The Types Of Content Marketing Clients (And How To Pitch Them)

The way you pitch and work with each is different.

By Natasha Khullar Relph

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One of the most important rules of business, any business, is to know your clients. 

That’s a rule content marketing writers should take to heart because the better you understand who your client is, what they want to achieve out of their content marketing strategy, and how they plan to do it, the better you’ll be able to deliver it.

Not all clients are created equal, however. Not only does each business have its own unique ideas on what they want to achieve out of their content marketing efforts, but the way they choose to outsource it can vary widely as well.

What does that mean for you, the writer?

Basically, that you’ll be dealing broadly with three types of content marketing clients and your techniques for approaching and working with them will be different.

Let’s talk about these three types of content marketing clients.

Client Type #1: The Agency

Most freelance writers will get their feet wet in content marketing writing with an agency. This is mostly to do with the ease of approaching them, working with them, and receiving assignments without ever having to talk content strategy or end goals for the actual client (the business you’re doing the writing for).

The pros of working through an agency are:

• They’ve already found the client.
• They know what they need done.
• They’ll give you exact instructions on what they need written and how, down to the number of sources. 

Frequently, agencies will hand you a list of ideas and ask you to pick the ones you’re interested in tackling. For obvious reasons, this makes your life easier and simpler.

The cons? There’s only one but it can be a big one: They’re going to keep a cut of the pay and it’s usually big. 

In fact, you don’t know what an agency is getting paid by the client at all. It’s probably good money. But you won’t see it because agencies often have a freelancer rate and that’s what you get, no matter how much or how little they’ve earned from the business. They found the client, sold the client on their services, and are responsible for keeping the client happy. So they get the big bucks.  

Some agencies pay $1 a word as standard, some pay a lot lower.

If you’re going to work through an agency, though, you need to make peace with the fact that the report you put together last week will make the agency thousands of dollars and the business even more, but you only got paid $1,500. However, given that you likely spent five hours on the report, your hourly rate worked out to be pretty good. Win-win-win.

How to pitch this content marketing client:

Craft an excellent Letter of Introduction with a focus on your specialties and credits. Don’t forget to highlight journalism credits. Many agencies are run by former journalists and you’ll find it easier to break in if you have impressive credits in your portfolio. 

Look at the agency’s website to see who works with freelancers, and email them your LOI or connect with them on LinkedIn.

Client Type #2: The Corporate or Association

Many corporates and associations prefer to handle their content marketing efforts in-house because they have the bandwidth and the will to handle freelancers, and prefer to save the money they would otherwise have spent on hiring an agency.

Since the content strategy and generation is all happening within the company, these clients are often directly approachable. You won’t be dealing with one person, but various people who all have ideas about how the content strategy should go and how to implement it. 

With this type of content marketing client, I’ve found that while they ask for outside input and ideas, they’re more likely to do a lot of the idea generation by themselves. Again, this makes life easier for you.

The pros of working with corporates and associations are: 

• You earn more.
• You get to add them to your portfolio, which you sometimes can’t with an agency. 
• They’re easy to connect with on social networks such as LinkedIn, where a simple introduction can lead to ongoing work. 
• Since most writers target agencies and not corporates (for fear or lack of confidence), you can expect to get responses a lot more quickly.

That said, with bigger companies, it can take some back and forth to get everyone on the same page. There’s also a strong focus on the bottom line and everything is viewed through that lens, including you. If your content boosts their bottom line, you’re gold. If not, you’ll need to prove your worth.

Finally, I see writers making this mistake a lot: Don’t expect kudos for that amazing turn of phrase or that stellar opening to a story, and be disappointed when you don’t receive it. While it’s probably much appreciated that your writing is clever and engaging, it’s the utility and information that these clients are most looking for. 

How to pitch this content marketing client:

Send a Letter of Introduction but focus on your experience writing for businesses, your understanding of the company, and your knowledge of the niche the company works in.

Client Type #3: The Small Business or Nonprofit

This is probably the most difficult client type to work with, but they can also be the most rewarding if you care about targets and take pride in delivering results. 

The small business client isn’t likely to pay you as much as the corporate client, but you’ll be more involved and do a lot more work. This means a lot more opportunity for you to grow, learn, and experiment in real business terms. While you’re not earning as high a per-word rate as with your big corporate clients, you’re doing a lot more of it, which can mean extra cash.

Be careful, though. Since small businesses aren’t always used to dealing with freelance writers, they may express bafflement when you put your foot down after two revisions or try to explain that writing their content isn’t as simple as sitting down and banging out three blog posts in an hour. They may need an explanation as to why you can’t use them as a source for your column for The Washington Post because they may have seen you as an “in” to that publication.

In fact, many small businesses don’t have any experience with content marketing at all. They may bring you on to revamp their blog and it could take a bit of convincing for you to explain to them how many more opportunities there are in social media and SEO, and how they could increase their profits by utilizing them.

Which brings me to my last point: This relationship has the potential to be very results-oriented, which can be very good if you’re driven by targets and very frustrating if you’re not. Small businesses don’t have money to waste or a lot of time to experiment with content. If they don’t see results in a 3-month period, they’ll doubt whether content marketing is for them and whether you’re the right person to be doing it.

I suggest you gain experience working with the first two types of clients before you approach small businesses. Set concrete, measurable, and unambiguous targets so that you can look at them after three months and know whether or not you hit them.

How to pitch this content marketing client:

Send a Letter of Introduction that specifically lists how you can help the small business, what changes they’ll see as a result of the content marketing strategy you’ll implement (preferably in terms of revenue), and why you’re the right person for the job.

Toot your horn, for sure, but make the focus of your LOI their business, the results you can achieve for them, and why you’re qualified to do so.

In my book The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Content Marketing, we go in depth with all three client types and I share sample Letters of Introduction for each. Grab a copy here.

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