SaaS marketing strategies cannot survive without content. One of the crucial building blocks of a successful SaaS content marketing strategy is the strategic content creation based on different funnel stages. However, not everybody can create stellar content which sells.
According to the Hubspot State of Marketing Report, about 70% of the companies worldwide actively invest in content marketing agencies for their business. The perks of hiring a content marketing agency for your business are limitless. A content marketing agency can make the ultimate difference in your business with the help of strategic content curation.
Thus, if you are willing to hire a content marketing agency for your business, too, we have curated just the right guide for you. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the requirements and the red flags you should consider when hiring a content marketing agency for your business. After all, when you spend a significant amount of your budget on these agencies, you definitely should be getting consistent quality, right? Let’s get started.
Being such a basic and obvious requirement, many SaaS companies often overlook this while hiring a content marketing agency for their business. When hiring a content marketing agency for your business, you need to ensure that their specialization is in SaaS. If not, they are just a regular agency that may not be able to deliver you content as per your business.
If the agency doesn’t specialize in SaaS, you will end up having a hard time communicating and collaborating with them in the long run. You may even end up having useless content which doesn’t benefit your business, subsequently resulting in a loss.
Hence, you need to find an agency that knows everything about and around SaaS. They should be able to understand your product to its core and work well around it. They should have worked with other SaaS companies to understand how SaaS works, which brings us to our next point!
When hiring a content marketing agency for your business, you should consider tons of aspects, such as their expertise, skills, strategies, and many more. To get a better understanding, let’s discuss each point in detail. Use this as a checklist during your hiring process to bring the best talent to your company.
The only way to understand their expertise in SaaS is to check their portfolio and case studies. Spend some time reviewing their previous work. The case studies, reviews, and testimonials are usually present on their website itself. Hence, you need not do much digging here. Take an example from Ampfluence which has a specific page for one of their case study as shown in the picture below.
You can also ask them for some common references to other SaaS businesses they have worked with. Next, if possible, connect with those businesses and ask for their experience with the agency. Understand the strategies the agency used for their businesses and analyze the improvement. This will help you know the process and approach they follow while working with any SaaS company.
To sum up, look for a SaaS company with a proven track record.
It is no brainer that SEO is a very crucial aspect of any content marketing strategy. If the content marketing agency does not have enough knowledge about optimizing the content for SEO, there is perhaps no way you can gain any success from your content marketing efforts.
This is why you should look for a content marketing agency with an extensive SEO skillset. Some content marketing agencies can even audit your website and curate a content optimization plan for your business. They should also do keyword analysis wherein they find the right set of keywords used by your potential customers on the web. They should be proficient with different types of SEO such as off-site SEO, on-site SEO, technical SEO, etc. A well-established content marketing agency may also have a separate SEO team to carry out the technicalities.
This will help in curating content that will rank higher in the search engine result pages, resulting in more traffic and sales to your business.
Content marketing is not just about randomly publishing content on your website. Since content marketing is a long-term journey, you need to have a well-laid content marketing strategy to start seeing results. Thus, the content marketing agency you hire should be able to create and execute an organized content strategy for your business. Check out how Ampfluence explains how does their Instagram marketing service work.
Starting from developing customer personas to placing the right strategies at the right stage. Your content marketing agency should curate both short-term and long-term strategies for your business and execute them accordingly.
Next, they should also do competitor analysis since if you want your business to outshine, you need to analyze your competitor’s strategies and moves. A competitor analysis can help you predict their future moves or strategies, which you can leverage in your favor. This will simply give your business a better edge over your competitors. Of course, this will not be your job since well-established content marketing agencies usually have different tools and software to carry out such extensive competitor research for companies.
According to all the research and analysis, they will create a complete content strategy, preferably a content calendar with the list of topics to be covered at least for the next week, month, or even year, depending on the contract.
Almost everyone can deliver you content. To make your content marketing efforts a success, you need to choose someone who is conversion-focused. Let’s simplify it further.
