If you own or manage a content marketing agency, you’ve likely reached points in time where you no longer have the internal capacity to scale further. It’s at these critical junctures that partnering up with a reliable content provider can once again accelerate your agency’s growth.
In this guide, we’re walking through the process of scaling your content marketing agency to the next level and exploring several common bottlenecks you can avoid with the right growth strategy.
Doing it alone and bootstrapping your way to success is great in the very beginning, but there comes a time when forming strategic partnerships around content creation provides your agency with a better ROI.
What Does a Content Marketing Agency Do?
A content marketing agency is a company that helps all kinds of businesses create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a clearly defined target audience.
The goal is to drive profitable customer action through the creation of content that is informative, educational, or entertaining.
Primarily, content marketing agencies focus on online content to drive their client’s goals. These agencies work with a wide range of clients, from small businesses to large enterprises across various industries.
They help businesses of all sizes create content marketing plans that align with their overall business goals and objectives. With the right content marketing strategy, businesses can build trust with their audience, which in turn drives more leads, sales, and ultimately, revenue.
What Services Do Content Agencies Provide?
Marketing agencies offer a range of services to small, medium, and large businesses, including:
Content Creation
Content agencies help businesses create various types of content, such as blog posts, articles, e-books, infographics, videos, and more.
This type of content aims to educate, entertain, or persuade the target audience.
The agencies work closely with businesses to understand their target audience and create content that resonates with them.
Content Strategy
Content agencies help businesses develop content strategies that align with their overall marketing and goals for growth.
This includes identifying the target audience, creating a content or editorial calendar, and determining the types of content that will be most effective, such as text, video, audio, graphics, and more.
Overall, they help businesses to create a consistent and cohesive brand and message that resonates with the target audience and supports the overall goals of the organization.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO services include conducting keyword research, optimizing headlines, meta descriptions, and images, and ensuring that the content is structured in a way that makes it easy for search engines to understand.
Social Media Management
Managing social media accounts includes creating and scheduling posts, engaging with followers, and running social media campaigns.
Content marketing agencies help businesses identify the best social media channels for their target audience and create content that resonates with them.
Content Distribution
Agencies help businesses distribute their content through various channels, such as publishing on the business’s website, submitting to directories, and aggregators email marketing.
Analytics and Reporting
This service includes setting up and monitoring analytics on the business’s website and social media accounts and providing regular reports on key metrics such as website traffic, engagement, and conversions. It also includes identifying areas for improvement and informing data-driven decisions about future content strategy.
Creative Design
Content agencies may also help businesses with their creative design needs such as infographics, social media graphics, e-books, and more.
This usually includes developing a consistent brand aesthetic and ensuring that future content is on-brand.
Content Translation
Content agencies sometimes also help businesses translate their content into different languages to reach a global audience.
This may include translating existing content or creating new content in relevant languages.
As you can see, there are myriad services that a content marketing agency can provide. Not everyone will be offered at every content marketing agency.
How Much do Agencies Charge for Content Marketing?
The amount that a content marketing agency charges for its services is highly dependent on a range of factors that include:
- The size of the agency – Smaller agencies may charge less unless they are boutique agencies with personalized services
- How long the agency has been in business – Newer agencies that still have a lot to prove regarding their ability to produce results will typically charge less in their early years, gradually increasing fees as their reputation improves.
- Who the agency is serving – Most agencies understand that a one-person small business isn’t going to be able to afford the same higher fees charged to a large corporation.
- The services provided – Many content marketing agencies offer a kind of à la carte approach, where businesses can pay according to the services they want to buy. Alternatively, they may offer tiered service levels to accommodate various-sized businesses.
Content marketing services can range from anywhere between $3,000 a month to more than $60,000 a month for elite, enterprise-level services.
Why Scale My Content Marketing Agency?
A popular quote captures the importance of scaling up your content marketing agency in one simple phrase: “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”
In business, this couldn’t hold more true. If you stop trying to acquire more content marketing clients and improve your existing relationships, you’ll slowly find yourself losing customers with your revenues going downhill.
The only way to survive in today’s competitive business environment is to establish a consistent growth mindset and do everything you can to grow your business day in and day out.
What Challenges Are Involved in Scaling an Agency?
Scaling a content marketing agency is not easy, and there is often a wide variety of challenges owners and managers face leading their company toward success.
Let’s discuss common agency challenges such as low profits, customer churn, hiring freelancers, and managing workflows effectively.
Low profit
When you begin scaling your content marketing agency, your business will often have a significant amount of overhead, additional staffing costs, and expenses directly related to investments in your growth.
Since growing your revenues takes time, this may lead your agency to experience a low-profit cycle where your expenses are greatly increased. Navigating through this cycle and overcoming the initial “growth pains” of your agency is critical.
