At its most basic, B2B content marketing is about creating and sharing relevant and valuable information with your target audience to engage with them and drive sales. In today’s info-saturated world however, this is not the easiest task. It requires delivering quality content consistently across numerous channels that address a B2B prospect’s interests, needs and problems with the goal of building trust and credibility, eventually transforming that prospect into a paying customer.
Many enterprises are currently facing what can be called a content marketing conundrum. Once you build a content marketing strategy that adds value to your business, you need to keep that content machine running continuously, standing out from the crowd in quality to stay successful. What does that take? This requires businesses to publish for instance from 3–5 new and updated posts per week on a company blog according to Hubspot.
Whether an SMB or a large enterprise, the next question is how does one meet these intensive content standards? This requires manpower, money, and time. For in-house content, you need to hire staff that know the product and the industry, and constantly builds on their ideas and expertise. Sourcing talent like this doesn’t happen instantly, is not cheap, and often when you do have the staff, the content marketing can take them away from core day-to-day business functions.
Therefore, the answer often is to outsource content. There are several factors, however, to take into account when deciding whether to outsource content creation or keep it in-house and these pros and cons need to be weighed-up depending on business needs.
Creating content in-house:
There are both pros and cons to charging your in-house marketing team with content creation, should you have the necessary talent and resources available – designers, content writers, SEO specialists, and the list goes on.
An in-house solution could be to invest in a qualified, dedicated content team that can establish authority and build the brand. But this can take years to become an effective source of content, and can be costly, as you need to pay your internal content-writing staff salaries, instead of by project hour. In the short term, or when your need results quickly, the in-house option can be limiting.
The Pros:
- Control – Producing content in-house allows for more control over your content strategy, the writers you work with, and the quality results they deliver.
- Convenience – Presumably, those who know your brand best are in-house. The flow of communication among an internal content staff can also be easier.
- Knowledge growth – Your content team will not have all the quality from the get-go, so the skills and expertise of your staff will grow the more content they produce, which will benefit a long–term content strategy. If you have the significant resources and time for this, this will support a long-term content marketing strategy.
The Cons:
- Time – According to a study by Ragan, a 1000-word blog post can take approximately 4-8 hours. As mentioned earlier, keeping the content machine running consistently with 3-5 posts a week, for many enterprises takes more time than they can afford internally.
- Resource Intensive – Time spent researching, writing, reviewing, publishing, and promoting content is less manpower focused on the core business, such as focusing on strategy, generating new marketing ideas, learning trends, and engaging with your customers. Also, having to hire content creators full-time, aside from the elevated cost, also limits flexibility and may not be the most efficient way to scale.
- Limited Expertise – Just because you have the expert on your product and customers in-house doesn’t mean, for example, that the writer is also an SEO expert. Or that their perspective and knowledge captures the latest and most relevant industry trends or have extensive insights on the competition. There could also be a risk in bias, not to mention a lack of diversity by limiting content creation internally. And this could impact content quality too.
Outsourcing B2B content creation:
According to a 2022 B2B Benchmark report by Content Marketing Institute, 57% of the most successful content marketers outsource content, while half of all B2B marketers outsource at least one content marketing activity. Outsourced content creators and agencies don’t have to replace your in-house team, rather they should be used to support them and enhance your strategy.
The Pros:
- Quality – If you outsource your content, you are dealing with professionals that produce quality content. It’s their bread and butter. These content teams have expertise in your industry, in SEO, in multiple forms of content for a variety of audiences, mainly because their business reputation depends on it.
- Fresh Perspective – Outsourcing content creation introduces a valuable dimension of fresh perspective to the work. External content creators, unburdened by internal company dynamics or biases, often bring a novel and unbiased viewpoint to the table. This external lens can inject creativity, diversity, and innovative ideas into the content, offering a unique and engaging perspective that might be challenging to achieve solely through an in-house team.
- Consistency – Outsourced content pros focus only on content and quantity. They are not focused on other business activities like your internal staff are. They work on a project basis with a budget and meet accelerated delivery times. This allows for ongoing consistency in meeting your content targets.
- Cost-Effectiveness – As mentioned earlier, in-house content writers are more expensive than hiring outsourced professionals to write. You don’t have to pay taxes, benefits, or social security. While the hourly rate for outsourced content writing is higher, you set the budget up front for the content that’s produced in much less time.
- Scalability – If you need more content for a special campaign or to confront a branding opportunity or emergency, you can scale much more effectively via outsourcing. This flexibility also allows you to experiment with different perspectives and expertise in the field. And if strategy changes, and you need to reduce content for a set amount of time, this is easier to manage through outsourcing.
The Cons:
- Control – When outsourcing, there can be some miscommunications along the way. While this can happen with in-house content writers as well, externally there is greater sense of lack of control.
- Confidentiality – Sharing sensitive company information with third-parties has its risks. There could be leaks to the competition or cybersecurity breaches outside your enterprise that can cause significant damage to your content strategy. However, contracting quality content creators with a solid reputation will limit these risks.
Content services by Anteriad
Anteriad provides companies with the resources they need to create high-quality content at scale. We are specialists in the tech industry and have proven results in turning content projects around quickly and with the highest quality for top clients in the tech field.
From social media advertising and email nurture tracks to longer-form content such as whitepapers or in-depth webinars, our team of content writers, graphic designers, and videographers is on hand to create bespoke and engaging content that will land your messaging with your target audience. We help you build brand awareness, establish credibility through consistency, and drive sales.
Contact us to learn more about Anteriad's digital and content services.
