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When it comes to the most effective marketing on a per-dollar basis, content is king. Content marketing (where useful content is used to promote a brand) is undisputably the most effective way to get eyes on your brand and product. But should you be doing it in house or should you outsource this vital marketing process?
Let’s have a good look at why it may or may not be a good idea to take your content production outside the confines of your company.
Pro: Cost-effective Access to Professional Writing
Let’s face it: good writing is hard. Hiring a good writer is even harder and pretty expensive to boot. This means that many companies hand off content creation to staff who aren’t actually writers. It’s something they do when they have extra time in between their actual main tasks.
This is not the worst decision when you can’t realistically justify hiring a creative writer full time, but it compromises the most aspect of content marketing: the quality.
By outsourcing you can maximize the quality of your content and so maximise how effective it is at engaging your audience. At the same time, you only pay for the time the writer is actually producing creative writing content. When you content marketing has grown to the point where you need 40 hours of writing a week, then you’ll be ready to bring someone in full time, but until then outsourcing is the way to go.
Pro: Access to Content Marketing Expertise
This sort of follows on from the above point, but there is more to content marketing than just being able to write well. In other words, you can’t just hire any competent writer. Nor can you outsource to just any content marketing writer. It’s important that your content is produced by someone with the right marketing expertise.
That’s the beauty of outsourcing when it comes to content marketing. You can seek out providers with exactly the right type of marketing experience. One that fits your business to a tee. How niche can you get?
Well, you can even get marketing services for physical therapy and just physical therapy. Now that’s what I call being specialized.
Pro: Out of YOUR Box Marketing
When you use in-house content marketing production you run the risk of getting stuck in a rut. People tend to get into a comfort zone and your marketing can become repetitive as your writers run out of good ideas. So even if you have in-house writers it makes sense to outsource every now and then, because it can reinvigorate the creativity not only of the marketing copy, but of your team as well.
Con: Lack of Fine Control
While you can give good briefs to an outsourced writer, you can’t be there to oversee their content production in detail. Not that any writer wants you to, for that matter! However, the feeling of disconnection you get by using someone outside of your own team can be a problematic one and if you can’t let go of the issue outsourcing may not be for you.
Con: Finding the Right Writers can Suck
In case you’ve forgotten since earlier in this article, creative writing is still hard. While there are lots of people who advertise themselves as fantastic content marketing writers, you can’t simply take their word for it.
So this means you do need to put the time in to evaluate a number of prospects before settling on someone you’re confident can do the job right. It also means it makes more sense to get outsourced writers over a longer term, which may mean having to pay them above market value.
Out or In?
Unless you’re a large operation that can justify the cost and complexity of running a dedicated content marketing operation in-house, then it is generally better to outsource. Outsourcing clearly has its own set of challenges, but if you are critical in your selection of content marketing partner, the potential gains far outweigh the minor risks involved.
So would you outsource your content marketing? Why not your entire digital marketing operation? Check out our article on the pros and cons of moving your digital marketing outside your business.
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Brianne Walter
