Content creation and digital marketing agencies can provide services that are fundamental in helping a brand or business grow and reach their goals, but there are a variety of important things to consider to find the right agency for your brand. The whole reason you are hiring them is so that they can provide you with a service that you aren’t knowledgeable about yourself, so you might not know exactly what to look for in a content creation service.
If you are looking for a content creation agency for you business but need to know how to make sure they are going to be the right fit for your brand, today we have something that should come in handy, because this article is going to feature a list of the best practices to look for in a content creation agency in 2023.
When you are looking to partner your brand with a content creation service there are a few basic best practices that you should be looking for to ensure you have a positive experience. The issue with content creation services is that they are a newer industry for the most part. With many of the top players in the market having only been around for a couple of years. That’s not to say there aren’t some really experienced content creation agencies out there. The goal here is to make sure you find a business that is right for your business's individual needs and has the track record to back up the claims they make when you are agreeing to the deal.
Reason: Minimize the Risk of Doing Business With Them
Importance: High
As we mentioned earlier, there are an awful lot of content creation agencies out there so it can be hard to sift through and find the truly talented agencies that are going to be great for your business. One of the best ways to do this is to ask to see any case studies they might have about their previous implementation strategy that can show they have the numbers to back up their claims.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to be strictly case studies. Any numbers they can show that provide you with confidence that they really do understand the data and know what to do with it to get you results. Many of these businesses will have such case studies or data sets featured right on their websites front page. So you shouldn’t have to search too far to find the data.
Another thing they like to feature on their front page is by showing off some of the larger national brands that they have worked with. This can be another good way to judge the reliability of the business. If they have been consistently performing well enough to attract the attention of national brands, they must be showing good results time and time again.
Reason: Reduce Losses/Stay on Budget
Importance: High
You want to be working with a content creation agency that is totally on the up and up of what their services are going to cost you. Many of these content creation agencies offer a wide variety of different digital marketing services for their clients. So make sure you are just paying them for what you need. There’s no reason to be paying for a whole service that you don’t even know about. How could you possibly be benefiting from it?
So be sure to go over the contract and make sure you know exactly which services you will be getting and paying for. You don’t want a bunch of surprise expenses to completely blow your budget. Particularly if you are a small business living on those razor thin margins. You don’t want to accidentally throw yourself under the bus by getting involved in a digital marketing strategy that is way beyond your needs and means. Talk with whoever does your books and get a concrete number on what can be spent hiring a content creation team and make sure you pick a team that fits that budget so you don’t find yourself digging a hole that is going to be hard to get out of down the line.
Reason: Helps Build Trust and Gets Better Results
Importance: High
If you find yourself with a really great digital marketing team or content creation agency, but they don’t get to know you and your brand before they jump into determining what people identify your product as, then you are going to struggle the entire time. Your brand, your product, and your content need to harmonize. If you have a disparate strategy across all three then it’s never going to be successful the way you want it to. It’ll never feel authentic to the audience because it's incoherent.
So be sure that the content creation service that you decide to partner with takes the time to build the brand around what your idea of the product is, and not build the brand around their idea of what it is. If they are constantly representing your product in a way you don’t think is right it's going to cause tension in your business partnership with the agency.
But that can all be avoided if you just find out how they go about learning about your brand in your early talks with them.
Reason: Lets you see the level of work they produce without a financial stake on your end.
Importance: High-Middle
If you are looking for best practices for content creation services then you will like this next one. In researching the different content agencies, many of them will provide you with some sort of free audit, analysis, or data-driven insight for free to lure you in as a customer. These are a great option for two reasons.
First of all, you get some free data about your business no matter what, so that’s a win. But on top of that, you get to see if the level of data they produce is worth what they are charging for it. You can begin to compare the level of data provided from different content creation services and see who provides the best data for the best price.
These tests come in a variety of forms so keep your eyes out for them when you are looking at different content creation service agencies. You have nothing to lose, and the absolute worst case scenario is that you find an agency you don’t want to work with. Best case scenario you get some really incredible data from a free audit and form a long lasting business partnership with the agency.
Reason: So much of the benefit of these companies is their ability to understand the data and offer insights you would never come up with on your own.
Importance: Middle-High
Another great feature in a content creation agency is a team that is highly expertised in data and analyzing it, but more than anything, it is really helpful if they have people on their team who are certified in Google Analytics and its platforms. If a content creation agency has access to Google Analytics Data then they basically have the gold standard in online data.
Google is such a behemoth in the marketplace that having their data on consumers is of critical importance if you really want to get more eyeballs on your pages. If a Google Analytics team partnered with a content creation team can take you from the 4th place of Google results all the way to the first!
Reason: They need to be able to show how the strategy will be implemented and measured, and explain how it will result in the business goals you have in mind.
Importance: Middle-High
The content creation agency just simply has to show you a strategy from the outset. That strategy can be, take some time and learn your brand, and then show you the new strategy at the next meeting. It doesn’t really matter. You just need to see that they know where they are going and why they are going there and how that will result in the business goals you have in mind. You need to know that they know what they are doing. Make them demonstrate competency from the outset and you will be on a much more sure footing in your business relationship
Reason: Can Be A Critical Way to Drive More Traffic to Your Brand
Importance: Middle
A lot of content creation agencies are going to be producing a lot of written content. If you would like to see your written content generate more traffic to your website, then they are going to have to be able to demonstrate a data driven SEO approach.
