What is a Content Marketer And Does Your Business Need One?

Content, content, content. The world is running on content these days, and if you’re a Founder, business owner, CEO or MD, you already know that you need a content strategy. That’s why you’re here.

Maybe this world of content is still new to you. There are plenty of industries (like financial services and wealth management) that have survived and thrived in the ‘good old days’ before content (or even the internet) was even a thing.

But the marketing and business development landscape has changed. Grabbing coffees or rounds of golf isn’t so easy now that remote work has become the norm, and people are much more guarded of their time. 

Couple that with the fact that we’re all constantly spending more time online, and content marketing is something that even the most traditional industries can’t ignore.

So, what is content marketing?

Right, we won’t labor this point because it’s fairly self explanatory. Content marketing is creating content that provides value to your ideal customer or client.

When you provide them value for free through a helpful blog post, podcast or YouTube video, they begin to trust you. The more of your content they consume, the more trust and authority you build and the more likely they are to reach out to you to help them.

So if you’re offering wealth management services to high net worth individuals, you could write blog posts that answer specific tax questions that they have.

If you’re a fintech company who sells FP&A software to CFOs, you could explain different solutions for cash management across multiple countries.

The point is it’s free, so it’s easily accessible, it’s targeted and it’s valuable. Those three principles are the basis of your content marketing strategy. Of course it gets much more detailed than that, because creating just any old content and putting it anywhere isn’t likely to get you very far.

You need to understand who your target audience is, where they spend their time, their habits and the type of content that resonates with them the most. 

If your ideal client is a 56 year old CFO, creating three TikToks a day probably isn’t going to be a great use of your time.

What is a Content Marketer?

By extension, a content marketer is someone who creates and implements this strategy for you. Sometimes it’s just the strategy that they’re involved in, rather than the creation of the actual content itself. If you’re using an agency, they’ll often do both.

Say you decide that the central pillar of your content strategy is going to be your company blog (great choice). In that case, a Content Marketer will conduct research of your market and your distribution channels (like SEO, LinkedIn or Twitter) and then create a content plan for your company.

This is often in the form of ‘personas.’ An example of your ideal clients as if they are individual people. Say you’re a wealth management firm looking for new potential investment clients. Your personas might look something like this:

This ensures that there’s a cohesive plan to your content, and that everything you pay to have done is working towards the same goal, whether that’s initial meetings, trial signups, downloads or whatever else.

It also makes it much easier to decide what content your ideal client would be interested in. You can think about sitting down for a coffee with Steven or Rebecca, and envisage what questions they’d ask and what concerns they’d have. 

It makes so much more sense than keeping things general.

The content creation process

As well as creating the overall strategy, a Content Marketer will also manage the content creation process itself.

Sticking with the blog example, they’ll find and manage the content writers either individually or via an agency (like us!). They’ll make sure the quality is up to scratch, the angle of the content is correct and that deadlines are hit.

Lastly, they’ll monitor the results of your content marketing campaigns.

At the end of the day, content costs money. Do to it properly, it costs quite a lot of money. That’s ok, because if you do it right then it can be super valuable and offer a huge ROI. But you need to track that ROI and consistently review and tweak the strategy to ensure you’re doubling down on content that’s working, and ditching content that’s not.

The result is that you can end up with thousands, or even millions of visitors to your site every year. They’re not all going to do business with you, but if even a relatively low percentage of them book a call or a free trial, it adds up to major revenue, year in, year out.

Here’s an example of one of our clients who decided in June to massively increase their budget for content.

They went from getting 50,000 - 60,000 pageviews on their content each month, to over 1 million. As you’d expect, this translated to a significant increase in the sign ups for their service. 

In-House vs Freelancer vs Content Agency 

Ok, so you get content marketing and you know where a content marketer fits into the overall strategy. But if you want to implement content marketing for your business, where do you start? Just like any other aspect of your business, there’s a number of different ways you can get the expertise in place.

In-house

The most obvious option is to hire a Content Marketer yourself. You get all the usual benefits and drawbacks of a full time employee. You’re going to have to go through a full recruitment process, which will be tough if you don’t know the industry. How do you know if the candidate is full of it or talking sense in the interview?

Once you’ve found someone, it won’t be cheap. You’ll need to fork out for a full time salary plus benefits, and you won’t likely see a return on that investment for some time. Your new hire will take time to understand how you work, and they’ll have to go through any mandatory compliance training and onboarding.

The benefit is that you’ll have their full time and attention once they’re finally ready to go. You’ll have control over their time and be able to work closely with them throughout the week. 

Freelancer

The next option is to find an individual freelancer to work with on your content marketing strategy. This is a useful option if you don’t think you need someone full time, but you want to start getting something in place.

It’s likely going to be even more difficult to find someone, because traditional recruiters and job boards don’t really cater to finding freelancers. You can try job boards like Upwork, but there’s going to be a lot of dross to wade through.

Word of mouth is the ideal option, but again, great freelance content marketers don’t grow on trees. And of course, if they are great, the likelihood is that they’ll be at capacity most of the time.

With that said, if you can find someone then it’s a great, cost-effective option for a company with little in the way of a content strategy.

One last thing to keep in mind is that you’ll also have to find writers, editors, videographers etc. to create the content. The Content Marketer will do the strategy, but they won’t create the content for you.

They might be able to help you with your search, but a large component is likely to fall on you. As you grow and want to scale your content, you’ll need more time and input in finding the content creators.

Content Agency

I think this is the best option, but that’s because I run a content agency. Really though, if you have the budget, it makes the most sense. You can start small at the beginning, and as you scale and want to increase the level of content you create, an agency can grow with you.

Not only that, but a content agency will often offer a one stop shop for both the strategy, review and analysis and the content creation itself.

It means that you don’t have to spend your time worrying about every step of the content creation process. You find an agency you like and then simply have a weekly meeting, or however frequently you want, to make sure the plan remains on track.

The downside? You’ll pay more. An agency has to build in a margin for all this additional resourcing work they do behind the scenes. This means that the stick price is likely to look higher than hiring an individual freelancer, or even an in-house employee.

Remember to keep in mind that this covers the whole strategy and implementation though, not just one part of it.

What not to do!

Don’t be tight and try to rope your existing employees into becoming content creators. I see this all the time with companies such as financial advisor firms. They make their advisors write articles and then post them on the company blog, maybe share it on Instagram and call it a content marketing strategy.

It’s not.

The advisors generally don’t want to do it and they’re also usually not that good at it. It means the content isn’t as good as it could be, and there’s no consistent thread across all the content that’s being created.

You’re taking time away from your staff that they could be spending on things that generate revenue for your business, and making them spend it on something they’re not suited for.

Want to impart your staff members knowledge into your content? Great, you should! Have a professional writer or content creator interview them, and turn their knowledge into content that fits your strategy.

Next steps

Go get your content strategy in place! Just quietly, we do this. We’re a content agency that specializes in the finance game. So if you’re in that space and you’d like to discuss your needs, you can find out more info here.

We’re always happy to have an initial call to talk through what you need. If we can’t help, we’ll point you in the right direction of people who can.