5 Reasons to Hire a Content Marketing Consultant
Content marketing has been a “buzz” word in marketing for over a decade now. Indeed, although interest in content marketing began in 2004, by 2010 the phrase entered popular culture and continued to surge throughout 2017. So common has the term become that almost every marketing department had a content marketing consultant on the new-hire shortlist. Although many experts dismissed content marketing as nothing more than a fad that would quickly die out, these experts would probably have trouble explaining why as of 2020 interest in content marketing has never been greater. And chances are, if you’re running a startup or small business, you’ve heard about content marketing and have a vague idea that you should be doing it if you want to grow your business. But should you be doing content marketing? Do you really need a content marketing consultant? And what can a content marketing consultant do for your business? In this post, I’ll define what a content marketing consultant is and show you why you need to include content marketing as part of your business's growth strategy.
What is a Content Marketing Consultant?
A content marketing consultant is simply an expert who provides strategic advice on a business’s content (or lack thereof) (website, blog, social, ebooks etc) and then revises existing content or develops original content to better attract visitors to your website and other properties to get them to engage with content in meaningful ways that support your business objectives. In most cases, engagement includes triggering audience behavior that increases leads, sales and overall revenue, but the behaviors could also result in increasing brand equity or loyalty. Content marketing consultants come in many forms and organizations, i.e., both individuals or teams and free-lance, sole proprietorships, or agencies. What they all have in common is expertise in developing content that will organically attract audiences to your business so you can more effectively “market” your product or service to that audience.
To learn what content marketing is in general, I recommend reading this highly informative and comprehensive blog post on the topic.
Can’t Anyone Do Content Marketing?
Sorry, but no. Small businesses and startups that are short on time, budget and resources often try to play “content marketer” because they believe that writing a blog post or maintaining a website is something everyone can do. Afterall, don’t we all know how to write? Don’t we all manage our own social media accounts? Don’t we all visit websites and know what a good website is? No. Unfortunately, being semi-literate, having personal social media accounts, and being a casual web surfer cannot--and I repeat cannot--substitute for real content marketing expertise.
I’ve been doing content marketing before there was a word for it, and I honestly can’t tell you how many disasters I’ve had to fix by well-intentioned people who underestimated how difficult it is to produce great content regularly and/or get the right people to discover it. If you’re not a writer by trade, don’t know how to tell a story, and have zero expertise in SEO, you shouldn’t try to do content marketing without adult supervision. No seriously, this is something you need to ask for help to do effectively and it is much less expensive to do content marketing with a trained consultant correctly the first time than to have a content marketing consultant come in later and fix a huge mess. Trust me on this one, okay?
5 Reasons to Hire a Content Marketing Consultant
So if you know you can’t do content marketing alone, how do you know if you need to do it at all or if you need help from a consultant? The good news is these questions all have easy answers. If any of the situations below apply to your business, then there is a very high probability you should hire a content marketing consultant:
You don’t have the resources or budget to hire a content marketing team: to get your content found in Google SERPs, you not only need to produce high-quality content, you need to produce a lot of it, regularly. Most companies who rank in top 3 in Google are blogging a minimum of 2 to 3 times a week. So how can you get this amount of content produced a week if you don’t have content marketers onboard? You can’t unless you have help from a skilled professional. The solution: outsource this time-consuming work to a content marketing agency.
You don’t have the time or skills to develop a content strategy and/or develop content: you can’t just write a bunch of random blog posts or ebooks and get your content found by the people who will buy your product or service. For these reasons, you need someone who can not only produce the right content, but also a robust strategy that will help attract the right buyers to your content. Again, getting a content marketing consultant to develop strategy is probably the most important, but most overlooked, aspect in content marketing. Do yourself a favor and don’t skip developing a robust content strategy.
You have a content marketer on staff but you’re not currently receiving a significant return on your investment in content marketing: You’ve invested in content marketing, but for reasons you can’t explain, you’re not seeing any ROI from it. Your website traffic is still low and your leads are anemic. You’re starting to wonder if content marketing is all hype. If you’re in this situation, the best thing you can do is hire a consultant who can audit your current content marketing efforts and provide a strategy and tactical plan to turn it around. Content course correction isn’t easy, but the sooner you do it, the better it will be for your business and its bottomline.
