities that brands can leverage. They have experience working with enterprise brands to achieve growth strategies with SEO-driven content marketing. In addition to SEO, this content team is good at content creation, digital PR and graphic design.

Their clients include:

• Zillow
• Shutterfly
• Tripadvisor
• Airbnb
• Casper

Good at B2B content marketing

7) The Content Bureau

The Content Bureau has turned marketing communications for B2B brands into an art. Armed with a team of marketing, copywriting, editing and design experts, The Content Bureau offers content marketing services that will establish your brand as a thought leader and drive visitors to your website. They specialize in brand messaging, email marketing, web design, long-form content and visual content.

Their clients include:

• San Francisco Ballet
• Unilever
• Amyris Biotechnologies
• Deloitte Consulting
• 300FeetOut

8) Dear Content

The dedicated team at Dear Content is experienced at developing and implementing content marketing strategies that guide potential clients through your sales funnel. They’re experts at creating content strategies, doing content writing and creating lead generation content.

Their clients include:

• Shopify
• Freepik
• MichaelPage
• iContainers
• Krauthammer

9) Content Chemistry

Content Chemistry is a digital marketing agency and a HubSpot Gold Solutions Partner based in Sydney, Australia. They’ve had experience working with startups as well as small to medium sized businesses to generate leads and customers. They specialize in inbound marketing strategies and they’re passionate about helping brands create content that has value.

Their clients include:

• Investa
• Vive Group
• Growth Mantra
• Addison Partners
• Karstens

10) Ironpaper

Ironpaper is a B2B-focused content marketing agency that focuses on attracting, nurturing and converting quality leads. The team at Ironpaper is committed to helping brands develop a content marketing strategy that improves the buyer journey. They’re skilled at producing content for campaigns, content for inbound marketing, content for ABM and content that bridges the divide between marketing and sales.

Their clients include:

• Shell Catalysts & Technologies
• Goddard
• Steelcase
• Crossfit

11) Spark Media Solutions

Spark Media Solutions is a B2B content marketing agency with a focus on creating content that helps brands make a memorable impression. They specialize in SEO, social media content, lead generation and influencer marketing.

Their clients include:

• IBM
• Microsoft
• eBay
• HP
• Samsung

Good at SaaS content marketing

12) Web Profits

Web Profits is an established content marketing agency that has been helping challenger brands drive growth since 2006. They’re experts at creating and implementing bespoke solutions in UX design, digital strategy, paid acquisition, organic marketing and marketing automation.

Their clients include:

• Logitech
• Aussie Broadband
• LJ Hooker
• Canon
• RSPCA

13) Optimist

Optimist is a full-service content marketing agency that works with startups and growth-stage companies to drive business growth. Beyond SaaS content marketing, they also offer SEO services, startup content marketing and B2B content marketing.

Their clients include:

• Contentstack
• FairShake
• HelloSign
• Neighbor
• Submittable

Good at visual content

14) Digital Brew

Digital Brew has specialized in using video content marketing to convert leads into customers then retain those customers. By creating quality videos, you can stand out in your industry and win more clients over to your brand.

Their clients include:

• Huggies
• Jetson
• Cisco
• 4Roots
• Braintrust

15) Sage Content Marketing

The content marketing expert at Sage Marketing can build you a website that not only looks good but also ranks high in search engine results. In addition to that, she also specializes in photography, video editing, copywriting, video editing, email marketing and promotional products. She’s worked with several small businesses as well as more established brands.

Her clients include:

• Frontier Leadership Resources
• RQ Horsemanship
• Integrity Freight & Logistics
• City of Brookfield

16) Infographic World (IGW)

Infographic World is a New-York based content marketing agency that specializes in producing visual content such as infographics, animations, explainer videos, presentations and interactive content. With this content, the agency can help your audience to understand even the most complex information.

Their clients include:

• Apopo.org
• Blackhawk Network
• Trend Micro
• AMP Agency

17) Globant

The team at Globant is skilled at helping brands develop a digital marketing strategy, create a brand position and redefine their go-to-market strategy. They specialize in generating audience engagement with content strategy, creation, publishing, moderation and optimization services. Given that they also offer culture management, as well as artificial intelligence and automation services, Globant might just be a one-stop shop for all your business needs.

Their clients include:

• American Express
• Fox
• Cabify
• LinkedIn
• Puma

Good at long-form content

18) Editor Group

Editor Group offers has experience doing writing, editing and proofreading services for businesses and governments alike. In addition, they specialize in indexing, writing training and custom style guides. They’re also the Asia partner for Acrolinx, an AI-powered editor.

Their clients include:

• Facebook Journalism Project
• Verizon
• AMGC
• AECOM
• Cisco

19) Goodman Lantern

With backgrounds in marketing, branding and research, the team at Goodman Lantern is skilled at crafting written content that helps brands meet their goals. More specifically, they offer marketing content, eCommerce content, research content and bespoke writing and editing services. They can help with the planning, execution and distribution of this content.

Their clients include clients in these industries:

• Fintech
• Telecommunications
• Health
• BPO
• Security
• Events

20) Content Powered

Content Powered is a blog management and content marketing agency. They’re skilled at helping brands to boost sales by creating valuable long-form content. In addition to helping you manage your blog, they can boost your SEO, design eye-catching graphics for your brand and help with web development. They’re also experts at using a wide variety of content management software including Shopify, WordPress, HubSpot, Medium and Ghost.

Their clients include:

• SaaS brands
• Consultants
• Travel agents

How to choose the best content marketing agency for your brand

As you can see, there are many options to choose from when looking for the perfect content marketing agency to help you meet your business goals. Ultimately, partnering with any of the agencies on this list can help you make a positive impression and stand out in your industry.

However, when faced with so many choices, it can be hard to make a decision. How does one choose a good content marketing agency? In order to make your final decision, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Do their prices fit within your budget?

Finding out if you can afford the content marketing agency you’ve chosen is a good place to start. A good content marketing agency can charge you anywhere between $1,000 to $5,000 for monthly services. However, those that work with startups or offer one-off services would fit easily in a more modest budget. Look around and compare prices before you make a decision. After all, it wouldn’t make sense to spend all your money on content creation when you’re still in the middle of product development.

• Does their specialization align with your goals?

The best content marketing agency for your brand is the one that will help you achieve your goals. If you want to boost your SEO, then you need to hire an agency that has SEO experts. Likewise, if you need help managing your blog so that you can drive more people to it, then you should hire an agency that has experts in long-form content.

• Do they have a good track record with proven results?

If the content marketing agency you want to work with isn’t able to show you work they’ve done for clients in the past, this is a red flag. Sometimes, to maintain confidentiality as well as client trust, an agency isn’t at liberty to share detailed information about clients. Even so, they should be able to give you examples of the kind of work they’ve done in the past. Beyond that, they should be able to talk about the results they generated as well as how they generated them.

• Do they have experts in different areas of content marketing?

Partnering with an agency that offers a wide range of expertise is important. This is especially the case if your content marketing goals are broad. The best agencies will have experts at long-form content as well as SEO gurus.

Whether you hire a content marketing agency or not will be one of the most defining decisions you can make for your brand. It’s true that it can be nerve-wracking to hand your content marketing over to an external party. After all, your business is your baby.

The good news is that the right team of content marketing experts can transform your brand image and drive clients to your business. What’s more, they will help you retain those clients when they arrive. In this way, a content marketing agency could be the best thing that happened to your brand.