By Nick Nelson

In-house content marketing teams have their hands full right now. Like all areas of marketing, they’re contending with constrained budgets and rising expectations. As with professionals of any stripe, they’re trying to navigate the AI revolution opportunistically yet responsibly. Meanwhile, the content discovery landscape is being flipped upside down.

These challenges aren’t unique, but as a function focused on creative production, content tends to feel the brunt of them. 

The struggle is real: Canto’s State of Digital Content 2025 survey found that only 19% of teams managed to increase content ROI last year.

Breaking through with standout results in this moment requires an edge. Marketing agencies specializing in content strategy, planning and creation can provide just that. But like any investment, hiring an agency needs to be scrutinized. You need to be confident in the firm you’re choosing, and that — as an external partner — they will be able to plug in seamlessly, helping your efforts rather than hindering them or slowing you down.

At TopRank Marketing, we’ve got plenty of experience joining forces with content teams from companies big and small. And we’ve proven we can help these teams take their game to the next level — our longtime clients at LinkedIn Ads, for example, were named Best In-House/Brand Team by The Drum Awards.

We know what it takes to build and sustain an agency-client engagement that delivers real value and impact for content marketing teams. These are the essential mainstays of a successful partnership.

Activate agencies to solve your biggest challenges.

In the latest enterprise content marketing benchmark research from CMI and MarketingProfs, these three challenges topped the list for content creation teams:

1. Communicating across organizational silos (61%)
2. Lack of resources (56%)
3. Measuring the results of our efforts (54%)

As it happens, these are three specific areas where agency partners can be most impactful!

Communicating across organizational silos.

This is a persistent point of friction in larger organizations, and it’s not hard to see why: different teams have their own focuses, and often their own disconnected goals to meet. However, lack of communication and cohesion across the organization often leads to inefficiency at best and counterproductivity at worst.

Agency partners that are accustomed to navigating enterprise dynamics as outsiders can be very helpful in spotting silos and uncovering opportunities for greater alignment. At TopRank, we often integrate directly with different business units in the same company (e.g. content and product, or content and IT) to help foster effective collaboration and coordination.

Lack of resources.

The advantage of working with an agency amid a resource crunch speaks for itself, providing your team with access to seasoned cross-functional talent so you can get things done on time without sacrificing …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

Author: Aaron