Attracting and retaining customers is always a challenge for any kind of business. Thankfully, hiring a content marketing agency can help overcome this challenge. By producing a steady stream of relevant, interesting content for the target audience, content marketing agencies can help businesses get more traffic and boost conversions.
In fact, research shows us that 91% of businesses rely on content marketing to attract and retain their target audience. This means that the demand for content marketing agencies is high, and the competition is fierce.
So, if you are thinking of starting your own content marketing business, then you should definitely keep reading.
Table of Contents
This is the ultimate guide for those who want to start their content marketing agency without spending a fortune. We will cover everything you need to know to get started–from planning and preparing to launch your content marketing website, and increasing your online presence. Buckle up, and get ready to dive in.
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Develop A Plan For Your Content Marketing Agency
Without a proper plan, it will be hard to kickstart your content marketing agency successfully. So the very first step when starting your content marketing business is to develop a plan that guarantees success. Here’s a quick checklist that will help you:
✔️ Define your goals clearly: Before you start worrying about how to start your content marketing agency, figure out what your goal is. Without having a clear idea of your industry, target audience and competitors, you cannot start your business.
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✔️ Determine the formats for your content: As a content marketing agency, you can choose what kind of content you want to create and be specialized in. You could choose to focus on a particular niche, such as blogs, or you could focus on all formats. These could include videos, graphics, and much more.
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✔️ Research, research, and then do more research:
The key to starting any successful business is doing research. Learn everything you need to know about your target market, identify competitors, and analyze trends. The more information you have, the more prepared you will be to start your content marketing agency.
Observe Your Competitors & Outsmart Them
There is no denying that the competition is fierce for content marketing agencies. After all, more than 56% of businesses are outsourcing their content marketing activities. These include content creation, distribution, marketing measurement, strategizing, and more. So you can imagine how competitive the industry might be.
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That’s why you must research and observe your competitors. Then, you have to find ways to do better than them. Figure out what makes you unique from your rivals, and your content marketing agency will standout.
Create A Legal Entity For Your Content Marketing Agency Business
Next, you need to focus on forming a legal entity for your content marketing business. This will protect you from liabilities and help you save money on taxes. How? Well, when you form a legal entity for your business, it will be treated as a separate ‘person’. Therefore, your personal assets will be safe should your business face any severe loss or other issues.
Besides this, there are also several other necessary measures you must take when forming a legal entity for your business. Let’s take a look at the things you need to do below:
✔️ Register for taxes: One of the benefits of creating a legal entity for your business is so that you can save money on taxes.
To do this, you also have to register your content marketing business for taxes. These could include state taxes, sales taxes, and income taxes. When you hire employees, then there will also be employee-related taxes
✔️ Get the necessary permits & licenses:
For any agency, getting all the required permits and licenses is absolutely necessary.
The laws and regulations in your business location will determine what permits and licenses you will need to start your content marketing agency. Make sure to stay updated on these regulations and get all mandatory licenses when starting out.
✔️ Open a separate, business bank account:
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To keep your business earnings separate from your personal finances, you must open a business bank account.
This will also help you to keep your financial statements organized. You should also get a separate business credit card.
Launch Your Content Marketing Agency Website
In today’s era, an official website is a must-have for any business. Websites are a great way to communicate with your target audience. It’s the ultimate platform to show what makes your content marketing agency unique, share your portfolio, and communicate with clients. With a website, you will be able to share detailed information about what your content market agency has to offer, and why your clients should choose you.
57% Of Internet Users Say They Will Not Recommend A Business With Poorly Designed Website On Mobile.
It’s extremely important that your content marketing agency website is attractive, responsive, and loads quickly. Research shows that 57% of internet users will not recommend a business with poor, unresponsive website design.
Don’t worry, launching your content marketing agency website is not as daunting as it may seem. In this section, we’ll show you how to create a stunning content marketing website without spending a huge amount of money.
➡️Select A Name For Your Content Marketing Agency
This may seem like an obvious and easy step. But, and you should trust us when we say this, choosing the right name for your content marketing agency is very important. You want your agency’s name to be memorable, unique, and available for web domains and social media accounts.
