In today’s digital landscape, content is king and your creative marketing agency is positioned better than just about anyone to take full advantage of that.
But there is a problem: Demand for content can quickly outpace your capacity. You know you need a freelance writer to supplement your team, but freelance writers tend to struggle within marketing agencies.
Why?
Marketing agencies require their freelancers to have a very specific set of skills and understanding. To truly bring value to your agency, your writer needs to have an in-depth understanding of the pain points you face and how they can solve them.
Let’s take a look at the pain points I’ve run into during my time writing for marketing agencies, and at the strategies I’ve developed to counteract them.
Pain Point: Diverse Content Needs
Just about the first piece of advice all freelance writers get when starting out is this: “Find your niche.”
And it’s solid advice, to be sure.
But it doesn’t help your marketing agency one bit. Why?
Because your clients come from all walks of life. You might need a finance writer today, a plumbing writer tomorrow, and a SaaS writer the next day. If you try to hunt down a niche writer for each demand, you’ll end up drowning in W-9 forms and project logistics.
Even if your agency specializes in a specific industry (EdTech, for example) you will still inevitably need content that falls outside the expertise of that writer, and then what? You’re stuck handing that assignment to someone in-house who should really be using their time for higher-value tasks.
(By the way, if you do want expertise in a single niche, check out my Expertise page to see all the areas I have written in and am still writing in.)
Solution: Flexibility Thanks To Agency Work Experience
My time working with marketing agencies has led me down a different path of specialization. Instead of specializing in just one niche, I have specialized in content methodologies. For each content type, I have developed separate workflows that allow me to arrive at unique, engaging content that converts, no matter what the underlying subject matter is.
When my agency clients send me an assignment, they know that they don’t have to worry about the subject matter of the assignment.
Why?
Because working with agencies has allowed me to develop a research system that is fast, thorough, and efficient. Before I even write a word, I have created a dossier for your client. I know their branding, their value proposition, their philosophy, and their competitors.
And once I know your client, I can address any content type you need. Blog posts, website copy, email marketing, lead magnets, you name it. Whether your clients are B2B or B2C or both, your writer needs to understand the nuances that each type of content and each target audience requires.
Writing for marketing agencies yields a unique experience you just can’t get anywhere else. You don’t just want a freelance writer. You want an agency writer.
Pain Point: Generic Writing And The “Vanilla Voice”
Take a look at your competitors, especially the ongoing content they manage. Notice how all those blog posts sound the same?
This is the “Vanilla Voice”, and it’s a common problem agencies face. Freelance writing can feel sort of… flat.
Why does this happen? When we, as freelance writers, work for an agency, we are further removed from our audience than we are used to. Normally, a writer gets to speak to the business owner directly. That means the writer gets a first-hand account of who the target audience is and the voice the business wants to project.
When we write for marketing agencies, we often don’t get that chance. We are left with an outline or maybe a handful of SEO phases. We do the best with what we have, but it can only be so genuine.
Solution: Custom “Voice” Work
Of all the value I can bring to your marketing agency, I am most proud of this. Along with the client dossier I mentioned earlier, I also create a “voice” sheet. I look at your client’s messaging and their previous content and I create a sort of voice practice guide.
You know how actors will recite certain lines from certain movies to “get into character”? It’s like that. Each voice sheet helps me step into the character of your client so the content we create will be true to them, will exemplify their values, and will make them stand out in a crowd.
You can see samples of this voice work in my portfolio.
Want to take it a step further? I’ve even done custom voice consultations. We (that is, me and my agency) have met with clients who want to rebrand and worked through a sort of character creation. By the end of it, we have a strong new voice ready to use in all marketing material, complete with catchphrases (not slogans, but turns-of-phrases that bring life and personality to a brand) and Lexile-level guidelines.
Want an example?
We once helped a company convert from government-only contract work to a consumer-focused business model. We shifted their messaging from jargon-filled and well beyond the grad-school level to direct, lucid, empowering, and, most importantly, easy to read.
