Preparing for Your Content Marketing Consultation

Last week, the Grammar Chic blog outlined five reasons to outsource your content marketing in 2015. Among them: Outsourcing can save you time; it can give you better bang for your buck; and it can provide both the perspective and the expertise needed to make your marketing endeavors effective.

Frankly, we feel like it’s a pretty sound argument—so we hope some of you will take us up on it! This will bring with it a whole new set of questions, though. Many small business owners have never worked with a content marketing professional before, and you may have some questions about what the process entails.

Generally speaking, content marketing professionals want to make the process as low-intensity as possible for you. One of the reasons to outsource, after all, is to free up some of your own time. Working with a company like Grammar Chic, then, you can expect the process to be fairly hands-off, while still offering you control over the process whenever and wherever you’d like it.

With that said, you should plan on spending some time on an initial consultation call—likely no more than an hour or so—to provide the content marketer with some insights into your brand. This is an important call, setting the stage for your content marketing strategy as well as for your working relationship with the marketer. As such, it is worthwhile to take some time to prepare for it.

Here’s how:

• Think about what your brand really stands for. What are the values, vision, and mission of your brand? Spend some time pulling together any sales copy you have—in particular About Us pages, Mission Statements, and the like—that reflect your brand.
• Consider your brand distinctive. What sets your company apart from its competition? Jot down some ideas.
• Consider your customer base. Who are the people who do business with you? Do you have buyer personas, or any demographic information? If so, compile it to provide to the marketer. If not, simply brainstorm some basics about who buys from you. Use our buyer persona guides to help you.
• Define your goals. Hopefully, your content marketing vendor has provided you with some insights as to what goals are and are not reasonable for you to pursue; think through what matters most to you in terms of increased website traffic, online authority, and so on.
• Think about your own involvement. How much control do you want to have over the process? Do you want to arrange weekly calls with your content marketer? Do you want to ask for approval of all materials before they are published? Do you want to provide the content marketer with more flexibility than that? Think about how much time you really want to invest in the process.
• Think about your budget. Finally, make sure you have a good sense of how much you are able to invest in content marketing at this juncture. It is always best to think about this in advance.

These bullet points should provide you with some direction—and a high level of preparedness as you think about your content marketing consultation call.

To learn more, or to set up a call with the Grammar Chic team, contact us today: 803-831-7444, or www.grammarchic.net.