Here are some tips for choosing the right name for your business. Check some of them out below:
- Do NOT use hard-to-spell names
- Make sure no one else is using it
- Pick a name that’s ‘catchy’
- Make sure it’s somehow related to your business
➡️ Get A Domain For Your Website On WordPress
If you want your clients to see your business as authentic, then you should definitely get a domain for your website. Consider this a business investment. Because without having a domain, you will not be able to launch your own content marketing agency website online to make your business credible.
The best platform to build your website is WordPress. It is the fastest and easiest platform to create your content marketing website. Moreover, there are thousands of amazing WordPress solutions that can help you run your content marketing business.
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You also have to choose a managed hosting provider for your content marketing website. Not sure what managed hosting means? Then check out this detailed guide on managed WordPress hosting and recommendations.
Create A Stunning Content Marketing Agency Website For Free With Elementor
This is where the fun part begins. In this section, we are going to show you how you can create a content marketing agency website for free without any coding. That’s right. With the page builder Elementor, you can design a stunning content marketing agency website in under 10 minutes.
But first, let’s get to know a little more about Elementor.
How Can You Build Websites Without Coding In Elementor?
Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress page builders. It comes with tons of cool widgets that you can drag and drop anywhere on your page. This way, you get to create stunning websites from scratch without touching a line of code.
That’s not all though. If you want to truly enhance your Elementor experience, then you can check out Essential Addons for Elementor. With this addon, you will get extra 70+ unique elements for Elementor to design your websites.
But if you don’t want to make your website from scratch, there is an easy solution for that too. You can use Elementor template packs for making your content marketing agency website. In fact, with Templately, you can get access to a beautiful free content marketing agency template.
This is the ultimate templates library for Elementor with over 400+ free and premium templates. Templately also comes with bonus features like seamless cloud collaboration and cloud storage.
With Templately you can get access to Content Hub, a stunning free template with which you can instantly create your content marketing agency website. It will take less than 10 minutes. Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Insert Content Marketing Elementor Template By Templately
First, create a new page in your WordPress dashboard by navigating to Pages→ Add New. Once your page has been created, click on the Edit With Elementor button at the top. This will load the Elementor Editor for you.
Once the Elementor Editor is done loading, all you have to do is click on the blue Templately icon. You should see a pop-up window open up from where you can search for the Content Hub template. Choose any of the premade pages you like and simply insert them into your site.
For this tutorial, we are going to start with the Content Hub Home Page. When the page template is inserted, this is how it will show up on your website.
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Keep adding more pages until you are happy with your content marketing agency website. Once you are done adding the pages you want, it’s time to add your personal touch.
Step 2: Add Your Own Content & Customize The Template
You can customize each of the pages in your content marketing agency website and add your own style to them. To do this, simply use the Elementor Editor on your left hand side and play around with the options in the ‘Content’ and ‘Style’ tabs.
Change the background color, images, typography, and more until you are happy with the look.
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Step 3: Preview Your Content Marketing Agency Website
One of the best features of Templately is that it lets you save your website design on its own cloud storage known as MyCloud. This is a great option that’s very useful in case you want a backup of your website design or reuse them again.
To save your content marketing website design to Templately, right click on anywhere on the page and click on ‘Save Page To Templately’.
Just like that, you have created your content marketing agency website. Amazing, isn’t it?
Build An Online Portfolio For Your Content Marketing Agency Website
Now that you have your content marketing agency website ready, it’s time to start building your portfolio. The more content you create and distribute, the more you can add to your portfolio. Your portfolio will display your work and showcase your skills and expertise to potential clients. To do this, you will need to create a portfolio page and add it to your website.
Grab FREE Elementor Template For Content Marketing Agency Website
The design and layout of your portfolio page will depend on the type of content your content marketing business will focus on. For example, if your content marketing agency focuses on graphical content, then you need a portfolio that beautifully showcases your images.
Need some more ideas for your content marketing agency portfolio page? Check out some of these ready portfolio page templates below.
Creative Hub Portfolio Page
The Creative Hub portfolio page template from Templately is perfect for any content marketing agency. This template is designed specifically for creative agencies. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. You only have to add your own content and style it to suit your preferences.
