When Should Executives Consider Outsourcing Content Strategy?

Many business leaders face difficult questions as consumers and search engine algorithms change. “Should we hire more in-house talent or seek out a content strategy agency?” “When is the best time to get outside help?” “How do we choose the right partner and integrate them well into the organization?”

This article provides all the answers, including the following:

• Benefits and challenges of an in-house content marketing team.
• Three biggest reasons to outsource it.
• Advantages and considerations of working with a third-party digital marketing strategist.

The right move at the right time transforms business growth. Learn about outsourcing content strategy and choose the best. Let’s go!

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The Power and Limits of In-House Content Efforts 

First, let us look deeper at what an in-house content strategy entails. It often includes the following tasks:

• Content planning and ideation to map out topics, formats, and themes.
• Content creation across media, such as articles, videos, and social media.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) through keyword research, metadata optimization, and formatting content.
• Distribution across channels such as email marketing, social media, and paid advertising.
• Performance tracking uses analytics to monitor engagement and refine strategy.

When handled completely internally, maintaining an in-house content team gives the company tighter creative control. It also promotes simpler, faster, and better collaboration among teams. 

For example, the content marketing department meets regularly with sales to produce testimonial videos and lead-generation e-books. They plan promotions and email-nurturing sequences with marketing. The product development process provides insights into new features that influence educational content.

Having an internal content strategy group also avoids the overhead costs and margins associated with external partner agencies. 

However, even talented in-house teams have limits. Your staffing, budget, and internal production capabilities restrict how much content you make and optimize. 

For example:

• Writers only publish ten articles weekly. 
• The video team caps production at one to two long-form videos in 30 days. 
• The social media manager works for only eight hours, which means no one engages with leads for the rest of the day. 

These limitations strain resources and make scaling content for business growth difficult. The team cannot fulfill growth demands if the business goals include doubling website traffic to increase conversion.

They also restrict your content’s ability to reach, engage, and convert audiences. They eventually hinder hitting sales and marketing goals such as brand awareness, lead generation, and customer retention.

Organizations today use automation platforms to streamline repetitive tasks and let the team focus on other high-converting activities. Although helpful, they are not as advanced as people think.

• They usually fail to connect with audiences because they produce generic and inaccurate content. Besides, unique perspectives and creativity still require human ingenuity.
• Technology cannot replace planning and high-level decision-making needed to drive content efforts.
• Only thoughtful human interaction builds relationships and community. 
• Innovations track and analyze metrics in real time, but only humans can derive meaning and make recommendations from the information. 
• Automated tools still need manual setup, governance, and quality control. They do not run themselves.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning complement but do not replace human creativity, strategy, emotional intelligence, and oversight in content efforts. 

3 Signs You Should Hire a Content Strategy Agency

Anytime is ideal for working with an external content strategist, but three red flags indicate it is now best to augment your in-house efforts with outsourced expertise:

     1. Plateauing Content Metrics

One warning that your current strategy needs a rethink is plateauing marketing metrics. Despite persistent efforts to produce and promote content, the numbers have hardly budged over the last six months.

These plateaus concern more than just your digital marketing performance. They affect the business’s bottom line:

• Flat website traffic means struggling to grow visibility and capture new market segments. It limits the effectiveness of demand-generation activities.
• Stalled social followership erodes mindshare. It also challenges your link-building strategy.
• Constant lead volume hinders scaling your sales funnel. Revenue expansion stalls without growth in qualified prospects.
• Lagging brand awareness and competitive differentiation eventually hurt customer retention. Audiences disengage and settle for alternatives.

Why do these happen? The causes vary. Sometimes, the tactics go stale. Other times, search engine algorithm changes demand new approaches. For example, Google has completed rolling out mobile-first indexing. Your site might rank even worse if you do not optimize content for growing mobile traffic. 

Regardless of the cause, the outcome is clear. Content marketing stagnation leads to slow business growth. The solution is a reboot. Get a fresh perspective from outside experts. Tap on their knowledge to find strategies to unstick content performance and see tangible returns again.

     2. Resource Constraints 

Resources, including people, are finite. This limitation often results in ineffective scalability and stunted growth unless you call for reinforcements. In this case, you hire a content strategy team. 

Limited resources happen in many ways.

• Content marketing is small. They cannot produce the volume of articles, social media captions, and other assets to remain competitive and reach various marketing channels and segments.
• A budget prevents your business from hiring more in-house talent. The company must offer non-wage benefits besides salary to attract the best. Then, it should give enough time to onboard and train the content marketer for the job. 
• The market needs more people to do the job. One study reveals that it now takes over 40 days to fill a position. It is even longer for work requiring specialized skills. 
• New content initiatives require expertise the team lacks. These include podcast production, multilingual articles, and data visualization capabilities for interactive content.
• The team deals with excessive bottlenecks and task overload. They eventually feel burned out, causing diminished efficiency and productivity. 
• Stretched teams struggle to brainstorm creative content ideas and formats to captivate audiences. 