You’ve recently lost significant website traffic and/or are recently losing business to a direct competitor: Did you recently get bad news from Google Analytics that your website traffic has plateaued or worse is decreasing? Chances are your content is the culprit! Did you try to outsource content to a cheap SEO agency or pay for blogs posts by “writers” at Fiver? Don’t walk--run to your nearest content marketing consultant and have them audit your content and develop a plan to fix this. Odds are your content has been penalized by Google and you need a trained expert to find the source of the problem and fix immediately.
You’re rebranding or repositioning your company or product/service: Sometimes a business needs to make a radical shit in its business model, which may include rebranding the company or its products or services. Rebranding or repositioning is very difficult to do even for large businesses and almost impossible to do well for small businesses and startups. If you’ve recently changed what you’re marketing and/or who you’re marketing to, chances are that you’ll need to change your content marketing strategy and tactics. This would be the perfect time to hire a content consultant.
What a Content Marketing Consultant Will Do for You
Now that you know the 5 reasons you probably need to hire a consultant, I’ll explain some of the general benefits of content marketing and specifically what VERGE can do for your business and how VERGE does it. In general, content marketing provides 3 major benefits for companies who invest in it:
Improve brand awareness--By generating content at the top of the funnel that users discover by browsing, brands can become visible to potential customers before they are aware they have a problem your business can solve.
Increase Customer Acquisition--By creating mid-stage content that users discover when they are actively searching to either solve a problem or access an opportunity, brands can actively guide prospects through their buyer journey. This process translates directly to increased leads, additional pipeline opportunities and revenue growth.
Increase customer retention--By developing late-stage content that continuously educates customers on how to get the most out of a product or service or provide recommendations on additional services or products that compliment ones they’ve already purchased, brands can increase customer lifespan while leveraging content for cross sell and upsell opportunities. Essentially a content consultant can help you keep the customers you already have, building deep and long-lasting customer loyalty.
Focus Areas: Summary
While it’s important to know what the general benefits of content marketing are, one of the most frequent questions I get from clients and prospective clients is: but how do you do that exactly? And what can you do for my business specifically? So I’ll spend a few moments explaining in detail what VERGE can do for your business and how we do it.
Essentially we focus on the following 4 service areas:
Branding, Content Strategy & Planning
Content Production & Editorial Services
Distribution, Promotion & Analytics
Training & Education
Focus Areas: Breakdown
Branding, Content Strategy & Planning
You can’t do anything well without a plan. You can’t build anything correctly without a blueprint. Whether it’s your brand identity, your SEO strategy or website performance, VERGE is an expert at looking under the hood, determining gaps and developing strategy to fill those gaps. Specifically our clients ask us to start with a basic messaging framework and then translate that framework into a brand identity and finish with a content strategy and plan:
Messaging Framework
Brand Persona, Brand Identity, Guidelines
Content Marketing Strategy & Planning
SEO Strategy & Planning
Influencer Marketing Strategy
Social Media Promotion & Distribution Strategy
Content Workflow & Governance
Website Performance Analysis
Website Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Content Production & Editorial Services
What good is a plan if you haven’t executed against it? VERGE is a full service agency, which means we not only develop the plan, we also develop the content for you that is “on brand” and “on voice.” Most content marketing consultants don’t do content development. But remember what I said, earlier--content is hard and you can’t do it alone. So VERGE can help you with end-to-end content production. We can help you brainstorm ideas, provide research for industry surveys and reports, ghost write blog posts or actually manage your blog and input into CMS. We make content marketing look and feel easy for you:
Content Ideation
Content Research
Byline Pitching & Media Placement
Writing, Ghostwriting, & Editing
Content Production & Packaging
Inputting Content into Content Management System (CMS)
Distribution, Promotion & Analytics
Creating the content is just the start. Once created you need to get it out into the world. VERGE can help you distribute published content, promote it and also track and analyze the content you produce so you can report it and optimize it:
Organic Social Media Distribution & Syndication
Social Media Management
Paid Campaigns, Advertising & PPC
Promotions, Contests, & Offers
Analytics & Reporting
Training & Education
VERGE has a different model of operation than most content marketing consultants. Most consultants will keep you in the dark about how they get the results they do so they can keep you dependent on them. In contrast, VERGE believes in training our clients so they can learn how to do their own content and become completely self-sufficient.
