Content has become a crucial part of the high-tech business world. But the field itself requires very little technical prowess. Most content marketing service organizations understand the importance of turning data into messaging assets. But the tools of the trade make few demands of marketers for information architecture administration. This administration requires skills in multimedia, writing code, tackling server setups and the like.
Sure, content marketing strategy requires a mix of science and creativity. But not when it comes to the hard skills required to get the job done. Your company’s key deliverables include articles, landing page copy and product description blurbs. What could motivate you to learn how to build a mobile app or set up a custom, AI-enhanced chatbot?
So you focus simply on producing and delivering high-quality assets that get results. This means attracting visitors, turning audience members into leads and nurturing leads to the point of sales-readiness. Measure it any way you choose. This represents the value you offer your clients. And writing great content doesn’t depend on your ability to make changes to a CMS back-end. Nor does it require familiarity with JavaScript.
But this approach could hold your business back. Today, many clients aren’t looking for content exclusively. But they do want a full suite of services. These include comprehensive setup, management and analytics solutions. And these solutions help owned properties and integrated multi-channel brand touchpoints. So these businesses want to spend more money on these services than ever before.
This Is the Full-Stack Challenge of 2019
These potential clients don’t want to repeat their vendor evaluation processes for each element of their marketing programs. They want to know from the outset they’re in good hands. And they want to be working with an outfit that can deliver A to Z. We’re talking text, video, nurture automations, customer experience, SEO, social ad funnels, influencer engagement, thought leadership, content promotion, design, A/B testing and product-embedded growth hacks. But the list goes on.
In this climate, if you aren’t a “full-stack marketer,” you’re likely leaving money on the table. You need to offer more than excellent blog posts and social media microcopy.
Transitioning to a one-stop-shop model may seem like a major leap for freelancers and smaller boutique content marketing shops, but it’s probably easier than you think. Instead of risking an investment in hiring a specialist for every technical deliverable, you can find solutions that fit your clients’ needs, and provide a more comprehensive array of services while remaining agile enough to enjoy the profits of your hard work.
Averse to Tech and Media Production? Check Out These Tools for Content Agencies
Meeting buyers’ expectations isn’t impossible, but it does require some creativity on your part to ensure that your content strategy comes with the value-added solutions that differentiate you from the pack.
1. Owned Media Setup and Management
One of the biggest areas of demand for clients is uploading content, setting permissions, and asset management. This is one of the most logical solutions to provide, since combining content with easy website self-service management makes for a relatively complete solution. However, it is a time-consuming job, and it can lead to decreased output and quality for many content producers.
One easy solution is to use web development platforms that streamline the process and shorten production cycles significantly. Here, services like Duda offer front-end design alongside collaboration tools. Agencies can use these tools to set permissions, manage the back-end, and simplify the flow of assets along with their clients.
Offering content as part of a ready-made deployment solution can give you a long-term commitment from your client and offer them greater value on a day-to-day basis.
With a good multi-site admin dashboard, it’s simple enough for anyone to create mobile-optimized versions of websites, add SSL encryption, integrate a CDN and even create a progressive web app.
2. Measurement of Impact and Experiments
Another key service that clients require is the ability to understand their return on specific content strategies. Successful marketing requires you to show the value of a given campaign or strategy, so offering an easy way to view results is vital. Even so, setting up “event tracking” in analytics tools is costly, and there are excellent avenues already available for use.
But even using Facebook’s native A/B testing platform, or more complete solutions like Raven Tools, can give you a way to demonstrate how your strategies are improving clients’ outcomes.
By incorporating a variety of analytics into a single dashboard, clients can gauge the success of SEO campaigns, understand their rankings on search engines, and view aggregated analytics from sources like Google Analytics and Bing Ads. Understanding their metrics can help clients make better decisions about their targets, strategies, and keywords.
3. Creating Visuals
For content to be truly attention-grabbing, though, you should always pair it with great visuals and potentially even specific things like infographics. The right visuals make content more memorable and are excellent magnets to grab more views and expand your content’s reach organically.
You may be amazed by how easy it is to create your own visual assets using super straightforward web apps like Canva or infographic design platforms like Piktochart, increasing your value to customers dramatically.
The ability to offer content that is fully ready to upload and promote, without extra steps or overheads, makes you vital to clients.
4. Scheduled Promotional Publishing
Finally, one solution that is becoming increasingly relevant is centralizing content and social media calendars. For brands that juggle multiple posting schedules and accounts, managing calendars can become tedious and ineffective. When a content marketing firm can provide this service at a reasonable price, customers can reduce their costs and time constraints.
More importantly, it helps expand your offerings to your own clients.
Having a social media manager isn’t always feasible, but using pre-made tools like CoSchedule or Buffer, which can be integrated into platforms like WordPress, offer a low-maintenance fix.
Choosing the Right Solutions
Content by itself is useful, but not providing the solutions to make it truly value-added limits your firm’s effectiveness. By providing a full suite of content and related solutions, you can expand your reach and provide a more robust service to your clients. More importantly, it can streamline your strategies, help you track them better, and demonstrate your value quantifiably.
You don’t need to spend a fortune on hires and costly outsourcing to do so. By choosing the right tools, you can easily increase your value and provide a better content strategy solution.
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