Relieving constraints through outsourcing allows the in-house team to focus on its core strengths. On the other hand, qualified partners strengthen content marketing efforts across volume, formats, and channels. This expansion fuels audience and business growth.

     3. Scaling Challenges

Companies must scale their content strategy and operations to sustain growth. This means the following:

• Growing from producing a modest amount of content to high-volume output across formats.
• Expanding distribution from just a blog and social channels to new platforms such as podcasts, video sites, and mobile app development. 
• Going beyond organic reach to paid channels, such as social media ads and paid partnerships.
• Evolving from capturing a broad audience to tailoring content for diverse segments and new geographies.
• Setting more ambitious engagement, conversions, and revenue goals.

Scaling unlocks growth opportunities but also brings complex challenges that strain in-house resources in the following ways:

• Production bandwidth limits create bottlenecks that hurt volume and quality. 
• Platform expertise gaps lead to avoidable missteps and wasted spending.
• Small teams need more insight to create culturally relevant, localized content that resonates across global audiences.
• Existing workflows grow inefficient at larger volumes, leading to delays and frustration.

Working with a content strategy firm is crucial during the scaling period. Their expertise and capacity in high-volume workflow management, PPC distribution, geo-targeted content, and advanced analytics fill the gaps.

Ready to Outsource? Consider These Tips

Outsourcing content strategy also has challenges. Misalignment with brand values and voice does happen. It sometimes introduces communication barriers because of cultural and time zone differences. 

The hired team fails to meet the business’s expectations or requirements or struggles to offer strategies that integrate with the digital marketing plan. Outsourcing also raises confidentiality and security risks. 

How do you take advantage of the benefits of an external content strategy agency while managing these challenges? Consider these tips:

     1. Pick a Team Who Aligns with the Business Goals

Choose a partner that understands and commits to aligning their strategies with your objectives and branding. How? Assess your needs first. For example:

• The agency must excel in data-driven content that converts audiences if the goal is to hit double-digit sales.
• The content strategist must know how to build communities if you want to expand your social media following.
• The agency should demonstrate success in nurturing high-value leads if the organization seeks to capture enterprise or B2B accounts.

Look for demonstrated experience. Review case studies and ask for references to validate claimed successes.

Evaluate the agency’s cultural fit. Do they “get” the brand's essence and voice? Does the in-house team feel rapport and creative chemistry when collaborating? 

Be transparent with goals, strategies, and benchmarks from the start to align the agency around core KPIs. Then, maintain an open dialogue to review performance against targets and adjust strategy as needed.

     2. Seamlessly Integrate the Team 

Outsourcing efforts are futile when external and internal content marketing teams still operate in silos. Smooth integration hinges on four areas:

Rigorous collaboration, efficient workflows, governance, and personal connections help break down silos and nurture a shared-revenue mindset and accountability. 

     3. Measure the Impact

Is your external team delivering results? Measure its bottom-line impact by defining, tracking, and analyzing the right performance metrics and KPIs:

• Traffic KPIs. Measure overall site visitors driven by content efforts. Analyze growth, new visitor acquisition, and loyalty retention.
• Engagement KPIs. Track the time on site or page, scroll depth, click depth, and social shares to measure how deeply content engages visitors.
• Conversion KPIs. Connect content to conversions. These include email subscribers, leads, signups, purchases, and other desired actions.
• Ranking KPIs. Monitor SEO-focused metrics such as rankings for target keywords, organic traffic portion, and clicks from search.
• ROI KPIs. Calculate the content’s business value by tying efforts to pipeline and revenue or cost savings.

Additionally, establish audience personas and conversion funnels to measure performance for each target segment. Set specific benchmark goals for improvement over baseline performance. Review analytics frequently. Assess what content resonates to amplify and replicate success. Identify underperforming areas needing course correction.

Govern outsourced content through actionable metrics versus subjective opinions. Numbers do not lie. It is working if data shows initiatives are moving the needle on key business goals. If not, use data-driven insights to adjust strategy for improved impact.

Summing Up

Could outsourcing be the key to unlocking your content’s potential and driving your business forward? 

Yes. It provides a lifeline for many executives needing help with a stalled or scaled-back content strategy. It injects your efforts with the required skill, perspective, and capacity to pursue new initiatives and maximize content’s value. 

Third-party talent becomes a seamless team extension with careful partner selection and integration. 

Do you need an expert content strategy agency? Contact Digital Authority Partners (DAP) to schedule a free consultation.