After you receive the content from the agency and publish it, you need to monitor the performance of the content to understand what worked for your business and what didn’t. However, the journey of the agency doesn’t end here. After submitting the content, they should be proactive and eager to know the performance too.
When they try to know what’s working for the business growth and what doesn’t, they may identify any potential flaws in the content, which they can modify in the next ones. This is called the mindset of improvement.
You need to ensure that the content marketing agency you hire is solely dedicated to growing your business and not just getting away after submitting the content. They should be eager to look for any scope of improvements and optimize the strategies accordingly. Their main motto is to bring the maximum ROI for your investment in their agency.
After researching, creating a strategy, and executing it well, your content marketing agency should also be able to measure it with the right KPIs. Their knowledge and experience with SaaS will help them analyze the right KPIs that should be measured to analyze the growth of your business. Some of the metrics they should track include:
And many more…
They should measure these metrics accurately and provide you with detailed reports regularly to keep you updated on the entire journey.
Now that we have discussed the points you should look for while hiring a content marketing agency, let’s check out some red flags which you should be aware of. This will keep you away from the content writers who do not meet expectations and provide expected results.
We have discussed in the points mentioned above the importance of looking for proofs of the content marketing agency such as testimonials, reviews, and case studies. It gives a better understanding of their processes and strategies.
You should also look for their digital presence on other social media platforms and their website. In case they do not have many details mentioned on their website or cannot provide you with any company names with which they have worked before, they are definitely not the right people to trust.
Lack of digital presence or transparent ownership indicates something shady or no experience with similar companies. These types of agencies may not know the right strategy or procedure and will simply end up wasting your time and resources.
Content marketing is not just about posting blogs anymore. With the internet advancing each day, users consume different forms of content regularly. The right content marketing agency should be able to curate different types of content, such as videos, infographics, quotes, emails, etc., at the right stage of the funnel. Similarly, they should be able to curate high-quality and relevant content for your business. Google only tends to rank websites that publish relevant and high-quality content.
Also, suppose they do not have the right tools and strategies to provide you with detailed reports about the performance of the content marketing efforts. In that case, you will be working with lots of guesswork which may result in errors and low ROI. Thus, before hiring a content marketing agency to enquire about the tools and software they use to provide you with the performance analysis. If possible, carry out your own research about the same as well to understand the accuracy of the tools to ensure that your content marketing efforts are in safe hands.
While hiring a content marketing agency, look for their website on google or any search engine. If their website is not present within the first few pages of the search engine, they won’t be able to do any good to your business.
If their SEO tactics couldn’t make their website rank high in the first few search engine result pages, how will they handle your SEO? Always opt for the businesses that appear at the top of the search engine result pages since that’s when you know that they have the right skills and expertise to rank your website just like they did for their website!
Every business has its landing pages or on-site funnels on its website. If your content marketing agency doesn’t have their landing page set for their prospects or any on-site funnels established, how will they curate a high converting landing page for your business?
When choosing a content marketing agency, always look for their landing pages which you can find from the search engine result pages, and analyze them. Look for the CTA placement and the other elements of the content. They should know the right way to convert visitors into customers. If their landing page persuades you into hiring their agency, they can do a good job for your business too!
Of course, you may have a specific budget in mind while hiring a content marketing agency. However, you cannot gain value if you do not spend the right amount. While hiring a content marketing agency, have a decent budget based on industry standards. This will ensure that you are allocating your resources to the best talents.
You may find many content marketing agencies luring you into cheap rates and affordable pricing plans but do not fall for them. These agencies either do not have the right skillset or may completely drive away after payment, leaving you with no content whatsoever. Thus, if you want to make your content bring you business profits, you need to invest in good marketing agencies with the right pricing plans for their services.
Now that’s a wrap to our complete guide to hiring a SaaS content marketing agency for your business. Remember. The key to finding the best content marketing agency is thorough analysis and assessment with loads of patience. Even if it takes longer than usual, once you find the ideal fit, there is no going back. You will only see the metrics of your business growing every day. Thus, don’t delay any further and kickstart your journey today to hiring the best SaaS content marketing agency for your business.
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