To new entrepreneurs, content marketing seems like a relatively easy task: You write about your business, about your products and about your industry — things you should know quite well — and your audience grows.
Many startup entrepreneurs launch their businesses confident that they themselves, or at least their staff, can manage content marketing on their own.
Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case. Content marketing is much more time- and labor-intensive than you might expect, and it also requires much more technical skill to see success. Before you commit to managing your own content marketing efforts, consider why it might be better to seek out qualified content marketing services:
Content Marketing Needs a Strategy
Anyone can create content, but not everyone can create content that accomplishes a goal. Your business needs your content to do something, like increase visibility or drive conversions, if it hopes to get back its investment in content creation.
Unfortunately, you might not know how to develop realistic goals for your content, let alone enact them through content creation and marketing. Plus, because content is never free — it at least demands your time and attention, or that of your staff, if you aren’t hiring professional content creators — you need to make and maintain a budget for this marketing strategy, which requires you to understand how different aspects of content marketing cost.
In contrast, content marketing experts are proficient not only at identifying how your business can benefit from content but also at creating a unique content marketing strategy based on your budget and timeline. Often, content marketing firms will conduct several interviews to better identify exactly what goals to pursue in your content marketing strategy, and they will track various metrics to ensure those goals are reached.
Content Marketing Must Engage Audiences
You aren’t necessarily your business’s audience — which means you might not be adept at understanding what your audience wants to see and engage with. As an industry professional, you might know too much about the intimate details of your field or your products, and the content you produce might be fit for others in your industry as opposed to potential customers and clients. Alternatively, you might produce content in the wrong format or the wrong tone, decreasing visibility and engagement.
Content marketing pros have a variety of methods for better understanding who clients’ audiences are and what they want, including market research, buyer persona development, customer surveys and more. This groundwork takes time and energy, but it ensures that your content isn’t boring or attractive to the wrong groups.
Content Marketing Requires Observation
Many content marketing DIYers focus intently on the “content” aspect and neglect the “marketing” aspect. To be successful, content must be promoted — through advertising, email campaigns, social media and more, which ensure that your audience is aware that new content is available. Then, content needs to be tracked; there are various key performance indicators (KPIs) to verify that your content is helping you achieve your strategic goals.
You need an experienced content marketing team to determine which KPIs matter and to monitor them for success. Sometimes, observing content will give marketers more insight into what audiences like or dislike, helping to hone your content strategy. Content creation is often a short-lived endeavor, but observing and analyzing content is ongoing, and it pays to have someone you can trust to monitor your content efforts.
Content Marketing Demands Patience
Too often, business leaders expect marketing to revolutionize their business in a matter of days or weeks. However, almost no business efforts manifest results that swiftly — and that is especially true of marketing. Content marketing is a long game; you need to be patient with the performance of your content, or else you risk making serious mistakes that jeopardizes your strategy or worse, your entire brand.
By outsourcing your content marketing, you are removing the responsibility from your plate and giving it to a trustworthy professional. This reduces the likelihood of you compromising any element of your marketing strategy and increases the satisfaction you will feel when you see positive results.
Content marketing is a critical strategy for growing a business in the digital age — which is precisely why you shouldn’t try to manage it on your own. By utilizing content marketing services, you will gain access to expertise that will ensure the success of both your content and your business as a whole.