“The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s words at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos could have been written for the content marketing industry.
The digital revolution has opened up brand new opportunities to engage audiences and acquire new customers through all manner of different routes. Content marketing strategies are barely recognisable from those of a decade ago. And they will continue to change just as fast.
To operate successively in this new word order, we believe the blueprint for how agencies operate needs to be completely rewritten. The traditional content marketing agency model is no longer fit for purpose.
Clients no longer want their different marketing agencies fighting each other for a slice of the pie. They want collaboration, networks and partnerships, with the different specialist agencies all focused on achieving the same overall objectives. Networks of agencies, working together, will deliver success.
Clients no longer want their budgets swallowed up by big agencies’ central London overheads, when nimble start-up creative businesses can offer better work at a lower cost.
They don’t want to be sold a website because that’s an agency’s heartland and they are scared of losing the work. They want new strategy, fresh ideas and answers to their actual problems.
They want quality work from specialist creatives, rather than a different creative every day because an agency allocates available staff from a central team. And they want evidence of ROI – because their budgets are under more scrutiny than every before.
We believe in this new world order. Which is why we are launching our agency based on the following six principles:
1. Quality Content
We believe content marketing should be built around quality content that talks directly to audiences’ needs and desires. In an era where most brands are creating content – and where audiences are far less concerned about where that content comes from – the content space is saturated. That’s why we focus on understanding audiences’ needs, creating quality content they can’t find elsewhere, and getting it to them through the channels they want. It’s how we create content that cuts through the noise.
2. Objectives
We believe in being focused on and driven by objectives. We are, first and foremost, a content marketing agency. But we will not come to you and recommend a website, a social campaign or a whitepaper. We will start with you objective and create the right strategy for delivering that – whether it plays to our core offerings or not. That’s why our service offering is focused on awareness, engagement, acquisition and retention.
3. Collaboration
We believe in a world of partnerships and collaboration. We are experts at what we do. But we know sometimes the work we are doing with you will require other specialist skills. When that happens, we embrace partnerships and collaboration with other agencies. We live in a networked world where agencies from different disciplines should embrace working together, not be afraid of it. We are excited by the prospect of working with partners to deliver great work.
4. Flexibility
We believe our position as an entrepreneurial start-up business will bring benefits to your business. Our entrepreneurial approach will feed directly through to the work we are doing for you – ensuring it is creative, exciting and that it seizes the opportunities of the modern digital world. Our structure brings consistency as well as flexibility. We are small enough to ensure you always get the same people working on your projects and the close involvement of our senior staff. Being nimble and flexible allows us to adapt creatively and deliver quickly – and on brief. But we also have the ability to flex the skills in our business if needed.
5. Value
We believe our structure and scale enables us to undercut other agencies in the market, many of which are hamstrung by huge central overheads generated by their large leased London office spaces and big central support teams. We believe clients are tired of having these costs passed on to them, taking up huge slices of their budgets. We want to direct as much of your budget as possible on what you are buying from us. By using cost-effective shared workspaces, and due to our start-up position – we are ideally placed to offer high-quality content marketing without the huge central overheads and DATs of the big London agencies. It’s just another benefit of our entrepreneurial, flexible approach.
6. Network
We believe in working with the best talent. Through years of working in journalism, contract publishing and content marketing, we have learnt the value of working with only the best, most creative and most thorough people. Bringing the best people to our business ensures we do the best work for our clients, and therefore work with you for longer. It sounds simple, but it’s not always the case. Our scale and size will mean we can’t carry anyone – and that we must find quality people.