SEO stands for “search engine optimized” and it basically means content that is specifically produced based on keyword research on search engines. If they know what people are Googling they can generate content strategies to feature those words and get your brand to rank much higher on the Google search results.
SEO is the bread and butter of any online digital marketing campaign these days. It’s the fundamentals that all the rest of it is built upon. If an agency doesn’t have a strong SEO data driven strategy then they aren’t going to be able to deliver results no matter how pretty their content might be. Watch out for these content creation agencies that start to get caught up in the grandeur of being content creators and totally forget about the fundamentals of the market.
Reason: Customer Experience Is An Absolute Necessity to Help A Brand Grow Online
Importance: High
UX and UI stand for “user experience” and “user interface” and they are absolutely fundamental to making sure your business has a great website. If your website needs some improvement this one is going to be an absolute must for your business.
The user interface and user experience aspect of a webpage have to do with its functionality and ease of use by the customer that is using it. The last thing in the world you want is for customers to have a bad or clunky experience when they use your website.
So a team of UX/UI experts can be just the thing to take your website from just ok to absolutely fantastic. And that can make a real difference. If your website is choppy most customers are just gonna click back and go to the next Google result. You don’t want to get ranked in the Google results just to drive away customers with a website design that leaves too much to be desired.
Reason: Stability Is Always A Good Thing For Business
Importance: Low
Be sure to look into how many of their clients have become return clients. This will give you a good way to indicate if they are good to work with and if they accomplish their client’s goals. It also shows you that they are open to long term partnerships. Now it's very possible different businesses just outgrow different levels of content creation agencies at certain levels, but there are plenty of agencies they’ll want to keep around as long as they are in business. Overall everybody would like to have a positive first business deal, then form a partnership, and continue the positive business dealings where both sides are happy
Finding a content creation agency that you can form a long term partnership with can be a great thing because it allows you a stable partnership with a business that is always focused on increasing your returns. And the longer you work together, the better they will get to know your brand and they will be able to do an increasingly consistent content campaign for it.
Reason: That Data is Important and You Don’t Want to Lose It
Importance: High
If you are working with any sort of content creation agency that has access to data about your business and your digital standings try to make sure that in your partnership you own the data, and they simply analyze and manage the data. You don’t want to be in a stable relationship with a content creation agency for a couple years, and then for some reason the business relationship falls apart, and then your partnership ends and you lose access to all the market data about your company from the last 2 years. That’s not a place you want to end up and you can prevent that from happening just by making sure the agency is agreeing to manage the data for you, not own the data.
Reason: This Takes A Whole Big Headache Off Of Your Time
Importance: Medium
If you need a content creation agency that specializes in social media then you will want to be sure of a couple of things. First of all, that they are going to be handling the creation of the post, the timing of the post, and the implementation of the post, and that they will be doing this across all the platforms that they are managing for you. Social media requires a constant string of content to be posted to keep users engaged so you want the content agency to be creating that content and completely managing the implementation of the content so that way you don’t have to dedicate any precious time to running the accounts.
In addition, if you are working with a social media influencer marketing agency, then you want to be sure that they have a real network of influencers, but also that they handle every part of working with the influencer. They reach out, they do all the talking and content promotion, they do everything there is to be done with the influencer, because you, as a small business owner, can not possibly have the time to deal with the demands and drama from a bunch of social media influencers. It’s just not something you’re gonna want as part of your work week, but you can be sure to avoid this from the outset by being clear with the agency about their level of control over the relationship with the influencer.
As experts in design and analytics, we partner with content creation experts, digital marketing agencies, and Google Analytics partners all the time Here are some content creation services out there that piqued our interest so be sure to check them out!
Category: Digital Marketing Agency
Specialties: SEO, Content, Digital PR, Data
Location: London, England
Builtvisible is a Content Creation Agency that specializes in a few different areas of digital marketing for their customers. They earned themselves a reputation as one of the highest performing search engine optimized content creators in the global market. They provide the data to optimize the content you put out.
And they also help you build a content strategy and implement it with their in-house production team. And if you are looking to truly expand the landscape of your brand they also have Digital PR specialists who have unrivaled insights into the data and decades of experience.
Builtvisible seems to have just about everything a business that wants to expand using a digital marketing strategy will want.
Category: Digital Marketing Agency
Specialties: Lead Generation
Location: King of Prussia, PA
Hibu specializes in generating new leads for small businesses. They have an advanced proprietary platform that results in more leads which in turn means more customers. Which results in a greater return on investment for their customers. They are trusted by over 70,000 local businesses across the nation.
Category: Venture Studio
Specialties: SEO, Content Creation
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
AIken House is a venture studio which makes them a little different from other content creation agencies. Aiken House is all about taking your idea (before it's even become a business) and creating a content driven strategy based on SEO research to help your business, your brand, or your product get off the ground running at full speed. You’ll come into the first stages of business with a content strategy already in place. And when you consider how much of advertising revenue is spent on digital spaces (almost 700 billion this year alone) you certainly don’t want to be missing out as a small business that could most benefit from online exposure!
Aiken House is the only place that provides data driven content creation in the phase before a business is firmly established and a product is in the marketplace. They offer you a chance to enter the market prepared and not be left struggling to create a digital marketing strategy once you’re actually running the business
If you are interested in how different agencies can help you achieve your business goals then be sure to check out some of our other great articles on the best content creation agencies, or specifically the best content creation agencies for small businesses.
Or if you really want to dive down deep in the numbers check out our posts on different Google Analytics services, like certified Google Analytics agencies, or the 24 best Google Analytics agencies this year.