Business Cube Portfolio Page
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If your content marketing agency also focuses on written content such as blog posts or case studies, then you can try out the Business Cube portfolio page template. This stunning Elementor page template from Templately comes with a sleek, modern layout, and beautiful buttons. It is perfect for any agency business and would work well for a content marketing agency website.
EleInterior Portfolio Page
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Although designed for interior decorators and architects, the EleInterior portfolio page template can also be for content marketing agencies. Its versatile, modern, and stylish design makes it perfect for showcasing both graphic and written content.
You can pick any of these Elementor page templates for your portfolio page or browse more stunning designs from Templately. They are all fully responsive and can be customized without any coding.
So there you have it! You have created your content marketing agency website and even added a portfolio page to showcase your work. Now, it’s time to get your business up and running. But before doing that, you need to decide on your business model.
Choosing The Right Business Model
Here, when we talk about business models, we are talking about how you should charge your clients. There are several ways you can do this, but the right pricing strategy will depend on the size of your content marketing agency as well as the type of content formats you will be specializing in.
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Even 1% improvement in price can lead to 11.1% rise in profits
This step is extremely important. A study by pricing experts and published in Harvard Business Review shows that even a 1% improvement in price can lead to an 11.1% rise in profits. This is a huge amount and can make a significant difference for any business.
So, if you want your content marketing agency to flourish in the industry, choose the right pricing model or business model. Below, we are going to take a look at some different business models you can choose from for your content marketing agency.
Project-Based Models
This is the kind of pricing model where you calculate the costs of undertaking a project for your client, decide a profit margin, and then charge the price to your clients.
Monthly-Rate Models
This is a pricing model that follows a structure similar to subscription packages. Basically, you will be charging your clients a monthly fee for your services.
Regardless of which business model you want to go for, there are a few things you should keep in mind. According to this article from Forbes, the key to your revenue equations is connecting your pricing strategy with your company values. This involves:
✔️ Putting the customer’s benefits first
✔️ Meeting client expectations
✔️ Focusing your prices on your unique offering
With these considerations in mind, you can choose the right business model for your content marketing agency.
Amplify Your Online Presence
Your client will have no reason to trust you if your content marketing agency does not have a significant online presence. Admittedly, for a new business, building your web presence is tough and will require time and patience. But with a little effort and some tips and tricks, you can easily amplify your presence in the vast space of the Internet.
Spread The Word: Create Your Social Media Presence
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It should come to you as no surprise that social media presence is essential for building your online presence. After all, out of the 7.7 billion people on this planet, nearly 3.8 billion are actively using social media networks.
So, if you want your content marketing agency to get the exposure it needs, then you need to create social media accounts for your business on all the popular networks. Not only that, but you also need to produce social media content for your own agency and interact with your followers.
Create Your Community: Participate In Forums
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Social media networks are not the only way to gain exposure on the internet. Creating and building an online community is just as important. You can start by participating in forums like Quora, Reddit, and others. Participating in these forums will help you connect with your target audience, get valuable insights on customer needs and problems. You can even get new creative ideas by participating in these discussion forums.
Use Social Proof To Build Credibility
Amplifying your online presence and becoming an industry expert requires trust. And the best way to build trust and credibility is by using social proof. This involves leveraging what others say about your content marketing agency to your advantage. This way, when a potential client visits your website, they will see you as a credible source.
But how will display positive comments, tweets, and recommendations all in one place?
The solution is using FOMO & social proof plugins like NotificationX. This powerful WordPress plugin lets you display stunning notification alerts anywhere on your websites. You can configure the content of these alerts to display tweets, comments, sales, ratings, and much more. If you want, you can also display attractive and eye-catching notification bars without any coding with NotificationX
NotificationX is trusted by more than 20,000 businesses and comes with powerful integrations with popular platforms. Want to see it in action? Check out these real websites thatare building credibility with NotificationX.
Final Thoughts
That brings us to the end of this guide on starting your own content marketing agency. Now, it’s up to you to get down to business.
Are you ready to create your content marketing agency? Let us know what you think of this guide in the comments below, or subscribe to our blog for tutorials, news, and updates. Don’t forget to join our community to connect with us.