Customer churn
As your agency grows, some customers won’t align with your processes, procedures, or strategy any longer. You can’t keep all of your clients happy every second of the day, and it’s expected that you’ll have some customer churn as you start scaling and growing.
Hiring great freelancers to produce content
One of the most challenging aspects of successfully growing a content marketing agency is finding the right freelance talent. You have to determine whether they have the qualifications required for your content and verify that they produce excellent content consistently.
By establishing a strategic partnership with a content creation platform, you can start bringing in reliable and high-quality freelancers to your team.
Managing workflows
As your order volume begins to increase exponentially, it can often be very difficult to keep up with your previously established workflows without a reorganization or restructuring of your internal processes. Ensuring that your agency has the right workflows in place to scale and handle increased volume is key to successful rapid growth.
How to Scale a Content Marketing Agency
If you are a content marketing agency that wishes to scale, you can begin by offering one or two services that align with your strengths.
As time goes on, you can add additional services from the list above.
Outsource
Many content marketing agencies start by providing written content, which they outsource through WriterAccess.
WriterAccess provides a robust platform where content marketing agencies of all sizes can specify exactly what content they need, and be assured of receiving high-quality results from a vast talent pool of vetted writers.
You can even get a free trial at WriterAccess to test it out for yourself.
Network
The annual Content Marketing Conference is a great way to network with other big players in the content marketing field.
The more your agency networks with talent, other agencies, and professionals, the sooner you’ll be able to scale your content marketing business.
Invest Internally
In the beginning, the most successful content marketing agencies invested in themselves.
Rather than taking all the early profits out of the business, invest them back in. Invest in things that will help your agency scale, like employee development courses, marketing, advertisements, and automation software.
Automate
Speaking of automation, this is a very effective way to quickly scale any type of business, including a content marketing agency.
The more you can automate your processes, the more attention you can give to feeding your pipeline of new clients.
You don’t even have to figure out your automation process yourself; there are numerous CMS platforms online that, for a reasonable fee, will completely automate the customer management process, from building an email list to nurturing leads, to final sales. It’s like having a guided hand along the entire buyer’s journey!
When you’re ready to take your content marketing agency to the next level, or even if you’re just starting out, you need a reliable source of high-quality content. WriterAccess is your ace in the hole for outsourcing SEO-optimized content that perfectly aligns with your constant agency clients’ needs.
The 5 Key Elements to Scaling a Digital Agency
If you’d like to rapidly scale up your content marketing agency, five key elements must be implemented consistently.
We’re going to walk through each element in detail and show you how you can begin to implement these into your own business to begin scaling higher than you ever imagined.
The elements we present below are designed to help your agency with the talent, tools, and training required to achieve that fabled “exponential growth.”
1. Prepare for growth
If you expect to see rapid growth in your agency, you have to prepare for that growth upfront to avoid any growing pains or potential mishaps.
Begin to think about how you’re going to restructure and reorganize your internal workflows and content creation processes. How will you handle an increase in content production demand from your growing number of clients? Think about the additional expenses you’ll incur, and how you’ll handle a period of reduced profits while growing your revenues.
2. Optimize your workflow process
The content production workflows and processes you started with likely won’t take you to the next level. Depending on how you’re currently managing your workflow process, it might be difficult if not impossible to handle a rapid increase in clients and content production demand.
Take the time to optimize your workflow processes before you begin scaling, and you’ll be much happier and more successful in the process.
3. Simplify customer onboarding
When you’re only dealing with several clients at one time, onboarding them individually and taking extra care to answer all of their questions and concerns is a great way to build a client-agency relationship.
When you begin scaling, however, you’ll no longer have the capacity to onboard each client one by one. Think about how you can simplify your customer onboarding process, and potentially automate certain elements of the process.
4. Optimize content production
Is your content production process efficient? Do you have a way to handle freelancer churn, decreased content production due to external factors, or an unexpected event that leaves you without writers for a while?
All of these are potential events that could happen and should be planned for. Slow down and think about how you’re going to optimize your content production process to increase efficiency and improve output.
5. Use efficient software & tools to your advantage
As an agency owner or manager, there’s no shortage of time-saving tools and software out on the market.
Are you currently using content production software that ensures your content is properly optimized for search engines? Are you taking advantage of project management tools to manage your workflows and reduce clutter? There are hundreds of ways your agency can save both time and money by properly utilizing the software and tools available on the market today.
Scale your agency today with WriterAccess
If you’d like to take on more clients, create higher volumes of quality content, and rapidly grow your revenues, content creation platforms like WriterAccess can help you get all of the freelance talents you need.
WriterAccess has a directory of top-tier writers, content strategists, and even graphic designers that are fully vetted and ready to help your agency scale.
Sign up for a 14-day free trial and instantly ramp up your content production.