We offer team training sessions and other resources and tools to help you or your team get up to speed.
8 Questions to Ask When Evaluating a Consultant
So, you know you need a content consultant. How do you go about finding a good one? what should you look for when you’re evaluating a content marketing consultant?
Does the Content Consultant Have an Experienced Team? Who do they work with? If a solopreneur do they have a team of experienced and reliable contractors they can rely on to deliver results?
Do They Have a Reputable Blog? Content marketing experts should run their own blog. And you can find out how well they know content marketing by examining the quality of their blog. Do they create well-researched, well-written helpful content? Is their content executed so well that you’d be willing to subscribe to their blog?
Do They Work with Similar Companies? Has the consultant worked with companies in your industry before? Do they have experience taking startups in your industry from seed to series A or C? If a small business, have they helped other small businesses grow? Do they understand the industry and jargon your company is in so they can write authentically about it? These are critical when attempting to deliver quality content that resonates with your specific audience.
Do They Keep Up with trends? Is the consultant familiar with the latest technology for developing and delivering content? Do they know where the discipline is heading? Ask them what content marketing blogs they read, books they completed or conferences they recently attended on content. Ask them to name three trends in content marketing to determine if they stay up-to-date and truly understand how to do cutting edge content marketing. Competition in content is fierce and you won’t get results from content developed that isn’t leveraging the latest media, channels, and techniques.
Do They Develop Content? As noted earlier, many consultants don’t actually develop content and will force you to find another content marketing agency or expect you to develop it yourself. But a consultant can't develop a great content strategy if they don’t know anything about how content is created and produced. Ensure the content marketing consultant you choose knows content marketing from strategy and ideation to production and governance.
Do They Provide Performance Reports? Does the consultant volunteer to provide regular performance reports on their activities on behalf of your company based upon mutually agree-upon goals? And do they ensure these reports are easy to understand so you can clearly see if your consultant is meeting content goals and you’re getting a significant return on your investment? The fact is that everything that is measured improves. The more actively your consultant is tracking and measuring performance the greater likelihood you will see ROI.
Does the Consultant Charge hourly? How does the consultant want to be compensated? By the project, hourly, or retainer? You should select a consultant who charges in a way that ensures they provide the high-quality work and doesn’t nickel and dime you for every second they are working on your account. Some compensation schedules actively reward consultants for being less efficient. Ensure that your consultant is charging in a way that will ensure the highest degree of efficiency.
Do They Display Evidence of Customer Satisfaction? Does the consultant offer any evidence that previous clients are happy with the service they received or that they met mutually agreed upon goals with other clients? Do they have testimonials from happy or satisfied customers on their website? Do they have case studies demonstrating the results they say they can produce for your company? Make sure to ask the consultant to provide testimonials, case studies or referrals to satisfied clients before you take the plunge.
Time for a Content Marketing Consultant?
Hopefully, if you’ve read this far you’ve now got a pretty good idea if you need a content consultant. If you’ve determined that you don’t need one at this time, then this post has done its job. The worst thing would be for you to hire a consultant and determine later after you’ve spent time and money that you didn’t need one in the first place.
However, if you now believe you do need a consultant, you also probably realize that this is something you shouldn't do on your own and you’ll need an experienced professional to guide you. VERGE may be the perfect solution for you.
To find out if VERGE would be a great fit for you, we offer a free 1-hour consultation to assess your needs, learn about your business and determine if it’s the right fit. VERGE provides completely customized content marketing strategy and activities for your business or we can provide “content packages” that are great for small businesses or startups who want to dip their toe into content marketing, but don’t have the resources or budget to completely commit yet.
Let’s get started :)