With the rise of content marketing, it is crucial for brands and
Ready to take the plunge into hiring a content marketing agency or finding a new content marketing partner? To help your company get started in the process, we have come up with five important questions to ask you next content marketing agency. With these questions, you will now be able to assess content marketing agencies and see who is the best fit for your company.
Let’s get started! And make sure you checkout the top content marketing agencies on Agency Spotter.
1. Who will be creating the content?
You are looking for a content marketing agency…and like the old saying, “Content is King.” So, the first question you should ask about is who will be creating the content. Do they have an in-house content staff, a network of freelancers, or a bit of both?
Most commonly, content marketing agencies have on-staff writers and a network of freelancers they work with. Both have their advantages and disadvantages but don’t be weary to work with freelancers. Freelancers are great when you want to look for experts in a particular industry, and their content is often better than a in-house writer without any knowledge in that field.
If the agency only has an in-house staff, that could also be a red flag. Having a small team in charge of all your content could be dangerous and set you up for subpar content.
2. How successful is your own content marketing?
This follow-up question is another gauge to measure the agency’s writers and their overall content strategy. They are a content marketing agency, so their own content marketing should be as good or better than what they offer you.
While everything may not be a one-to-one relationship, you can get a feel for what the agency’s about and what they are great at.
3. Do you have an efficient on-boarding process?
Whether it’s new content marketing tools or the agency’s content strategy, you need a partner that can help bring your team up to speed and answer any questions you might have. This question is very important because if you see your company having a hard time adapting to the agency’s on-boarding strategy, chances are the rest of the experience could be just as hard.
There are tons of content marketing tools out there that you’ve probably never used. You need an agency that can train you to use the tools and implement them for the future.
4. Will your agency handle SEO?
Great content is meaningless if no one can find it. This technical but critical side of content marketing is a must and your content marketing agency should be SEO experts as well. As SEO rules change, your agency partner should be capable of making changes in a timely manner and update your website as needed.
If they say you need a separate SEO agency, walk away…
5. How do you capture customer data?
The point of content marketing and every other marketing strategy is to convert visitors to customers. Ask what kind of tools they use to track customer data, and how they will present this information to you.
Google analytics isn’t enough for tracking visitors, you need great data management tools to optimize you content marketing efforts. Creating great content is very important, but using that great content to convert visitors is just as important.
Are you content now?
Take these five questions and start your journey on finding your next content marketing agency! Add or subtract questions depending on what is important to your company. Remember, there is never a bad questions, so study up on your potential content marketing partners, and we hope that Agency Spotter has helped your company :)
To see more of our 5 Questions to Ask Your Next Agency series, visit our 5Qs page.
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