In today’s business world, there are myriad solutions and tools available to aid in the marketing of your company, one tool being content marketing. You may feel like you are fighting a war when slogging it out on the battlefield of content marketing, but asking questions before leaping into critical business decisions is crucial to your company’s future. You are emotionally invested in the success of your company, but you need to detach yourself from making a decision based on nothing but emotion. Having a list of questions before hiring a content marketing company is an excellent way to do just that.
Do We Really Need Outside Help?
You may have staff capable of handling some areas of your marketing program. You may discover that you are missing only a few key competencies, or find that a particular department is overloaded. Decide where your staff is lacking to identify where you need help with marketing.
Do They Know the Market?
A content marketing agency that does not understand your market will effectively use you as an experiment to stretch its skillset. Instead, look for a company that is already familiar with your industry. Ask them what they have done for similar businesses in three key ways:
- Did they listen to those clients and learn their unique needs?
- Did they develop appropriate objectives for those needs?
- Did they deliver on those objectives?
Yes, that is really three questions growing out of the main one, but together those three answers will signal the content marketing company’s effectiveness.
How Much Time Do We Have?
Rushing decisions or arranging back-to-back agency interviews will disappoint and overwhelm you. Take your time with the selection process by performing due diligence on every company you interview. Ask the same questions of every content marketing company you interview, too, so you can make clear comparisons.
Have We Answered All Your Questions?
Define ahead of any search exactly what you want done—what questions should this content marketing agency be asking to align themselves with your requirements? Be skeptical of a content marketing company that arrives for a presentation ready to solve your problems before you have defined for them what your unique challenges are. Listen for the quality and direction of their questions to your people—they should be probing for your brand goals and your target audience, not delivering a pre-packaged solution that worked on the previous five clients.
Do Prospective Companies Take Their Own Medicine?
Does a content marketing company present itself to the business world in a fashion that would be attractive for your own brand? A good content marketing company models its own best practices, presenting itself to the world using strategies it can deploy for you.
