You Do The Marketing 

We Provide The Content

Your Agency Grows

So, I’m talking to my friend Federica the other day.  She owns an advertising agency in the Pacific Northwest specializing in inbound content marketing services, including content creation. Her agency does a sizable radio, tv, and print ad business, but her inbound content marketing services are really taking off, where she and her team were recognized recently as a leading agency partner by Hubspot. Like a lot of inbound marketing agencies, her team excels at web and mobile design, using the right tools to drive traffic to her clients’ sites and then moving these visitors farther along the customer-buying journey continuum with various content assets, such as blog posts, ebooks, and research papers. The idea is to create content that attracts and converts visitors into marketing qualified leads, and then close them into becoming customers. Most of the tasks required for inbound clients are automated in the Hubspot CRM,  from email and lead nurturing, to persona creation and SEO. But content creation is another matter. Maybe you can relate. The volume and industry-specific quality of her clients’ content requirements is simply overwhelming, causing her stomach to do flips. Federica’s agency can design beautiful sites in a snap and market like nobody’s business—no doubt! But if she’s honest, no one on her team has the skills to create and package content across web, mobile, app and print platforms, and none are strong in areas like information architecture, usability experience, and content strategy—areas critical to strategic content creation. No one could blame Federica’s team members, I said: They’re not writers and were never trained in the discipline of writing. Nor had they spend long years together honing their craft as journalists or copywriters. They’re marketers, and that’s perfectly fine, I assured her. Like some other agencies, Federica is using various content mills (anonymous groups of freelance writers paid on the pennies-per-word plan) to create content for her clients, while relying on strategies like Growth-Driven Design to address her clients’ content strategy needs post-launch. Federica assured me that she’s satisfied with her agency’s content mill relationship and that she paid a lot of extra money, including a monthly subscription, to gain access to writing talent with industry experience and a project manager who switches out under-performing writers on various client projects—which happens infrequently, but often enough. But there’s a problem, I explained to Federica—you’re doing it wrong! (no, just kidding, I didn’t say that). But seriously, she had a content quality problem on two counts:

1. Simply put: Content without content strategy is nothing more than noise that discredits your company and brand.

   You have to admit, I said, trying to deliver results without proper content alignment and positioning is an exercise in futility, like throwing mud against a wall and hoping it sticks. Instead, client content must align with the goals of the organization and be informed by content strategy—that upfront pre-launch site-development work, such as information architecture, usability studies, and stakeholder feedback, that informs good site navigation and ensures a friendly and effective experience for the site’s end-users. In other words, having copywriters who understand content strategy, usability experience and information architecture is an essential quality requirement that content mills can never offer. The quality of the content received from content mills is disjointed at best, for this reason. The old adage remains true: You get what you pay for. Solid content creation is an outgrowth of solid pre-launch content strategy and the two are always connected, notwithstanding Growth-Driven Design’s excellent post-launch approach to iterative site improvements.

2. Second, the writing Federica was receiving from content mills suffered from another systemic and systems-wide problem; namely, it was created in a culture where content is treated like a commodity that goes to the lowest bidder!

   The quality and consistency of the content had to suffer because content mill writers are pressured to write more-and-more content at lesser-and-lesser rates to compete with the endless sea of writers who threaten to underbid them. This is the fruit of their broken pennies-per-word content model. How these freelancers are vetted is unclear and how many are diletantes dabbling for a little extra cash (what little there is!) is anyone’s guess. So really, Federica, you can do better, I said.

As we finished talking, Federica acknowledged that it would be great to offload content-related concerns to a copywriter who understands content strategy, user experience, and information architecture, especially when building client sites. Doing so would provide a better understanding of the task-driven actions and paths end-users were taking using the site’s current navigation menus. She could feel confident once again about delivering beautiful, user-friendly sites with great content—content that actually got read and shared, that increased sales and built customer loyalty and staff engagement. What’s more, sites she created this way would enhance her agency’s reputation, which could result in additional business, Heck, with time saved from the elimination of content-related concerns, Federica could pursue new client engagements and make more money doing what she loved to do—helping her clients build their business with awesome marketing. Yes, more time on helping clients and building exceptional sites and marketing plans less spent on the hassles of content-related concerns. That sounded good, but how?

Truth is, there’s a way for agency owners like Federica to get started on this path today. 

