digital content strategy Archives - Mutant Communications

6 tips to help you pick the right content marketing agency

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve probably heard it a thousand times: content is king. And unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would also understand the important role content marketing plays in driving leads and delivering results.

Traditional marketing is falling out of favour with many consumers, and content marketing fills the gaps with regular creations and distribution of quality information relevant to your target audience – drawing them in and ultimately turning prospects into customers.

Sounds great doesn’t it?

But the only problem is that content marketing requires a full strategy, time and dedicated resources. This means that at least one or two team members should be dedicated to executing your content strategy, which can be tough, particularly if you don’t have the knowledge or manpower. If you don’t have the time, your next bet is to hire an agency to assist you. Agencies are generally made up of skilled professionals, meaning you can utilise many different talents and levels of expertise to help you drive your marketing strategy forward.

But with so many agencies out there, how do you pick the right one?

Here are some tips to consider when choosing a content marketing agency:

1. Define your purpose

This may seem like a no-brainer question, but so many brands out there get caught up in creating content just for the sake of it. When planning your strategy, really think about your key goals, and what you want to achieve. Do you want traffic? Increased conversions and leads? Or perhaps building brand reputation and awareness?

Your goals will determine your agency evaluation criteria. For example, if you’d like to to develop a strong content strategy, you might focus more on the team’s knowledge of your industry and knack for strategic and analytical thinking. But if you just want to outsource the content creating process, you would more likely look at hard skills such as subject matter expertise and video or photo editing skills. Most brands might not require the full breadth of an agency’s content marketing skills, so tailor your search accordingly.

2. Measure success

Ultimately, what you want out of your chosen agency is measurable results – to determine your ROI. So find out how they measure success and what content management tools and data sets they use. Getting to know and understand their processes should give you more confidence to select the right agency for you.

3. Do the groundwork

Being a content marketing agency without a blog and social media accounts is akin to a pilot without a license: unqualified for the job. Don’t take what they say at face value, do the necessary legwork to validate their claims. Check out the quality of articles on their blog, who writes it, and how they’ve been growing over time. Their abilities should shine through at this point, and if you remain unimpressed, move on to the next agency.

4. Get to know the team

Ensure the people working on your account are knowledgeable and skilled. It’s not uncommon for top-level executives to pitch for your account, and then pass it over to other members in the agency – but it’s also your job to get to know who will eventually be on your team. Clarify these details, find out their track record, and if possible, meet and get to know them. They are the ones who will pluck out everything amazing in your company, and turn it into fantastic content that’s worth sharing.

5. Test the relationships

A good relationship is crucial, so make sure to pick a team that you’re completely comfortable and confident in. Besides having faith in the agency’s abilities, you should also feel assured that they will not hesitate to tell you if your ideas might not work, and recommend other strategies that are in line with your goals. Having a good working relationship also helps when you have to coordinate between your in-house team and the agency. The agency should be working as an extension of your company, and should help make this process seamless.

6. Don’t forget culture and values

While it’s important to assess an agency’s skill set and competency, cultural fit is also an important factor to take into account. Besides allowing for a smoother partnership, a good culture also determines the type of team you get. People are an agency’s number one asset, which means success comes from the right people with the right skills, doing the best for their client. It’s essential for the agency to have clear values in place, because those values shape the culture that attracts and retains top talent. Without an amazing culture, an agency will be subject to high turnover, which may affect your account.

And there you have it, 6 things to help you choose a content marketing agency. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it should help you get started and point you in the right direction.

Drop us a note if you’re in the market for a creative content marketing agency. Reach us at [email protected].

Distributing content to the right people

Great job! You’ve created a lot of content that’s just waiting to be read. Now the next step is to identify what you want to share, how and when.

Suggested read: Content Distribution 101

Ask yourself these important questions:

Why are you sending out content?
How will it support business goals?
Who are you targeting?
What can you offer your target audience at each stage of their journey?
How will you be different?
How will they find the content? Where will you publish it?
When and how will you measure results

Answer these, and then begin to work your content selection and distribution around the buyer journey.

The buyer journey

Following the buyer is key to a successful content marketing strategy. A content distribution strategy should begin with the awareness stage, followed by lead generation, then to nurturing, and finally the sales push. You will find that different content pieces will be suitable to fulfill each stage, which will ultimately determine the distribution channel/s.

Here’s a great representation of the buyers journey (and what you need to do at each stage):

Source

During the discovery or awareness stage, you’ll likely be sharing fun and light information to capture initial interest, and hoping people download your lead generation call-to-action. Following this, you can take it up a notch and delight them with more informative content pieces, personalised emails, demos or deals. This is the nurturing stage, and when your prospect is ‘considering’ a purchase – so an important stage.

