If you’re going to successfully scale your content marketing program, you’ll need to use both internal and external resources.
Many companies have ambitious expectations. One of them is that they can easily scale up their content marketing program by solely relying on internal resources. However, the reality for most companies is that it’s simply not the case.
What is your internal capacity?
Before making the decision to outsource, first you need to take an inventory of your internal capabilities:
- Which internal staff is going to be responsible for creating content?
- How much of their time is going to be allocated toward it?
- How much time does it take to create, produce and amplify a piece of content?
Many smaller companies don’t have individual resources dedicated to content marketing. They only a handful of hours each week for it.
In our experience, writers take approximately 4 to 8 hours to create a well-crafted, researched blog post, depending on the length. This doesn’t include editing, SEO optimization, meta descriptions or readability optimization. It’s simply researching content, creating the outline for it, and then actually writing the content.
If your internal team cannot allocate at least 4 to 8 hours of uninterrupted time to write a piece of content, the quality is going to be inferior.
Should you compare internal available resources vs content marketing program requirements?
Let’s say that you have determined your available internal resources and the number of content pieces that your team can reliably produce each month. You should then compare it against the requirements of your content marketing program. The difference between the two is your content gap.
If your content marketing program has an output gap, you’re stuck with one of two choices:
- Hire additional staff internally or allocate more internal staff time to your content marketing program
- Outsource the additional content needs to a managed services provider such as Tempesta Media.
Are you accurately measuring your costs of content creation?
Before you can decide on whether to add your internal team or outsource, you need to determine the true content cost.
As outlined above, it takes up to 8 hours to be able to write a strong, detailed and well-researched blog post. For most companies, individuals within the marketing department will have a fully burdened pay rate that will exceed $50 per hour or more.
Let’s assume your content takes 8 hours to create. Suppose an average marketing person makes $60,000 per year, or $50 per hour, fully burdened (including employer taxes, overhead, etc.). When you combine the effective employee hourly rate with the amount of time it takes to create that content, your costs will come out to approximately $400. This is even before you get to the costs for editing, SEO optimization and the other requirements.
If your company can sustain that cost, it makes sense to add internally. If you’re like most companies, you likely cannot sustain that cost at scale.
Your best bet is to look at managed content services providers such as Tempesta Media. You will likely save significantly and gain the ability to scale up fast.
How do you determine which content should be done in-house or outsourced to a managed services provider?
Many companies regularly struggle with this question. Blog posts are one of the most common content posts, but you should invest in a content mix as well. Other content types include eGuides, ebooks, case studies and emails to name a few. All these content types support both the content marketing and the overall marketing programs.
Based on our experience working with hundreds of companies, the content types that we see work best produced in-house are:
- Technical white papers.
- Marketing brochures.
- Collateral.
Blogs, case studies, eGuides, press releases, thought leadership articles, SEO content and news commentaries are excellent for use with a content managed services provider. Your internal content marketing manager can easily identify these outsourceable content types.
What are other components of a content marketing program can you outsource?
Other areas that you’re going to want to outsource will include your editing, technology stack, as well as supplementary services associated with amplifying the content.
Typically, these specialized areas require massive capital investments, and hiring an internal person is also not cost-effective.
For example, it is much easier and cost-effective to subscribe to a content marketing platform than to build one. Tempesta Media’s content platform has many capabilities, including editing content, amplifying it, managing content workflow, screening for plagiarism, and much more.
In summary
If you’re going to scale up your content marketing program, you’ll need to carefully evaluate your company’s available internal capabilities. You’ll need to take a hybrid approach to content creation, with some of it being done in-house and the remainder outsourced. If you take this approach, you’re going to get the best of both worlds. Most importantly, you’re going to have your content marketing program scale up fast.
Need content marketing help?
If you have a content marketing program or are planning one, download our ebook 100 Mistakes Businesses Make When Starting, Optimizing and Scaling Content Marketing Programs.
This ebook will walk you through the mistakes of hundreds of other companies and the challenges they faced in implementing their content marketing programs. To learn more about how Tempesta Media can help you streamline your content creation process and deliver quality content at scale, contact us today.
