Assume you're in a room with 100 TVs all switched on at the same time. In the middle of the commotion, what would it take for just one of those screens to grab your attention?

Isn't it something special? This is the problem that most marketing departments are dealing with these days.

Everyone is occupied with generating content, which creates a tremendous quantity of background noise in the digital environment. It's tough for any one message to stand out in this climate.

Small businesses without the means to establish highly experienced in-house content marketing teams have an even greater challenge. As a consequence, small businesses must either devise new ways to bridge the skills gap or risk falling behind their rivals.

Creating external collaborations

Partnering with an external firm is a frequent technique used by many smaller businesses to acquire content marketing help. While this strategy may be very successful, it still demands strong in-house leadership capable of recognizing internal strengths and weaknesses, assigning duties to external partners, and bringing both sides together to seek meaningful shared objectives.

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So, how can businesses bring together internal and external resources to create a successful content marketing strategy? It all starts with determining your team's responsibilities.

Roles in content marketing that are common

Before hiring an external firm, a business should examine inside to see what resources it currently has, how much capacity it has for content marketing, and what capabilities it lacks. After completing this audit, a firm should have a clear understanding of the assistance it requires from its agency partner, as well as how the two parties could interact in the future.

The following are the most typical positions that businesses will need to fill:

Leadership

Identifying who is in charge of content marketing is a fantastic place to start your assessment. Depending on the size of the company, this person's title may vary. Their professional duties, however, should be devoted to marketing.

This internal marketing leader will handle internal and external resources, as well as drive strategy and create appropriate targets. As a result, they should preferably have direct access to executive-level leadership in order to obtain insight into the company's performance and future plans.

Strategy

Content marketing strategists play a variety of important functions. They begin by defining the team's objectives and the strategies it will use to achieve them.

Strategists know what internal resources are available, how to deploy content to target a certain audience, and how to change content in response to success, failure, or changing business circumstances. Successful strategists also know what a company's target audience wants or needs, as well as the kind of material they'll share.

Production

• Individuals with production talents generate useful marketing material by combining visual and textual information. These abilities are generally divided into three categories:
• Copywriting: These producers create short and long-form material for social media postings, video scripts, white papers, and other mediums. Multiple copywriters, if feasible, are beneficial since they frequently have diverse strengths and limitations.
• Designers: Graphic designers that can provide their business a consistent look and feel across a variety of content categories are very important team members. On content creation, designers and copywriters often cooperate closely.
• Internal consultants: This internal resource offers other producers with the subjects, information, and figures they need to generate outstanding marketing material. Internal experts are often high-ranking personnel such as CEOs or other product and service gurus. Some firms, on the other hand, hire lower-level workers as internal experts in order to develop them as thought leaders or prepare them for speaking or webinar positions.

Distribution

After a content team has finished creating something, they must make it available to the public. The distributors step in at this point. There are three types of content distribution channels:

• Owned media refers to assets that a firm owns, such as a website, blog, social media platforms, or an email newsletter.
• Earned media, often known as public relations (PR), is the distribution of company-created information via third-party channels such as television, newspapers, trade journals, and podcasts.
• Social media and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are examples of paid media.

Many various positions are represented among the distributors, including public relations experts, website team members, search engine marketing specialists, and others. The marketing approach and the location of the audience for a certain piece of information will determine how they disseminate material.

Strategists and distributors often collaborate closely to develop this strategy.

What role does an agency play?

You may pick your agency partner now that you've determined which positions you can perform internally and which you'll need to outsource. Any of the roles described above may be filled by most agencies. Some organizations, however, specialize in one area over another, such as PPC or PR.

The good news is that you are not obligated to hand up anything to the agency. You may combine your and their abilities until you discover the ideal recipe for mutual success.

If you're starting from scratch with content marketing, partnering with an agency may help you figure out what positions to recruit inside. Let's say your agency partner has copywriting capabilities. In such instance, rather of hiring a more specialist content generator, you could want to engage a flexible designer who can contribute to various aspects of your organization.

Above all, agency partnerships allow firms to remain flexible in response to their requirements, objectives, and internal resources. When new marketing needs surpass current capabilities, agencies can help organizations expand.

Designed for success

To get the word out about their goods and services, firms must create attractive content marketing tools. These companies benefit from agency collaborations because they can create more complex content that targets their target audience more efficiently. These collaborations are also often less costly than bringing in-house the required talents and resources.

So, if you're thinking about working with an outside agency, evaluate your current talents first, and then think about how your agency partner can help you fill in the gaps. You may use your agency partner's resources and skills to establish a successful content marketing plan by being flexible and communicating properly.

Thanks to Mike Rosenberg at Business 2 Community whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.