Next, if they look like a hot lead, you can give them more detailed materials about your business. This is generally done by the sales team, and includes content in the form of product sheets and pricing guides. By this stage, this prospect should be on their way to becoming a paying customer.

Distributing your words

Now let’s look at the how you will get your content seen.

Each stage will require unique content as you are targeting the buyer at different stages in their decision process. The key is to target the buyer’s emotions and help them identify their need for your product or service nice and early.

This table provides examples of the type of content and channels suited to each stage in a buyer’s journey.

You will need to remember that your industry, product and sales lifecycle will all determine the length of your campaign and the type of content you produce. Only you know your target audience and how they respond to different information, so each content distribution plan should be unique and tailored to your business – not a carbon copy of any other business.

From planning to performance

Any strategy needs to be measured to assess its effectiveness. Without proper measurement, you will have no idea if your content is working.

Run your campaign and at its conclusion look at each stage of the buyer journey separately.

Here’s an example of a typical campaign measurement system:

Step 1: 20-30 days after end of campaign

How much traffic was generated to your website?
How did your social channels perform (likes, shares clicks etc..)?
Any initial leads?

Step 2 – 45-60 days after end of campaign

How many qualified leads have you got?

Step 3 – 90-120 days

How many leads have you converted to sales?

Of course, not each campaign has the same sales cycle length, so as I previously mentioned, this should be unique to your business. Through this you can see how each buyer stage performed, and where any content adjustments need to be made for your next campaign.

Need help with your content? Drop a message to [email protected]

How to create killer content

Do you wonder if your marketing budget is being spent in the right places? Or whether your dollars are delivering maximum ROI? Content marketing has far surpassed traditional advertising in today’s social-media driven world. Viewers channel-hop during television commercials and ignore ad placements in newspapers and magazines. Instead, they actively seek out content they are interested in.

With the human attention span getting shorter by the minute, the competition for audience attention is intense. How exactly do you set your writing apart from the increasingly saturated blogosphere of content?

Use compelling titles

People scan more than they read. A huge wall of text often turns readers off and you’ll find them scrolling past your content in a jiffy. Your title represents your content on keyword searches and social media. It practically sells it and 8 out of 10 readers today don’t look past post titles. With an interesting title, you are more likely to attract your audience to at least scan through your words. Include subheadings that stand out so that your readers have an idea of what to expect next.

Here is a an example from Hootsuit of a great headline:

Be consistent

It isn’t enough to merely schedule your content for a couple of times a week. Sure, that is consistent frequency, but the key to retaining your readers and attracting them to read post after post comes down to a lot more than just timing. Your tone should be streamlined across each platform you utilise to engage with your audience. To leave a lasting impression, you’d want to give your brand a unique personality. Start off with an overall content strategy and consolidate a fixed tone in order to set the foundation.

Go visual

As mentioned earlier, readers often switch off when they face a wall of text. Imagine scrolling through paragraphs of Times New Roman size 12 font (boring right?!) and then something colourful catches your eye. Of course you would stop to look. Not only do visuals help to illustrate your content, but statistics show that visual content is processed 60,000 times faster in the brain as compared to text. Integrate colourful infographics and videos when you’re creating your content to increase the chances of getting your content read.

Here’s a great example from Deliveroo. They have provided mouth-watering mac and cheese images that makes reading the content a whole lot more exciting –Who’s hungry?

Involve your audience

Engage your readers by speaking directly to them through your content. Posts need to be relatable and readers should never feel detached from the narrative. You can also leave your readers with questions and perhaps address them in the next post. Your content should ideally spark a wave of comments, increasing its reach to a wider audience.

Check out this great example from The Smart Local:

Take your sales hat off

Today’s tech-savvy consumers are so used to viewing content that promotes a branded products and services they are practically immune to direct sales. Aggressive overselling only turns potential consumers away because the more you try to sell, the less interested they become. Instead, focus on building your voice and influence within the industry. Be genuine and convey your ideas directly in your content. This not only creates a brand impression in the eyes of your readers, but interests them to patronise your content because they know that there will be no hard-selling involved.

Adidas has nailed it. The article has no mention of buying Adidas clothing but indirectly implies fit parents need cool workout gear. (If you have’t got it, they want you to go buy Adidas workout gear!)

Content marketing is a powerful way for businesses to reach out to their target audience. The best kind of content is captivating, makes audience want to continue reading and most importantly, makes them want to share it on their social media platforms. Don’t forget to leave a call-to-action to guide your readers on what to do next!

Need help nailing your next content piece? Get in touch with us at [email protected].