The Best Way For Agencies To Handle Content Concerns: Copywriters Who Understand Content Strategy 

Hi, I’m Dom Crincoli.  I’m a content guy. In lesser days they called people like me writers, but that’s so yesterday now. 😉 After starting my career as a journalist and regular contributor to The New York Times, I’ve built my reputation as a corporate communication, content strategy, and marketing consultant during the past 20 years, helping organizations you’d recognize achieve their employee communication, content marketing, and intranet engagement goals. You might say I’ve developed some pretty good copywriting and content creation skills during this time along with a nerd-like fascination with content strategy. Right (gasp!), I actually like this stuff! I’m not superhuman and don’t pretend to be. I’m just someone willing to roll up his sleeves and perform the due diligence necessary to produce effective content strategy, information architecture and content creation—content that actually gets read and shared! The A-ha! moment came during breakfast with my wife one morning. You see, advertising and marketing agencies I knew were building client sites with very little content strategy, information architecture, and end-user feedback while complaining about bottlenecks from content-related concerns. Copywriting and content strategy were obstacles preventing them from doing the site design and marketing work they really loved to do. So I combined these skills to form Crincoli Communications in 2009. Now agencies offload the copywriting and content work they don’t enjoy doing to me and I have the opportunity to do what I love while making a decent living!

We hear this a lot: “I didn’t know there were folks out there that offered this service.”

Listen, it’s not your fault if you didn’t know these services were available! You didn’t know, and that’s what’s been holding you back! But there are some good reasons why it’s CHEAPER to hire a copywriter and content guy like me rather than doing it yourself or outsourcing to content mills. See, traditionally, information architecture had been a siloed discipline, something you might have relied on for ultra-complicated design projects. But content strategy and info architecture are now fully integrated at most marketing organizations due to the growing emphasis on social engagement goals, marketing calls-to-action and lead generation, That’s why agencies need a fluid crossover solution—someone to address lead-up/front-end development content issues who can then work with you to build out fresh, relevant content for the fabulous sites you’re already designing for clients. Truth is you can continue to do it yourself or outsource to content mills, but that’s not going to work well for you in the long run, where you’ll continue to drag yourself down with tedious content-related concerns. Offloading to copywriters who understand info architecture will free you up to focus on what you do best while growing your agency with sites that build your reputation.

We’ve heard this too: “I can do this myself” or “I don’t really need this.”

Maybe you think content strategy and front-end development aren’t necessary or that it’s still ok to offload this work to your staff writers and content mills. True, there are some free content strategy templates available out there and you could mod them for your own use. And yes, you’re right, you could probably continue to get by doing what you’re doing. But you probably have 7 other things you’d rather be doing instead of worrying about content! And while you could do it yourself, should you continue to do it yourself? It might mean 40 hours of additional work for you and your staff each week and, in the end, you’ll never be sure you achieved results informed by content strategy.

Your clients’ end-users could wind up like this dude:

Copywriting and Content Strategy for Agencies (Why You Should Care)

So, many agency owners we’ve met say building out content for clients is the hardest, most demanding part of agency life. That’s because websites, e-commerce sites, apps and intranets often have multiple audiences and multiple content owners, forcing team members at your organization to chase down someone in HR, someone in Marketing, and someone in Operations, to get the content required to complete site redesigns.

I believe the only RIGHT way for agencies to address their upfront and ongoing content needs involves hiring a copywriter who understands information architecture, user experience, and content strategy.

• • • • • You can eliminate the headache of trying to get content from clients. Offload it to us! We interface with your clients and take care of this for you so you can spend more time doing what you love: Awesome marketing services for clients!
        • You’ll build better sites in less time, so you can spend more time getting new clients and making more money rather than classifying, chasing and writing content.
        • We’re past the point where content-rich organizations can say, content is king. What’s needed now are content creators who understand how to package content to the ways we now access it, engaging readers across desktop, mobile, app and print platforms.
        • Seize the opportunity to eliminate content-angst on your next client site redesign project—once and for all!—so you can focus once again on building your awesome agency.

More specifically, here’s what to expect when working with us:

During Week 1, we’ll set up two phone calls to talk about what you’re looking for. On the first phone call, we will talk about your vision and goals. I might ask you questions like: “Describe your current process, including what success looks like, when handling content-related concerns on your current design projects.” Or, “Help me to understand your biggest challenge(s) or the business pain you’re experiencing related content-related concerns.” Then I might ask what you could be doing with the time-savings if you offloaded this work to us, and what additional business opportunities you might be able to pursue as a consequence.” On the second phone call, we’ll go over some options for working with us on your next design project or current content work with clients. You can communicate any expectations you have regarding the specific clients we’ll be helping. This way, we’ll make sure we’re on the same page, and you’ll get a content strategy and a level of service that you love. I’ll send you 3 different content strategy options and levels of service for you to choose from—and you’ll pick the one that’s PERFECT for you, your agency and your brand. If you don’t like any of these options, we’ll go back to the drawing board and you’ll receive 3 more options… and we’ll do it over and over again until we either a) find something you love, or b) part ways as friends. Once we’re clear on the best way to collaborate and our mutual branding direction, I’ll put a final estimate together detailing our scope of work that you can fold into your overall proposals or provide to your client separately. You’ll then present the proposal to your client and, if needed, we can then join you at the initial sales or project kickoff meeting, either in-person or virtually.

