As a marketing agency owner you already know why your clients are hiring you: they need you to get the word out for them. But if your website doesn’t market your own services effectively, why would a business want to hire you to market them? Marketing agencies must be good at creating effective marketing campaigns that catches the eye of potential clients and promotes their clients brands. Therefore, it only makes sense that your marketing agency has a content strategy in place to market yourself first.
Does My Agency Really Need a Content Strategy?
Bottom line: if your marketing agency doesn’t succeed, your clients won’t either. Having a clear content strategy for your agency is imperative for determining your own success as well as the success of your clients. After all, as a marketing agency you’re likely to take part in developing your client’s content strategy too. Content is crucial for any business and more people are starting to catch on.
So Where Do I Start?
If you’ve never developed a content strategy for your business, now is a great time to start. According to the Content Marketing Institute, there are seven initial steps everyone should take when developing a content strategy:
- Define Your Goals: Why are you making this content? What do you need from your website?
- Record the Metrics: Decide how you will track whether or not you’re achieving your results.
- Gather Up Some Research: Research your typical buyer and how you can market your services to them. Do you market to home care agencies only? Or do you accept all business and industry types?
- Decide on Content: Decide the type of content you’re going to write for your marketing agency.
- Create the Content: Get writing!
- Distribute Content: Whether that means publishing it on your site or distributing it through press releases, you have to distribute it somehow.
- Follow-Up: Review your content and measure its performance. If it’s not meeting your goals, it’s time for a revision.
Keep It Diverse—Like Your Customers
As a marketing agency, you represent a variety of clients, industries and brands. If your content focuses on only one type of industry or customer, you’re going to limit your acquisition capabilities. A good content strategy should be diverse, just like your client list. Make your services appeal to the little guys as well as the corporate bigwigs. Make your content fun enough for those younger entrepreneurs, but sophisticated enough to attract the long-term owners.
Press Releases are Crucial
You’re a professional marketer, so you need to market yourself like crazy—literally. One of the best ways to get the word out about your service is through press releases. A press release is a news-like piece distributed through top press release distributor sites, like PRWeb or PRNewswire. Today’s press release, however, is a lot different than the press releases of a few years ago. Press release distributors are no longer allowing poorly written press releases through, and the information must be newsworthy. You can include keywords and links, but don’t think because you’ve done so your rank is going to shoot through the roof. Instead use press releases as a stepping stone to get potential clients to visit your site.
Not sure where to start on your press releases? Here are a few tips for success. If you need more, read this article by Forbes on how to write a news worthy press release.
- Be concise. No one wants to read a 1,000 word press release and no one will read it if it’s a wall of text. Stick to 300 or 400 words maximum. Even better, use a numbered or bulleted list somewhere to drive your points home and sum it all up for the reader.
- Be newsworthy. Your story needs to sound like news and be something urgent. Whether you’re updating them on changes in-house or a new client you’ve acquired, it must be newsworthy. Consider the newspaper and what you read. You won’t see a post about a computer breakdown, but you might read about a company signing on with a new computer repair service to add to their pool of clients.
- Don’t sell. There should be no selling in a press release what-so-ever. Instead, tell the reader what news you have to share and redirect them to your site or blog for the sales speech.
- Release often. You should release press releases a few times per month (perhaps once a week).
Get Blogging
Blogging is critical. A blog gives clients a sense of your personality and your range when it comes to marketing. In fact, according to the State of Inbound Marketing in 2012, 56 percent of companies who blog at least once per month acquire a new customer. About 92 percent of blogs who post multiple times per day acquire a new customer. Blogs that are posted just once a day have a 78 percent chance of acquiring a new customer. So, if your marketing agency isn’t blogging at least daily, you’re halving your chances of catching new clients.
You market your customers and you know how to sell. Show potential clients your skills by marketing yourself first. Creating a killer content strategy can help market your services to a broad range of clients and ultimately increase your business. If you just can’t put it to screen the way you intend, consider hiring a professional content writing service instead. They can take your goals, help you with your content strategy and get you the large customer base your company needs to stay competitive.
