Connect with your readers and enhance your brand by developing (and sticking to) a thorough and carefully crafted content strategy. By understanding the needs of your target audience, and producing content that helps turn leads into sales, you’re setting your business up for growth.
Content Strategy Services
How To Choose The Right Content Strategy Agency
Your goal shouldn’t be to find an agency that is ready to produce a flawless content strategy on day one. Your goal should be to find an agency that understands content marketing and is willing and prepared to ask the questions necessary to craft a strategy that will enhance your brand and tell your story. Here are a few things to look for…
Find an agency that…
Doesn’t outsource their work
Many agencies will take on the content strategy aspect of your marketing plan, but then hand off the actual copywriting tasks to one or more freelancers. This will only blur the lines of communication and lead to more revisions and more waiting (a prolonged process that will be reflected in your costs). For the sake of clarity and the sake of expenditures, it’s always best if your content team is housed under one roof and is actively involved in every step of your marketing initiatives.
Understands your target audience
While you’re not going to find an agency that already knows everything about your business, it doesn’t hurt to try to find one that has some familiarity with your industry. In doing so, you’ll find in many cases that identifying target audiences and producing engaging content comes much easier. This is not to say that an inexperienced team might surprise you, but it’s not worth risking your entire site or content strategy to find out. Excessive revisions and countless edits can delay your process and ramp up your costs in a hurry.
Follows Best Practices
You’re not going to come across an agency that flat out tells you they DON’T do this, so you’ll have to investigate a little. If an agency says they follow best practices, ask them what that means to them. Get the specifics of what best practices they follow and what dictates those practices. They should be able to give you specific examples and, should you end up working with the agency, you should be able to see those best practices exemplified in your new website.
Why You Should Work With Us
We have an accomplished team of in-house strategists and copywriters who love uncovering the best ways to tell our clients’ stories. Everything our team does in terms of content is done with a specific goal in mind. We want your content, told in your unique voice and tone, to engage your customers and drive them to an action. We are not just writing to meet a quota or fill up white space on a page. It’s not an afterthought. Content is planned far in advance and presented in a clear and organized way that will make sense to your audience. We understand and appreciate that content is key when it comes to getting your page recognized by your target audience, and just as importantly, search engines. If you’re looking to develop a custom content strategy, but don’t know where to begin, let’s talk.
Our Awards
The Communicator Awards
Digital Distinction: Branding Content
The Communicator Awards
Marketing Effectiveness Distinction
The Creative Excellence Awards
Website Design
Graphic Design USA
Branding + Identity
We Take a Custom and Strategic Approach
to every marketing strategy, and every step of the process is meticulously planned out by our in-house team of developers, designers, strategists, and branding experts. Nothing is outsourced and nothing is overlooked. And, if we’re being honest, we love doing it. It’s more than a job; it’s our passion. Staying at the forefront of web design trends and tactics, our team aims to create a website that exceeds every one of your expectations and serves as an exemplary marketing and communications tool for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I just do my content strategy myself?
Make no mistake, you’re going to be very involved in every step of your content marketing and strategic planning. Nothing will be going live on your site or sent out to your audience without your approval. However, taking on the entire project yourself will be a major undertaking that we highly suggest you leave to a reputable agency. Your agency of choice will be better equipped to handle market research, SEO, copywriting, content planning and everything else that goes into your content marketing, allowing you the freedom to focus on growing your business.
How long does content strategy take?
The right content strategy is not something that’s going to be done overnight. Building a cohesive content strategy requires research, planning, competitor analysis, copywriting, stakeholder collaboration, and lots and lots of revision. It’s important to know as much as you can about your agency’s content marketing process before you get too far in. Prepare yourself for the process ahead of time and avoid surprises down the line.
What is Content Strategy?
Content strategy is the planning and development of a cohesive content marketing plan to ensure that every piece of content that is created for your business has a specific purpose and is aligned with your company’s overall business goals and objectives. Your company’s content strategy should influence and guide all of your content marketing efforts, and provide a solid framework upon which to build your brand. There are some important considerations that factor into a concise, successful content strategy versus one that is muddled and ineffective.
The first important component of a winning content strategy is establishing goals for your content marketing efforts. What are you trying to accomplish? You might wish to increase the number of qualified leads your sales team receives, increase brand awareness in your industry, launch a new product, or re-engage with previous customers. Each company’s goals will vary, the important thing is to identify specific and tangible goals that you hope to achieve, and to then develop a content strategy designed to support those efforts.
Next, identify the target audience for your content, and make sure that your content strategy addresses their needs and frustrations, and creates content designed to speak directly to them. It is important to focus on the benefits and outcomes that your company provides its customers; users don’t want to engage with content that talks about how great your company is or the many awards you’ve won. They are seeking a business that can solve their problem and improve their lives, so the bulk of your content needs to accomplish this. Also be sure that the language that you use, and the voice and tone that you adopt, keep your best customers at the forefront. Avoid using too much insider language or jargon that your customers won’t understand.
Also keep in mind that your target audience will include users at all stages of the sales decision funnel, from awareness to consideration to decision. So your content strategy needs to accommodate each of these groups. Your top-of-funnel content might include more educational and informational pieces that don’t include any hard sales message, but rather are intended to build brand awareness and credibility. Your middle-of-funnel content could include things like webinars, videos and whtie case studies that are more heavily branded and demonstrate how your company can solve the user’s problem. Finally, your bottom-of-funnel content marketing could be things like emails, landing pages and product demos that include a direct sales message that are designed to convert now.
Your content strategy also needs to account for many different types or formats of content. Different users prefer to engage with different types of content, so you should plan to include things such as videos, infographics, podcasts, case studies, white papers, emails, social media, and many others. This may seem a daunting or perhaps even unnecessary step, but failure to create and promote a user’s preferred content format could well mean the difference between gaining a new customer and losing them to a competitor.
Armed with a solid content strategy, you now need to determine how to both create and amplify the many pieces of content, in a variety of formats, that your business will need to be successful and achieve its goals. Working with a digital marketing agency that specializes in content strategy and creation is a great way to make sure that your content marketing is not only exceptional but that it is also consistent and correctly branded. Remember, creating content for the sake of creating content is not going to help your business, it is only going to eat up valuable resources. Commit to developing a vibrant content strategy that focuses on your business goals and your best customers, offers content in a plethora of formats, and demonstrates why your business and not your competitors is the ideal choice to solve users’ problems.