• • • • • You’ll present your design proposals with confidence, knowing that all content-related concerns related to front-end development will be addressed thoroughly and efficiently.
        • You’ll distinguish yourself from competition that doesn’t have this kind of laser-like focus on content and information architecture and be less vulnerable to haggling on price and “commoditization” of your agency design and marketing services.
        • You’ll focus on doing the thing you love to do: Marketing and growing your agency rather than classifying and chasing content, and that will make your work more enjoyable.
        • With the new time-savings you’ve gained from offloading content concerns, you’ll be freed up to hunt for and acquire new clients for your agency.

Then, here’s what your client will receive , depending on your choice of Site Design Standard or Site Design Advanced Packages, or our Premium Content Creation Services:

Site Design Standard Package: 

• • • • • Stakeholder report: Maps out project content goals and success metrics
        • Information Architecture (IA): IA is one of the most cost effective and often overlooked ways of increasing your clients’ end-user satisfaction. We gather user information from card sorts and reverse sort research and use it to build a great IA. We use the IA to help you redesign navigation menus, content classification, and page layout, so your clients’ sites or applications support the way their users think about the world.
        • Site Review Report: High-level improvement suggestions that focus on usability, design and content, which are based on all (or a representative sampling) of the site’s most frequently used microsites/pages and a comparative web analysis gleaned from pages of other competitive sites
        • Content Improvement Report: Excel spreadsheet (builds on clients’ site asset inventory and existing content-based taxonomy) that maps site review recommendations to page URLs, content owners, and recommendations for content to stay or be archived. Created by us and distributed to your clients’ content owners in different business units, this report provides actionable guidance for content owners (which they, in turn, provide to the site developer) before uploading content to the redesigned site or application.
        • Persona Creation: Ensures content is delivered to audience segments (such as Millennial business owners) and addresses their needs by creating profiles for each audience group, called personas.

Site Design Advanced Package: 

Everything in the Standard Package, along with

• • • • • Content Marketing Communication & Lead Generation Plan: An iterative, ongoing continuous improvement plan to increase the number of marketing qualified leads, on-and-off-line subscribers and ad revenue.
        • Copywriting Reboot/Refresh: Breathes new life into all kinds of content on your client’s site. Reboot/Refresh builds on Communication/Content Audit and Site Improvement Report, where we work with content owners to furnish results-driven content site recommendations.
        • Continuous Improvement & Iterative Design Support: Ongoing support, growth-driven design and iterative content improvement suggestions based on our content marketing analysis, A/B testing (e.g., headline and call-action testing), end-user feedback and retargeting results.
        • One-On-One Coaching Sessions for Online Writing, where content owners will learn how to position and package content strategically across all communication channels (web and mobile, email, app, print).

Premium Content Creation Package

• • • • • Blog Posts In Your Own Unique Voice
        • Long-Form Content: eBooks, white papers, and research studies
        • Digital and Print Newsletters
        • Email & Social Media Campaigns
        • Content Maintenance and Copywriting Refresh
        • Content Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
        • Content Sharing and Promotion
        • Digital Press Releases To Drive Additional Traffic to Your Site
        • Content Marketing Measurement and Iterative Improvement

In short, we’re a group of Hubspot-certified inbound marketers and copywriters with exceptional content creation skills. You can outsource to us for a fraction of the cost of in-house while enjoying a personal touch and consistent, quality content. View some of our content samples right here on our Tumblr Blog. We’ll help your clients create content in their own unique voice and then position it across desktop, tablet, mobile and app platforms so that it gets read and shared by their customers and prospects who need it most.

