Why Your Next, Best Strategic Move Is to Find a Great Writer
Good content relies on great writing, whether it’s an idea, an outline, a headline, a script, or a blog post. And while creating copy is a skill most can do, very few marketers list writing as their specialty.
The current business landscape may not offer you the opportunity to find and retain writers in-house or sometimes the services at your full-service agency just don’t measure up. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Here are three reasons why outsourcing content creation to a professional writing team makes sense:
1) Marketing Is More than It Used to Be
Gartner’s most recent annual CMO Spend Survey revealed that in the wake of 2020’s economic upheaval, marketing leaders’ priorities — and budgets — are shifting. With digital marketing now accounting for almost 80 percent across paid, owned, and earned channels, almost one-third of marketing work has shifted from agencies to in-house teams.
Rather than hire true specialists, or be given the option to, most business leaders simply expect their marketing staff to take on more and more functions outside their core roles. These days a marketing manager may need to cover everything from overseeing your AdWords lead generation program, composing and running A/B testing on Marketo emails, generating customer personas, researching consumer trends, authoring web pages, to writing copy for a product brochure or blog.
In today’s economic environment, while it’s completely understandable for us to need to manage more with less, the hard truth is, that we’ve blurred the line between marketing strategy and creative execution.
And while at first, it may seem an easier or cheaper option to produce all content in-house, this approach is rarely the one that makes the most business sense. Stick to the business activities where your strengths are the strongest and strategically outsource content production as needed. You’ll not only end up with higher quality content, you’ll give your in-house team a much-needed break from a task many of them actually dread: writing.
2) Writing Isn’t Easy
One of the most critical specialties in the world of digital marketing, is the generation of content. Yes, making sure all the specialties function properly is important, but in the end, content remains king (or queen, if you prefer). Writing, in particular, is key to good content – and yet – writing is a specialty at which few marketers excel.
According to Jane Trombley of the Writing Cooperative, writing requires “focus, practice, and diligence” and once you’ve fallen out of practice, it’s “much, much harder to write.” Similar to public speaking, writing takes most people out of their comfort zone, so it’s often the task most marketers put off or even avoid.
Trained, professional writers have experience telling other people’s stories. They can alter their style to the audience and format as needed, understanding the difference between various channels, buyer personas, and how to optimize content for search engine success. These are critical skills that professional writers use every day, but not when they can get around to it after working through a host of otherwise important but unrelated tasks.
In addition, writers themselves often have certain specialties such as those who do well optimizing content for online search, creating compelling social media posts, or those who are adept at long-form, or technical content. When you work with a team of writers, you get the benefit of a talent and resource collective, without having to adjust priorities based on limited internal expertise.
3) The Importance of Content Momentum
Establishing or maintaining a blog, content hub, or nurturing steam email campaigns always sounds like a great idea – until you realize how much time it takes. At companies of every size, projects like these always start off with a bang, and then, much like what used to happen with newsletters (remember those?) as other priorities surface, keeping the content fresh and flowing becomes more of a chore.
CRM software giant HubSpot suggests that for brand awareness, a blogging-frequency best practice for even a small business could be at least once a week. If the goal is improving your results in organic search, the weekly frequency increases to three. And that’s just for a blog.
Content marketing can cost at least 62 percent less than traditional marketing and often creates three times as many leads, so there is little doubt that content works. But when content-dependent campaign managers encounter the bottleneck of volume needs or publishing pace, many marketers make the decision to re-scope, stall, or pull-the-plug.
Let your internal team stay focused on their zones of genius – and we’ll keep your content strategy on schedule by quickly and cost-effectively filling in the gaps. Schedule a free 20-minute consultation today!
