When Is the Time To Hire a Content Marketing Strategist?

Even for professionals, developing a content marketing strategy requires careful consideration of the audience and marketing goals. That means an expert adds great value to your strategy if you hire one.

Here are seven ways a Chicago content strategy consultant reinvents your content marketing:

1. Start content marketing the right way.
2. Smoothly scale your strategy.
3. Realign your current strategy.
4. Improve content quality.
5. Expand your content’s reach.
6. Combine marketing strategies.
7. Upgrade to the best practices.

There’s a lot to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

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1. Start Content Marketing Right

Crafting an effective and efficient content marketing strategy takes patience and skill that most people do not have. This is not to say that making a decent strategy without help is impossible, but it does cost you extra time and resources to learn everything from scratch.

Hiring a Chicago content strategy consultant helps you go straight to being productive and working with a functioning plan. It does not happen instantly, but it does expedite the process. A strategist leads your team in the right direction and oversees the assembly and execution of your strategy.

The strategist also helps with or takes over all related tasks, such as identifying your target market, setting marketing goals, and overseeing content creation. They more or less follow through on all of the critical tasks for you and then report the results, giving you time to focus on other aspects of your business.

2. Smoothly Scale Your Strategy

If building a content marketing strategy from the ground up is difficult, then scaling it is just as, if not more, challenging. Expanding a content marketing strategy is not as straightforward as doubling your content output or adding more channels to publish it.

You must consider each new channel's features, demographics, and the environments in which to use them most effectively. For instance, social media is great for delivering content if you know which platform to use and how to use it. Moreover, you have plenty of options for posting content marketing.

In addition to blog posts and videos, you can utilize ebooks, webinars, podcasts, short-form videos, and infographics to meet your goals. Scaling also means opening your strategy to new channels such as YouTube, TikTok, and email marketing, just to name a few popular ones.

3. Realign Your Current Strategy

You might think that if you have a successful content marketing strategy, you have no reason to hire a Chicago content strategy consultant anymore. That is not true at all, though, because a consultant can perform a critical function by regularly auditing and evaluating your current content marketing plan.

A consultant is handy when revisiting less successful posts and seeing whether they can be altered or placed elsewhere to produce better results. Audits also help when you want to refresh your branding or completely overhaul it. Essentially, you can hire a strategist to ensure consistent posting and branding.

For example, an Albany Park seafood restaurant can do more than just post its menu. They can write about sustainably sourcing their ingredients, especially the seafood items. With the help of a strategist, they can convert this idea into shareable content on other digital marketing channels.

4. Improve Your Content Quality

Although content creation is not overly complicated or difficult, the output quality greatly alters with knowledge and experience. A Chicago content strategy consultant has many solutions to this point. That includes, as mentioned above, conducting an audit.

After pinpointing problem areas in your strategy, they can give more detailed suggestions, such as revising your keyword strategy and following search engine optimization (SEO). They can even recommend and assist with other content strategies, including the best semantic SEO practices.

Another good benchmark is Google’s experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) quality rating guidelines. For example, the Albany Park seafood restaurant can tap marine life and aquaculture experts to discuss the implications of sustainability for seafood.

5. Expand Your Content’s Reach

Scaling your content marketing strategy means nothing if you come no closer to reaching your target market. Posting and sharing do not help if your content is not tailored to your audience’s needs. There is far more to content marketing than marketing channels and spamming your posts.

A strategist helps resolve that by helping you match content to your audience through extensive market research. For example, the seafood restaurant in Albany Park most likely does not have an audience composed exclusively of individuals who care about sustainable fishing, right?

They would be people who primarily love good seafood. That means the restaurant should aim to create content based on people’s interest in the different species of fish they serve and the nuances in flavor profiles. Think of it as similar to how wineries make pamphlets on taste notes.

6. Combine Marketing Strategies

Even outside of scaling, combining strategies is essential for content marketing success. After all, you only reduce your chances of success when you hyperfocus on one tactic. Imagine if a company such as Coca-Cola created content exclusively for its website and refused everything else.

It certainly would not be as successful without the viral ads and campaigns it is known for today. The same goes for any local business — your website or social media profile should not be where your content strategy starts and ends. You must explore other platforms to see what fits.

In fact, a well-made content marketing strategy is one in which each digital marketing channel has a designated role in generating or converting leads for the business. For instance, paid ads and landing pages collect visitors’ email addresses, which are then used to send email offers or newsletters.

7. Upgrade to the Best Practices

Finally, a Chicago content strategy consultant keeps your content marketing strategy in perfect condition and up-to-date on best practices. Businesses, especially small businesses, often face the prospect of sudden shifts in the market, which ultimately affect their consumers’ behavior.

Trends are an excellent example of this in practice. Consumers have limited resources, and social pressure is a powerful driving force in how they spend their money. If you are too slow to catch up with a major trend, you miss a significant opportunity to generate more sales and grow.

Working with a content marketing strategist can change that by managing how you engage with your audience. They review people’s responses to your content (and the current trends in content in general) to adequately adjust your strategy to better suit your target market’s needs.

Summing Up

Creating your own marketing strategy cuts down on the cost of your campaign but prolongs the process of running it and reduces the quality of the results. Hiring a content marketing strategist offsets that, making your campaign more effective at what it does and appealing to more people.

Need help creating a strong and reliable content marketing strategy? Contact Digital Authority Partners to learn how we can help.