• • • • 1. Content Creation: We offer blog posts written in your clients’ own unique voice, digital and print newsletters, email, and social campaigns, and other long-form content, such as ebooks, white papers and research studies. Does you have a blog (or a client blog) that’s been neglected? Happens all the time, no worries. How about a white paper that’s anything but evergreen and needs to be updated? Or maybe there’s an email campaign that isn’t working for you? We can help. This is valuable content! We’ll show you to refresh and reinvigorate this content to reach your marketing goals.
        2. Content Maintenance and Copywriting Refresh for Web, Mobile, App or E-commerce Sites: Content on your clients’ sites should be refreshed and improved on a regular basis. This a post-launch content service you can offer to clients where we audit the content assets on your client’s site and then use iterative growth-driven design principles to evaluate and improve them.
        3. Content Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Content on your clients’ sites must be clear and compelling, drawing readers in, but it must also be optimized so it can be found by search engines. We comb through the content assets on their sites like blog posts and landing pages and apply SEO best practices to titles, headings, descriptions and on-page content to increase site visibility and engagement.
        4. Content Sharing and Promotion: Content is king, right? The more content create the more traffic you’ll get on your site, right? Heck no! That’s one of the biggest myths! You can create enough content to put your wrist in a sling and still wind up with crickets! You have to promote the content you create and best practices point to the 80/20 rule; namely, spend 20% of your time creating content and 80% of your time promoting it! We can help your clients navigate the chaos of online marketing promotion and find the best way to drive traffic to their sites, from social channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, to pay-per-click options like AdWords and retargeting.
        5. Digital Press Releases: Authoritatively-written online press releases is an outbound tactic that can bring additional exposure and drive traffic to clients’ sites and events. We’ll take care of this for you and work with leading vendors like PR Newswire to achieve wide and targeted distribution.
        6. Content Marketing Measurement: Using inbound marketing and sales CRM software like Hubspot we can play detective with all of your clients’ content and marketing initiatives and answer all of their online marketing questions. You and your clients will always know what’s working, and what isn’t. You’ll know how visitors arrived at their sites from sources such as email campaigns, organic search, inbound links, and paid search ads, even as A/B testing and other iterative improvements that make the most of your time and resources.

What Others Have Said…

Outstanding service. We were looking for an efficient low-cost service to help market our brand and presence in the New York Market and Dom and his team hit the mark. Dom’s ability both on developing a marketing strategy as well as designing our blog and website were top-notch. Dom is an asset to any organization and I would highly recommend his services.

Ross Krasnow, Vice President of NY Operations at Hays Companies

I highly recommend Dom Crincoli and Crincoli Communications Consulting. We recently asked Dom to help us with our communication strategy and rebranding project, and the results were spectacular. He was able to deliver strategic content and business results, accomplishing this within an extremely tight time frame and within budget. He is creative and professional, and worked with our employees like he was part of our organization, not an outside consultant.

Dom is a gifted writer and communicator: That is why we refer to him as our “write” knight!

Tom Mason, Global HR Executive, JC Decaux of North America

I retained Dom’s services for content marketing, business development and lead generation while working at Lockton Companies and Willis Towers Watson. Dom created a content marketing strategy and tactics (blog content, email marketing, measurement, social engagement and positioning) that worked to build my business and the authority of my company’s offerings with clients. He creates content that converts and was exceptionally flexible and responsive. Also, he provided me with measured results from our content marketing campaign to quantify our marketing campaign. Finally, he is uniquely qualified to provide well-written, concise content at below- market industry rates. Yes, I would strongly consider Dom Crincoli for the aforementioned services.

Rob Ruotolo, Vice President & Risk Advisor at Willis Towers Watson

Dominick oversaw the communication plan for the rollout of Pitney Bowes’ My Total Rewards Statement and had much to do with the achievement of PB’s stretch metric (55% sign-on in the first six months). Dominick also oversaw an aggregated intranet knowledge center was also involved in furthering the goals of the employee value proposition and preparing the way for My Total Rewards. He was a committed, passionate member of the team.

Rob Hallam, Global Corporate Communications Lead at Compassion International and former Vice President of Internal Communications at Pitney Bowes

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Standard Package

• Stakeholder Report
• Information Architecture
• Site Review Report
• Content Improvement Report
• Persona Creation

Reserve Your Confidential Consultation

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Advanced Package

• Stakeholder Report
• Information Architecture
• Site Review Report
• Content Improvement Report
• Persona Creation

Plus:

• Content Marketing Communication & Lead Generation Plan
• Copywriting Reboot/Refresh
• Continuous Improvement & Iterative Design Support
• One-On-One Coaching Sessions for Online Writing

Reserve Your Confidential Consultation

Premium Content Creation Package

• • • • • Blog Posts In Your Own Unique Voice
        • Long-Form Content: eBooks, white papers, and research studies
        • Digital and Print Newsletters
        • Email & Social Media Campaigns
        • Content Maintenance and Copywriting Refresh
        • Content Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
        • Content Sharing and Promotion
        • Digital Press Releases To Drive Additional Traffic to Your Site
        • Content Marketing Measurement and Iterative Improvement

Reserve Your Confidential Consultation

Satisfaction Guaranteed

In addition to certain guarantees provided by law, we guarantee your satisfaction with our services and support. If you are not satisfied with our services, please contact us immediately and we will correct the situation or offer credit that can be used for future business we do together (see terms and conditions).

Seize the opportunity to eliminate content-related angst on your next design or client marketing project today. You have nothing to lose.

Don’t Delay: Reserve your confidential consultation right now.

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