Content Syndication to Generate MQLs: In-House vs. Outsourcing. One Easy Step

“Content is king”, wrote Bill Gates, a long time ago now. Gates’s 1996 insight was, and is, unusual. Since the mid-90s, our lives have been dominated by febrile online discourse, fiery arguments, and disputed facts. Nobody agrees about anything. For marketers, though, the Microsoft founder hit upon something approaching a universal truth: if you want eyes on your brand, you’re going to need to offer something for those eyes to consume. All these years later, content is still king. 

But time doesn’t - and didn’t - stand still. Having been crowned, the king now needed a queen. Within a few years, it had one: distribution. What a handsome couple 😀

There is nothing in the information you have read so far you didn’t already know. You know it all too well. You know you need great content. You have it. You know you need key figures in your target market to see and engage with your content. You’ve tried. It’s a good idea, but there’s so much else to do. You know there are tons of ways to do this. You just need to find the right solution.

You’re one of the most senior marketers in your industry. Of course, you know this stuff! 

Knowing isn’t the same as doing, though. For any number of legitimate and understandable reasons, you don’t have effective B2B content syndication strategies in place right now.

Let’s take a look at how you can get there.

So, What’s the Problem?

65% of your peers and colleagues are making content syndication a priority for generating MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) - so why not you?!

Where to Start?

Don’t know where to start? You’ve already started! By thinking about your content syndication and how you can improve your B2B content distribution strategy, your journey has begun.

And as with many journeys, you don’t have to travel far before you reach the first roadblock. A Google search for “B2B content syndication solutions” generates 261,000 results. There is so much choice, so many options - how are you supposed to know how the hell to begin to filter this stuff, let alone know which, if any of them, are the right fit for your organization? 

It’s not like this is your full-time job. It’s one part of your full-time job, and you already feel like there ought to be two other people sharing those duties!

Who has time for this? Not many people in your position do.

Where Next?

Right now, you’re stuck in a circular maze. You need to use content syndication to generate MQLs. Because you haven’t been using content syndication, you don’t have MLQs.

And when you find some leads, with what authority will you be addressing them? Content that’s been published on third-party platforms will carry more weight with prospects - 75% of ‘top-performing’ content marketers pay to use one or more content distribution platforms.

Where next? You might as well keep going around in the same circle. Or you can stand still. Either way, you’re not going anywhere. Unless you find a new pathway.

It’s the budget

The content you have on the website - the cost to produce those pieces came out of your (budget, right? And what was the ROI delivered by that spend? It’s okay, you don’t need to answer that one.

But this is serious for you. You have responsibilities across the whole marketing function. You can choose to go all-in on content syndication. If you have the will, and the financial firepower, you can build the most incisive, powerful, profitable B2B content syndication operation in your entire industry. It’ll be great! 

The only downside of this strategy is you’ll be pulling resources away from other essential marketing activities - activities that are such high priorities they haven’t allowed you to focus on content syndication until now. You’re answerable for the performance of your whole department. We’re looking at tough choices here.

So the problems seem pretty big. What can you do?

Yes, when the sheer volume of potential solutions to a problem becomes in itself a problem, you’ve got problems!

But fear not, there are solutions. And they can be easier to find than you think. 

Despite the seemingly endless options out there for you, you only have to make one decision in the first instance: step up your content syndication efforts in-house, or utilize third-party agency expertise.

1. In-house

You know what you’re doing. Your team knows what it’s doing. There is no reason to think you don’t have the experience, knowledge, and talent to succeed this way. After all, you are you, and you hired your team!

If you choose this route, you have three major considerations to keep in mind: 

• Capacity
• Budget
• Effectiveness

We have already established you don’t have the bandwidth to personally commit to taking the organization from a standing start to having a killer, winning syndication game - getting it right takes time, research, and dedication.

Can you delegate? Is your team working at capacity? If not, why not?! You wouldn’t be paying people if you didn’t need the work they do to be done, and done well. Where, realistically, will they - individually or as a team - find the space in their schedules to make a difference? What will you have to lose to make this work?

