If you own a marketing agency, you must have experienced first hand the pain involved in acquiring new clients and selling your content. There are thousands of marketing agencies in the market, so getting a piece of the pie can be a very complicated and challenging task. Nevertheless, there are some tried and tested methods that you could follow to help you sell your content this November as a business.
1. Start Small, Dream Big
Many content marketing agencies misleadingly believe that hiring tons of in-house copywriters and content strategists is the guaranteed go-to method for success. However, skyrocketing your monthly expenses by hiring a full team of writers can shift your budget off course. On the other hand, you cannot possibly take on all the copywriting and content marketing on your shoulders, so what is the alternative to that?
Buy the services of freelance writers! The beauty in hiring freelance writers is that you can have a full team of available writers you can choose from and assign each project to the writer that is the best fit for the said project. You can search for industry-specific writers and search for writers that resonate best with your niche target audience.
Moreover, you can scale the services hired according to the influx of projects, thereby leaving more room for profit. Needless to say, that when you work with freelance writers, you free yourself from all the legal bindings of hiring and firing an employee.
2. Set Your Pricing
With so many marketing agencies out there, selling content as a business can be a tricky task of striking the perfect balance between competitive prices and profits. No matter what you are selling and who you are selling it to, it would be best if you considered having fixed pricing for each service you provide.
Before searching for clients to sell your content, you should be prepared to answer the first question that always pops up: How much? If you have your pricing determined from the beginning, you have a clear idea of how much each project will cost and how much profit each project will yield.
Of course, this implies that you have thoroughly researched your freelance writers’ options, as per step 1. This allows you to have a clear indication of how much of your earnings will go to your writers, thereby indicating how aggressively you can price your services.
3. Roll Up Your Sleeves And Find Your Clientele
Do not make the mistake of going out there and start selling your content from scratch! If you are a content marketing business, chances are you already have some established clientele. No matter how big or small your agency is, you should roll up your sleeves and find your existing clientele. Offer them your new upscaled content writing services, create appealing content packages, give them an exclusive discount as valued customers. Whatever you do, ensure that you take advantage of the fact that previous experience with your services already has them positioned to take up new services.
When this is said and done, you can turn your attention to finding new clients. The best way to do this is by offering packages of services for businesses, thereby creating a strategy that has content backed into it. Promote your new packages and allow a company to enjoy SEO services, Landing Page services, GMB services, etc., all neatly packed under one very attractive pricing. Once you have that, you can move forward and suggest more ways that content can be of value to your future and existing clients, and perhaps set individual pricing for these services, above and beyond what the package includes.
4. Sit With Your Clients and Find Out What They Need
Not all content serves the same purpose, nor should you approach each client’s needs the same way. Once you have secured your clients, you need to spend time with them and get to know their specific needs, who their niche-specific audience is, and what they are looking to get out of your content. Do they want to increase their traffic? Do they want to promote brand awareness? Are they looking into establishing strong brand loyalty? Is their target group new buyers, or re-curring buyers? There are so many different variables that need to be established and multiple parameters that must be considered before you can successfully sell your content. So, what sort of information should you gather?
What are the company’s goals?
Who is their target audience?
What tone and style are they looking for?
What are their top keywords to use?
If you want to sell your content, you must create content that sells. And you can only do this if you create content that is the perfect fit for your clients’ needs.
5. Don’t Leave Your Freelancers Hanging
As per step 1, you need to find your trusted team of freelance writers because you cannot possibly do all the content writing on your own. This, however, does not imply that you should do zero part of the job. On the contrary, you should never leave your freelancers hanging. You should not assign a project to them and expect them to rise to your client’s expectations if said expectations are not known to them.
Remember that you have sat with your clients and that you are aware of their needs (refer to step 4). You have taken the time and invested the energy into getting to know your clients and thoroughly understanding what they expect and what they need from you. It is now the time to turn this valuable knowledge into content briefs for your freelance writers. Create straightforward and crystal clear content briefs for each project explaining to your writers what your client wants. This ensures that nobody gets lost in translation and that the content your writers produce is exactly the content you want and the content your client needs.
On Your Way To Success
Selling your content is not as easy as many believe. With so many rival marketing agencies and an abundance of content writers, getting your share of the market can be a tricky task. However, you could follow our steps and be on your way to increasing your content sales this November. Are you ready to start working?
