Does B2B content marketing feel like a long-drawn and unending battle?
At some point, most B2B marketers struggle to maintain the desired scale and quality of SaaS content marketing efforts.
Can outsourcing content marketing be your saviour amidst this roller coaster?
Absolutely.
Outsourcing content marketing can help you focus on the big picture. It can remove the pain of daily content creation and let you focus on experimenting with your content marketing strategy.
Hiring a professional B2B content marketing agency can help you ride your content campaigns instead of getting bogged down by their immensity.
So, in this post, let’s look at some practical strategies to outsource your B2B content marketing efforts.
Are you ready? Let’s get started.
What is Content Marketing Outsourcing?
Content marketing outsourcing involves hiring external professionals or agencies to manage various aspects of a company's content marketing efforts.
It includes content planning, content strategy, producing and publishing content, search engine optimization, and performance metrics analysis.
Businesses may choose to outsource content marketing to access specialized skills, save on costs associated with maintaining an in-house team, or scale their marketing efforts efficiently.
By partnering with freelancers or agencies, companies can focus on their core business while outsourcing content operations to specialist service providers.
Top Benefits of Outsourcing Content Marketing
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to outsource your content marketing, let’s understand some of the key advantages of outsourcing.
Access to Trained Experts
First and foremost, content marketing outsourcing gives you access to expert and experienced content marketing professionals.
This means it does away with the effort and resources you might otherwise invest in hiring and training an in-house team.
Ease of Team Management
You don't have to manage the entire content team when you hire an external partner or a team of freelancers. A content agency deputes an account manager who takes the responsibility for managing your entire content marketing process.
Hence, outsourcing lets you focus on what matters most to your business—the outcomes.
Simplified Onboarding
Besides ease of team management, outsourcing lets you onboard and grow your team faster.
A more efficient onboarding process paves the way for your B2B brand to quickly start with the main content marketing activities: writing, publishing, and promotions.
Find New Ideas
Content marketing outsourcing lets you sit back and think about fresh perspectives to improve business outcomes.
You can also organize brainstorming sessions with your agency to uncover innovative platforms and formats for your branded content. This way, outsourcing paves the way for you to work on executive creative content marketing ideas.
Get High-Quality Content Cost-Effectively
Content marketing outsourcing helps you publish high-quality without breaking the bank. It enables you to hire writers with specific experience.
Such writers are most often skilled at understanding your brand and assisting you in publishing content that reflects your brand’s core values.
This allows you to scale content production without the overhead costs of full-time hires.
Outsourcing Content Marketing vs. Outsourcing Content Creation
So, here’s the thing: outsourcing content marketing isn’t the same thing as outsourcing content creation.
The scope of content marketing is much broader than content creation, which involves generating blog posts, infographics, images, and videos for a brand. Content marketing involves a whole gamut of activities, including:
- Audience persona development
- Defining key content marketing platforms
- Promoting branded content on social media accounts
- Tracking and improving business outcomes
The main advantage of outsourcing content marketing as opposed to content creation is that you get to hold your marketing partner accountable for what they achieve for you in terms of results.
In the case of content creation outsourcing, you need to build and ride the strategic element of your content marketing efforts. Hence, in such a scenario, the scope of work and the level of responsibility of the agency or the freelance writer are relatively low.
Content Outsourcing vs. Hiring an In-House Team
Let's now briefly compare outsourcing content marketing with an in-house content team.
Pros of Hiring an Agency Over an In-House Team
Outsourcing is Far More Cost-Effective
When comparing content outsourcing to hiring an in-house team, outsourcing is far more cost-effective. Hiring full-time resources means a fixed cost structure, including salary, benefits, training, and payroll taxes. However, agencies offer you access to the best talent at a relatively lower cost.
Content Marketing Outsourcing Saves Time
Hiring an agency helps you dive straight into publishing. That means if you onboard an agency, you're ready to roll with your strategy. Hence, hiring an offshore team is an excellent way to start publishing authoritative content in agile mode.
Occasions When an In-House Team Has an Upper Hand
Here are certain occasions when an in-house team can be a good fit for spearheading your branded content marketing.
Highly Technical Niche
If your niche or industry is complicated and might take years to master, it's better to hire SMEs as content marketers. In a situation where you can't find any agency or a freelancer who can deliver expert content, it's ideal to hire an in-house team.
