Narinder Mahajan co-founded ODN Digital Services in 2015 and is currently serving the organization as its CEO. Looking at the opportunity to simplify the digital conversion process, Narinder came up with the idea of ODN Digital Services. At ODN, Narinder is consistently striving to deliver superior quality services to the customers and keep ODN at the forefront of the industry. He is actively involved in designing service roadmaps and identifying ways to improve client experiences. A retail specialist for over 18 years, Narinder has worked with game-changing organizations across different industries and formats of consumer retail before starting his entrepreneurial journey with ODN.
Millennials are one of the rapidly growing and important consumer bases for any brand or start-up venture in the present times. For any business to grow, it needs to connect and engage with the millennial target audience.
They come with different mindsets and preferences. They desire convenience, variety in choices, varied premium experiences, affordably priced products, and services, a sense of belonging along with recognition. Hence, the overall approach has to be altered by the independent brands while catering to their needs. However, the millennial audience expects more or less the same thing from all the brands.
Businesses adopt various innovative ways to attract the millennial user base. Ranging from personalization, customization, sharing the brand story, providing superior quality content, to connecting with them via social media are some of the few ways through which businesses connect and engage with the millennial user base. However, content marketing remains one of the major hacks to gain recognition amongst them.
Outsourcing content work by brands
The better quality content we provide, the more will be their engagement. However, the brand needs to think big and focus on a variety of content including video blogs, social media posts, blog posts, email marketing, website pages, etc. to tap the millennials. While earlier brands used to create the content in-house, nowadays, there is a shift in their working and they are comfortable with roping in third-party content creators as well.
Businesses are not apprehensive about outsourcing content creation and marketing activities. Rather they consider it as an effective approach that will help them gather creativity and feedback from a third party perspective which will be neutral and unbiased. Of course, we can’t afford to compromise on the quality of the content.
Hence, here are a few points to be taken care of before you make the decision of outsourcing content related work–
Know your need
Before you rope in the third party, you should be well aware of your requirements. For this, you should create a content strategy that will form the base for your targets to be achieved. Post planning, you should analyze the required talent available in-house. Once you have gauged so, you will be able to easily delegate the task at hand to the third person.
In the absence of conceptualizing, there will be mismanagement and you will either end up exceeding the expense limit or your deadline.
Decide what needs to be outsourced
Having clarity about what needs to be outsourced will help in the further stages of content marketing. One should critically analyze the content plan, the available skills inside the team, along the required skill set that needs to be outsourced. For instance, while you may be able to deliver written content perfectly, social media management and video curation might not be your forte and you would require assistance for the same.
There are various instances when there is no provision of good content writers are hence they are hired for specific assignments. Taking such a decision is indeed risky as the writer might not be able to grasp the depths of the topics and deliver content as per the requirement. The brands also fear that they may not be able to hire the right talent.
However, content creators are experts in their field and hence are trained to take up various types of content-related assignments. Outsourcing them this work will be financially consuming but will help save time and efforts as the team won’t have to spend hours doing what they can’t, don’t wish to, or isn’t a part of their job profile. They will be able to focus on other relevant tasks at hand along with coordinating with the freelancer for the content work. Additionally, their fresh perspective, writing style, and experience will offer benefits to the brands as it will enhance the quality of the content.
Assessing the ROI
You need to assess the ROI of the outsourcing tasks. For instance, if you feel that your team lags in coming up with innovative content marketing ideas, then you can find the required talent and delegate these responsibilities. This assessment will help you understand the areas where your team lacks and requires assistance. This step will help save time, money, efforts and will also reduce stress on your team.
The idea is to have a content plan that is full of high ROI activities. This is important so that you have the maximum outcome versus the investment done.
This step will also help analyze the kind of tasks that can be outsourced. For instance, extremely confidential and sensitive jobs of course can’t be given to the third party owing to safety and confidentiality issues.
Keeping abreast with the latest trends
As a brand, you should be aware of the latest trends in content curation and marketing. The content that you wish to go ahead with should be relevant for the millennials and should be of premium quality. Only when it will add value to their lives will the content be consumed by the millennials and will prompt them to engage effectively with your content.
Provide a proper brief to the outsourced talent
You need to give a proper brief to the third party enlisting your requirements and deliverables. The resource will work accordingly as per your instructions. Hence your briefing should be crisp and accurate to ensure that the work is delivered on time and is of premium quality.
Also, you should include the metrics against each task that is assigned to the outsourced talent. This helps the external resource to work as per the requirements along with maintaining the quality.
Provision of the needful resources
The outsourced talent should have all the required information and resource in place. This includes contact information of the concerned team, internal or external experts, access to documents like a company style guide, content planning sheet, website, and blog access, and any other relevant information that will help the resource to prepare the draft.
Easy and free communication
You have to ensure that the communication between the content marketing team especially the one dealing with the outsourced resource and the third party talent has to be smooth, free, and instant. The external talent should be able to reach the point of contact easily so that his/her queries can be resolved in real-time and the quality of the work isn’t hampered. While phone calls remain the age-old way, firms now also use modern ways of communication like slack, google hangouts, email, etc.
You have to make them believe that you are available for them. They should be satisfied that you are easily reachable. Clarifying doubts during the process of creating content is feasible rather than reviewing it later at once and then re-working on it.
Summing up
Outsourcing is often considered to be when a stranger third party is roped in. However, brands can also collaborate with someone from the organization itself but from a different team provided the talent possesses the required skillset. Being in the same firm, they will have all the requisite knowledge about the organization and its work. Additionally, if they would possess the capability of content creation, then this will benefit the content marketing team and will be a win-win situation for them.
Outsourcing can be beneficial for the brands only when they will leverage it efficiently and when the quality of the content will be maintained. Once the above-mentioned points are taken care of, outsourcing content marketing to target the millennial user base can be an easy and seamless task. It will not only ensure that the millennials’ requirements are met but will also extend the provision of high-end content which will make them connect and engage with the brand. This will help the brands achieve their long-term goal of developing a relationship with the millennials.