If your existing team can’t find the capacity to master content syndication, you’re going to need to bring somebody else in. Take another look at your budget. Is that what it needs right now? 

Let’s say you decide that the rewards of hiring a new team member outweigh the budgetary impact. The marketer you take on is impressive, a self-starter. They made the effort to learn all about content syndication before their first day with you. As we know, there’s a wealth of information out there. And, with a few exceptions, they all give the user the same basic information:

• A definition of content syndication. This is useful for a beginner, but the knowledge is already in your team.
• Examples of platforms that publish third-party content (LinkedIn, Medium, Quora). Once more, this is a helpful way of understanding first principles, but you need a targeted, sophisticated, consistent delivery strategy, one that’s uniquely aligned with your brand.
• The benefits of content syndication. Who knew, right?!

It will take time, training, and experience for your new recruit to begin operating at a level of effectiveness that makes them a valuable addition - can you afford to wait for this?

2. Agency Expertise (Content Outsourcing)

With so many agencies out there, how do you pick one, and how do you have any idea they’ll do what they say they’ll do? We’ll come to some specifics on that shortly. For now, we’ll look at the same principles applied to agencies as we did above with the in-house path. 

A dedicated, specialist content syndication agency is going to have capacity. Agencies exist for a vast array of reasons. One of the most important of those reasons is they can offer capacity where a client has none. This is one of the most persuasive reasons to consider a third party.

Will using an agency impact your budget? You bet it will. Nobody works for free. Will they offer you a manageable, predictable, competitive rate commensurate with the value they deliver, with none of the onerous responsibilities of adding staff to your team? If they don’t, stop talking to them immediately. They should.

We talked about expertise, right? If you find the right agency - not just one that seems the least expensive, or the one working with the most famous brands - you can build a partnership based on your mutual expertise. You have climbed to the top of your profession, and they can demonstrate proven success in your industry, in the type of content syndication you know will deliver the MQLs your sales colleagues need. Now that looks like the foundation for a strategy that performs with the effectiveness you’ve been looking for.

And if that sounds like a full-throated endorsement of using third parties, it isn’t. 

It is a full-throated endorsement of using a third party that understands what you need, how you get there, and will be transparent about what it’s going to cost. 

What Does the Right Agency Look Like?

Before we go through an illustration of what a fantastic agency does, let’s take a quick tour of what a bad agency will do. It looks a lot like what your hypothetical new employee might have produced: taking your existing content, republishing it on Medium or LinkedIn, and…hoping for the best. 

And it might work. People browsing those sites might see the content and beautiful relationships could be forged. But there’s no strategy there; if you throw something at a wall, some of it may stick. How do you replicate that next time?

The right content syndication agency will take the time to get to know your business, goals, and culture. It will work with you to understand the competitive environment you’re participating in.

You’re not looking to connect to ‘an industry’ or ‘c-suite-level executives’; you want to reach people with specific roles in specific companies with a specific need for what you do. The good agency will do the hard yards on your behalf here. Whether through personalized email campaigns, cold outreach calls, social media, or a combination of these, you will be able to deliver red-hot MQLs to your sales team, having received a complete service from your syndication partner.

An agency’s aims and achievements ought to be in total lockstep with your own, but that’s not enough. They need to have the resources, knowledge, and determination to succeed for you. Your success, after all, is their success.

You Know You Need Content Syndication - What Next?

It’s easy to get to a place where taking care of day-to-day business takes up so much of your time and thinking power that all the important items on your to-do list get left until you next have free time. When did you last have free time at work?!

Content syndication is a simple concept. When you get it right, the number of MQLs that come into your business will increase, that’s just how it works. When MQLs increase, so do sales, so do profits, and so does happiness for everyone in the business. All thanks to you if you make the right call.

Content syndication is a simple concept, but one that can be susceptible to failure if it isn’t given the time, resource, and expertise necessary to succeed.

The great thing about syndication for you is that you only need to get your strategy right once. Once you decide to have the best people out there, making the most of your content on your behalf, all you have to do is take the plaudits, praise, and gratitude pouring in from delighted colleagues. You’ve got the capacity for that.

Try it out now.