Should You Outsource Content Marketing?

Outsourcing content marketing can cost a fraction of what dedicating in-house resources would — and you’ll get better results.

Nobody can do it all, despite what the latest motivational meme tells you. When running your business, it is vital that you focus on where you excel; sticking with your core competency is critical. Essentially, the more hats you wear in your company, the more watered down your efforts become.

Content marketing can be highly effective in generating leads and driving sales, but doing it right requires significant time and effort. If you are trying to manage content on top of overseeing key aspects of your business’ day-to-day operations, you are stretching yourself thin. What’s more, it’s negatively impacting your bottom line.

Why DIY content marketing can be costly

Many companies mistakenly think that managing their content marketing in house is simple, cost effective, and not time consuming. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Here is why:

Lost hours on your job

Taking time away from your primary focus prevents you from doing your job. If what you do best is new product development, for example, then dedicating hours each week to writing blog posts means that much less time for market research, design, and implementation. Those few hours away each week add up over time, and the cost to your company is significant.

Lost leads and sales opportunities

You may be a good writer and have personal social media accounts, but do you understand the ins and outs of creating and distributing content in a business setting? Professional content writers have expertise in search engine optimization (SEO), branding, user experience, and storytelling — all of which drive traffic and generate leads. Social media strategists similarly have expert knowledge of networking sites and how to best reach a target audience. If you don’t have that expertise, you are costing your company those opportunities — or, again, taking time away from your primary function trying to learn.

Lost readership and audience retention

If your content does not engage your audience, you shouldn’t have bothered in the first place. And engaging content doesn’t occur by happenstance. Research shows a strong correlation between content marketing success and strategy, documentation, and frequent check-ins. You need to know exactly who your audience is and what they want to read, and then you need a long-term plan for continually reaching them in new and interesting ways. Then you need to regularly assess your strategy and adjust as needed. As you can imagine, that all takes time and focus.

According to Forbes, outsourcing your content marketing is a cost-effective way to increase the success of your program. Essentially, you get expertise and experience — at a fraction of the cost of dedicating in-house resources — with no long-term commitment. By allowing experts to create strategies and leverage well-crafted, engaging content across multiple channels, you can improve lead generation and exponentially increase sales.

The Takeaway

By outsourcing your content marketing to the right firm, you can:

Get professionally written, optimized content that engages your target customer and builds relationships.
Benefit from the firm’s experience with content marketing for your industry and beyond.
See results and ROI. The firm should put metrics on all of your marketing activities and deliver a regular report to you so you can monitor progress.
Save time and money: You can focus on the core aspects of growing your business, while outsourcing your content marketing costs a fraction of dedicating in-house resources.

Simply put, it ultimately costs less to let experts create and execute your content. Given the reins, they can leverage their experience to produce greater results, capture more leads, analyze results, revise strategies, and, most importantly, free up your schedule to focus on your key responsibilities.

About author Kate Lee

Kate has close to 20 years of experience working with a range of clients from senior executives at Fortune 100 companies to academics to refugees. She has worked both domestically and internationally. With experience in content development, business intelligence, demand generation, qualitative and quantitative research, social media, and forging strategic partnerships, Kate is recognized as an industry leader.