Need More Control
An in-house team means you have direct oversight of your content projects. It gives you greater control over the quality of content that you publish. Having an in-house team helps you better align your content with your brand standards and objectives.
How to Outsource Content Marketing?
Understand Your Outsourcing Needs
When you decide to outsource content marketing, start making a list of things you need to outsource. For instance, do you wish to outsource your entire content marketing program?
Or do you think hiring only a content creation agency is best? Some marketers might wish to create content in-house and outsource distribution to an external partner.
Others might outsource a tiny part, such as image editing or video production. Deciding how much to outsource depends on the current state of your content marketing team.
Freelancer or Agency
All B2B SaaS marketers have a big question: should I hire a full-blown B2B content marketing agency or a freelance resource?
The answer to that question also depends on your outsourcing needs. If you’re looking for end-to-end solutions, an agency would be a better fit for your SaaS business.
On the other hand, hiring a freelancer would work just as well if you’re looking for help with a specific aspect of content marketing, such as image creation, content writing, or video editing.
Your content marketing budget also factors into choosing between a freelancer and an agency. Most companies that end up hiring an agency have a big budget for their content marketing campaigns.
Companies looking to stay lean with their content campaigns turn to freelancers to outsource their content marketing.
Document Your Content Marketing Budget
B2B marketers, on average, allocate 26% of their total marketing budget to content marketing. (Source)
A content marketing budget is usually a percentage of a total marketing budget. Once you've ballparked a figure, you can get an idea of the type of outsourcing partner you can afford to hire.
B2B marketers spend between $1500 to $15000 (or more) on monthly content outsourcing. The money you spend depends on the quantity and quality of content you intend to publish.
Plus, you need to factor in the content marketing channels and formats. More channels mean you need more money to publish and promote your branded content.
Documenting a content marketing budget lets you decide the type of content partner you need for your business.
Choosing the Right Content Partner
When you choose whether to hire an agency or a freelancer to outsource, it’s time to start looking for the right vendor.
How do you select a content marketing partner? Let’s answer this burning question in this section.
Work Portfolio
The prospective content marketing agency or freelancer should have a portfolio that aligns with your business needs.
Browse through the portfolio section of their website to get an idea of the work they’ve done in the past.
See if they have experience in serving clients in your niche. Explore if they have worked on creating content in the required format.
Niche experience is one of the primary factors to consider when hiring a suitable content partner for your B2B SaaS business.
Read Through Their Case Studies
Another essential consideration when hiring a content marketing partner is their ability to get you results. This is especially true of agencies offering end-to-end content marketing solutions.
The ideal way is to head over to the case studies section of their website and read through each of their case studies.
Once you do that, you’ll get a fair idea of the agency's capabilities to match your expectations in terms of business outcomes.
The process helps you learn about the depth of their experience and subject matter expertise.
Look for Social Proof
When speaking of track record, social proof takes centre stage. Therefore, to verify an agency or a freelancer’s credibility, you must look at their client testimonials.
If other marketers in your industry say nice things about a content marketing agency, then there is a good reason to hire them.
Flexibility
An agency you’re going to hire may be good at what they do, but do their service bundles align with your business needs?
Also, does your prospective outsourcing partner offer a certain degree of flexibility and adaptability in their contract?
These things matter because content marketing needs to adapt to a dynamic business environment. That’s why hiring an agency that adapts to your changing needs and requirements is ideal.
The right way to understand their approach is to get on a call with one of their executives.
Share Your Expectations
Once you’ve chosen an outsourcing partner, you must align them with your expectations.
If you already have a documented brand voice strategy, make sure you share it with your agency. A detailed style guide helps content creators to produce content that goes with your brand.
Create a workflow and timeline document and share that as well. The process helps your external team understand your expectations in terms of processes and deadlines.
Clear communication during onboarding helps you set the tone for the partnership. Also, it helps in ensuring a smooth and lasting relationship with your outsourcing partner.
Over to You
Content marketing outsourcing is definitely a terrific way to build a solid and scalable content marketing engine that generates leads and sales for your business.
What you need is strong attention to detail when choosing an agency or a freelancer who can take the onus of executing winning content marketing campaigns for your business.
At TripleDart, we have experience working with numerous B2B SaaS companies as their one-stop content marketing partner.
To learn more about how we can help your business, book a call with one of our experts. But before you do that, don't forget to check out our case studies section to get a glimpse of what we've achieved for our clients.
