Covid-19 seems to be sticking around for the foreseeable future. As a result, marketers and sales leaders are having to adjust to tighter budgets while aiming for the same growth targets. The changing times call for a change in how your team operates. But what is the best way to cut costs while remaining on track?

Rethinking your agency focus and bringing content in-house is your ticket to adjusting to new budgets. All the while, you can open up new ways to boost content engagement, grow team creativity and prove content ROI.

Let’s take a look at four reasons why it’s never been a better time to bring content in-house, and why it’s behind companies like Cisco saving 90% on content costs.

Cut costs and turnaround times

It’s easy to say that reducing outsourcing cuts costs. But, what about the costs of training in-house colleagues or acquiring the necessary software to continue writing and publishing content without an agency?

In 2018, this was a question which Cisco’s EMEAR team was faced with. Their agency-led approach was creaking under growing pressure to produce content faster while reducing costs.

They were determined to take on the problem by moving their content creation in-house. By acquiring software that was easy for employees to use, they could produce and publish content themselves.

The results? Costs were cut dramatically. In addition to this, turnaround times were shortened. There was no longer a risk that content would be out of date when it was finally delivered.

Cisco’s EMEAR team was able to report results from moving in-house as:

7 times more readers
Turnaround times cut from weeks to days
Content at a tenth of the cost

Finding the right tool mitigates training costs. Cisco’s Audience Campaign Manager (EMEAR), Kay Armstrong, says “We have reduced the production time of content by weeks, if not months in some cases, as this is a self-service tool. You don’t need agency involvement”. Find out more here.

Increase consistency and accuracy

When you’re working with multiple agencies, it becomes almost impossible to maintain consistency. Even the most watertight of brand guidelines have room for interpretation. As a result, brand identity may be diluted. In addition to this is the inability for agency writers to be as familiar with, and committed to, the focuses and priorities of the business as those in-house.

Instead, imagine publishing content only written by members of your in-house team. These people encounter the business’ growing objectives and needs daily. Not only can in-house writers adapt quickly to changing demands, but they are also able to reach out to members in other teams for different perspectives. The output is not only going to be more consistent with the brand, but also has the potential to be more engaging, thoroughly researched, and accurate.

With in-house software, it’s also possible to update content continuously – meaning that content is not outdated once it’s published. This means that you can be sure what you’re publishing in-house is only ever up-to-date information.

Boost creativity and collaboration – while working remotely

In difficult times, when colleagues are working remotely, boosting collaboration is essential to keep morale high and improve communication. This can be one of the most overlooked benefits of bringing content in-house – the ability to bring teams closer together to work on a project collaboratively.

Faith Wheller, Marketing Director at Cisco found that collaboration between teams across the world was one of their strongpoints after moving in-house. Seeing amendments from other team members, and getting feedback instantly improved quality control and teamwork.

Prove ROI and content impact

Outsourced content gives you limited analytics back. You might be able to see how many people downloaded a document, or visited a page – but this doesn’t necessarily give you the meaningful insights you need.

Moving in-house means you’re able to find platforms that can track your content performance. This means that you can measure your content engagement, read-time, and bounce rates to find out what your audience prefers reading, and which topics they’re uninterested in.

These insights are invaluable to the wider business as a whole. A Forrester study*, commissioned by Turtl, found that sales teams need more insights from marketing to close deals. In fact, 51% of sales teams surveyed said that marketing insights were lacking in the final stages of the sales cycle. Moving content in-house provides marketing teams with the ability to deliver these insights, and steer their content strategy towards topics their audiences are engaging with.

In summary

In difficult times, cutting costs to adapt to new budgets is a necessity. Moving content in-house not only reduces costs dramatically but benefits the business by:

Reducing turnaround times from weeks to days
Ensuring content is accurate and up-to-date
Improving collaboration during remote working
Providing much-needed insight for marketing and sales teams

Read the full case study

Find out how Turtl helped one of the world’s largest technology companies save 90% on content production costs, all while increasing their engagement and improving employee satisfaction. Read about Cisco + Turtl.

In-house content creation – why now is the time to embrace it?

You can plan ahead and pinpoint every part of your marketing strategy. However, there are some things you just can’t see coming. Unexpected events. A global pandemic, for example.