In-House Production vs Outsourcing: How to Achieve the Best Content Marketing Results No Matter Who's In Control In 2022, simply offering a helpful product won't make your business successful, especially in online services — that's why you need a content marketing plan.
By Luka Edited by Kara McIntyre
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The key to presenting a consistent, compelling brand narrative is implementing an online marketing strategy that has high-quality content produced at scale at its core. Scaled content can be created by businesses of any size, regardless of the volume, and you can choose whether to outsource or build an in-house team.
Here's a breakdown of the features and benefits of scaled content, providing guidelines to help you achieve the best results possible.
Related: In-House or Outsourced? How Do You Decide?
Why is content at scale important, and what does "scaling up" mean?
Despite a shift to video, especially on social media, written content marketing is more relevant than ever. It offers businesses a powerful tool for creating brand awareness, building trust and strengthening their relationships with their customers.
When articles are completed to a high standard and published promptly, they help a brand increase its online visibility, boosting trust and website traffic. Meaningful content in any form, even just one well-written article, can generate inbound leads and new customers for months — or in the case of evergreen content, even years to come.
Identifying and attracting your target audience as early as possible in the buyer's journey is vital. In fact, over half of the marketers surveyed by Content Marketing Institute in 2019 said they saw the best results from their marketing efforts at the top of the funnel.
This is where scaled content comes in handy.
Scaling up content production means producing 10 to 100 times more content than you believed your available internal resources could create — without prioritizing quantity over quality. That sounds impossible, we know. But it's achievable if you follow a strategy designed to optimize your team's workflow to increase high-quality content output while keeping workloads manageable.
Related: Why Content Marketing Is Crucial to Your Business
Strengthen your online presence
Promoting a service or product using traditional advertising exclusively is challenging. Today, consumers expect information as and when they need it. Any content you want to share with your customers (or potential customers) should be easily searchable using relevant keywords and questions.
The more high-quality content you can get out there — with the appropriate keywords — the more likely customers will find your website. This helps them get to know your brand, leading them to sign up for your newsletter, engage with your online marketplace, download your latest e-book or whatever your end-of-funnel goal is.
At the very least, they'll remember your company's website as a reliable place for good content and become a repeat visitor.
Related: 6 Easy Ways to Build a Strong Presence Online
When to commit to in-house scaled content creation
Outsourcing content creation has become common among businesses, and it might seem like the obvious choice for your business.
Surprisingly, only around 12% of businesses outsource 100% of their content creation, while 37% work with hybrid models and 51% do not outsource at all. The same report found that companies employing between 100 and 500 workers typically choose to outsource, while smaller businesses tend to keep production in-house.
The takeaway here? A colossal workforce isn't necessary, and you don't have to outsource your content production if you have the management resources to create and follow a carefully planned content creation strategy.
This strategy should include taking advantage of software, platforms and tools to:
- Streamline your hiring processes: Airtable, Upwork, LinkedIn
- Prioritize team management: Airtable (again), shared inboxes, experienced project managers
- Maintain content quality: plagiarism checkers, grammar and spelling checkers, AI translation, SEO tools
This allows you to optimize your workflow while staying in control of the process and outcomes.
Related: Hiring vs. Outsourcing: How to Recognize the Right Moment to Add Talent to Your Team
When should I outsource scaled content creation?
For some businesses, outsourcing your content production can be the better solution. These companies usually decide to outsource content creation after identifying a need to scale content production quickly.
In these cases, their in-house talent is not experienced enough to handle the task of scaling content production to the quality standard or within the timeframes needed. A company may also lack the budget for hiring and onboarding new staff.
Outsourcing to an agency can save you time and help you overcome organizational and management challenges. It's cost-effective and flexible. You tap into an experienced team of freelancers, editors and project managers.
This ensures the scaling process happens seamlessly, without the hiccups you may experience trying to do it all in-house.
Related: Outsourcing Is a Shortcut; Insourcing Is an Investment
No perfect method for scaling content
Both in-house production and outsourcing have their benefits and challenges.
Keeping your content production in-house gives you more control over your content strategy, the professionals you work with, the results you get and the analysis of those results. Outsourcing saves you time and allows you to keep your company agile.
Even if you don't have an enormous content marketing department, effectively scaling up your content creation is doable. You just need to decide whether you'll entrust that task to a small team of employees or freelancers.