In short, we took them from professor-everyone-hates to approachable-authoritative-mentor.
Are you considering using a content mill? You might be interested in my rundown of the pros and cons of content mills.
Pain Point: Demand Outstrips Supply
You simply have too much demand and not enough time or energy. The last thing any marketing agency wants is to find themselves turning down new business because they aren’t sure they can handle the bandwidth.
Of course, you want to have open capacity just waiting for that next big opportunity, but keeping staff on full-time and underutilized is expensive and frustrating, both for you and for the underutilized.
Solution: Freelance Writers As Work Batteries
I know it sounds like something out of The Matrix, but hear me out. When you work with a freelance writer, you only pay for the work you need. When we have excess capacity we (the good ones at least) will communicate that to our clients. That gives you a buffer. It lets you store up potential work.
Here’s an example: Let’s say I just finished a project and now have five hours of extra capacity in my week. I send out a quick email to my agency clients to let them know. I’ll tell them both in terms of hours I have available, and how many words of content that generally equates to.
For my current agencies, that translates to about 2,000 words of polished finished content.
That could mean a new ongoing client for an agency. Maybe they had agreed to do a website redesign, but this new capacity means they could also accept a 1,500-word blog post and a 300-word email each week.
My agency is happy about the extra business. The client is happy because they can get all their marketing needs in one place. It’s a win-win that comes at no extra cost to my agency clients.
Pain Point: Feast and Famine Cycles
In the same vein, agencies can suffer from a sudden decline in demand. If you’re paying full-time staff for your ongoing writing needs, you can be stuck with serious cash flow problems and truly difficult decisions to make, should an economic downturn strike.
Like so many industries, the marketing world is prone to feast and famine cycles. And the shift from feast to famine can happen at breakneck speeds.
Solution: Freelancers Tie Costs To Demand
Freelancers let you pay only for the work you need. A good agency freelancer is ready to jump back in when the work returns. They understand the nature of the business cycle and have financially prepared themselves for the inevitable famine. They don’t burn bridges. They are, after all, professionals.
A good freelancer that has been through this cycle with agency clients understands the nature of the game. They afford your agency a certain amount of automatic belt-tightening.
Finding The Perfect Freelancer For Your Marketing Agency
So what does the perfect freelance writer look like from a marketing agency perspective?
It’s a bit of a catch-22, but the best agency writer is going to be a writer who has lots of experience writing for agencies. From their time doing agency work, they will have developed a set of skills that they just couldn’t get elsewhere:
- They’re going to have lots of experience doing very fast research and even more flexible writing.
- They’re going to be ready to write any type of content for any type of client.
- They’re going to be able to match the “voice” of your clients to keep content publication engaging and genuine
- They’re going to communicate quickly and clearly with you so you always know how much capacity you can tap if you need to
- They’re going to be professionals who have managed their business properly so they can weather the feast or famine cycle.
Bonus: Independence
When you work with me, you get all of those skills in spades. And while I’m most proud of my voice work, I think my greatest value to you personally is this:
Independence.
I am at my happiest when you send me a Gantt Chart or content calendar full of assignments and let me get to it.
Let’s face it. You don’t want to micromanage. And I don’t want to be micromanaged. When you send me work (go ahead, send me 100,000 words at a time) I will get it done on time, without hand holding, and without error.
I consider it my first duty to make your life easier. And so I try to take as little of your time as humanly possible. I happily work within whatever project management system you prefer. You can even pay by credit card directly through my invoices if that’s easier for you.
But don’t get me wrong.
I won’t leave you in the dark. If I need answers, I reach out promptly, clearly, and concisely. I never take guesses when it comes to client work, but usually, after I get to know your clients, I can go all year without needing more than a few minutes of your time.
Let’s Talk
If you think my experience at agency writing could make your life easier, reach out, and tell me a bit about your agency. I’m sure we’d make a great team!
Got more planning to do? Check out my rates to see if I’m in range of your budget.