Choosing the Right Content Marketing Agency for Your Goals

We hear the word "Content Marketing" mentioned so often, but what exactly is it? It is a marketing technique that involves creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and reliable content to attract and acquire a target audience. The objective is almost always, to drive favorable customer action leading to profits. content marketing for small businesses

Content Marketing is a very useful advertising tool when you want to grow your business. How? Well, Content Marketing first creates awareness about your product or service. Then more relevant content helps a customer to research or learn about the product or service. The next step will be consideration which may include price or features comparison etc. Finally, the right strategized content will motivate customers to actually purchase your product or service. Now the entire process can become much simpler for any business, when a Content Marketing agency is hired. Here is how you can go about it.

What to Look For in an Agency?

• Don't go by the accolades a Content Marketing agency has won. Rather, go through their long term case studies which will reveal - the quality of work, quality of placements secured for their campaigns, KPIs used to measure their success, level of innovation, client relationship and so on. Even if an agency doesn't have a case study in your specific vertical, they can still produce high quality, marketable work for you.

• Check the diversity of work portfolio. It may include articles, info graphics, data visualizations, images, videos, interactive maps, mixed media pieces and such.

• On-site client testimonials and LinkedIn recommendations are an unbiased way to gauge about both agency founders and those who actually produce campaigns.

• Research the published work of team members or industry columns by the founders to estimate the depth of their knowledge.

• See if the agency is always trying to innovate with content creation or marketing processes. Then it can help you stay ahead of your competitors.

• Ensure if the success evaluation metrics of the agency suits your goal. Some vital benchmarks are high quality links, total social shares, purchases, downloads, subscriptions, and unique visitors etc.

• Make sure that the content agency knows how to use SEO efficiently and get your content ranked high on major search engines.

• Though a piecemeal content may cost you less, a comprehensive strategy package from the agency can offer long term results. This may include strategy consultation, ideation, research, production, design, influencer marketing etc.

• Ask specifically about who will produce your campaigns, who will be your weekly contact point, their work history and so on.

• Ask if any Marketing Automation or Advanced Analytics tools will be used to measure the results.

• Also focus on the technical side of marketing and inquire about who will execute the website design, changes or updates.

• A small or boutique agency can provide great results and are often more adapted to changes. So don't dismiss them because of a small social following or lack of blog.