How to Hire the Right Content Writing Agency for Your B2B SaaS

One thing I’ve learned from working on B2B SaaS content is that good writing is only part of what makes an agency worth hiring.

You also need people who can understand your product, ask the right questions, work with your internal team and produce content without needing someone to rewrite every other paragraph.

And unfortunately, it’s difficult to judge any of that from an agency’s website or a 30-minute sales call.

That’s why I’d recommend looking at four things before signing a contract:

I’d start with the portfolio. It’s probably the easiest way to get a feel for an agency’s writing before you spend any time speaking to them.

But don’t just skim the headlines or look at the logos on their website. Open a few articles and actually read them. Ideally, find three pieces covering topics close to your industry or the kind of content you’re planning to commission.

Here’s what I’d pay attention to:

• Industry experience: Have they written about products similar to yours? A writer who’s covered payment infrastructure will probably have an easier time understanding another FinTech product than someone who’s only written lifestyle content.
• Content formats: Can they write comparison pages, buyer guides and case studies, or is everything a general blog article? 
• Quality of research: Do they explain complicated subjects clearly, use credible sources and include details that suggest they’ve done more than a quick Google search?
• Writing quality: Does the content sound natural? Can you follow the argument without rereading paragraphs?
• Recent work: Check when the articles were published. I’d put more weight on work completed in the past year than samples from several years ago.

One of the things I’d want to avoid is hiring a content agency only to discover that my team still needs to do half the work.

You send over a brief, wait two weeks, and receive an article that needs another round of research and several technical corrections.

At that point, you haven’t really outsourced much.

Before hiring, ask the agency to walk you through what happens from the moment you commission an article to the point it’s ready to publish.

To give you an idea of what this looks like in practice, here’s how we handle content production at GrowUp, from the first brief to the finished article.

I’d always ask to see work from the actual writer assigned to the account.

An agency might have an excellent portfolio, but that doesn’t necessarily tell you who produced those articles or whether the same people are still working there.

There are four things worth confirming:

• Writer: Who will produce your content, and can you see samples?
• Experience: Have they covered similar SaaS products or technical subjects?
• Editor: Who checks their work before it reaches your team?
• Continuity: What happens if your regular writer becomes unavailable?

I don’t think it matters much whether the writer is an employee or a freelancer, provided the agency has a reliable way to select, manage and review their work.

I’ve seen plenty of content reports filled with rankings and traffic graphs. Those numbers are useful, but they don’t answer the question most SaaS marketing leaders eventually get asked: what is this content doing for the business?

That’s why I’d recommend asking how the agency measures performance before you hire them.

To give you an example, at GrowUp, we use AttributeIQ, an attribution platform we built ourselves, to track what happens after someone reads an article. We can see how content contributes to demo requests, sales opportunities and eventually revenue, rather than reporting on traffic alone.

By the time you’re speaking to agencies, you’ve probably read a few samples and formed an opinion about who seems like a good fit.

This conversation is where I’d try to understand what working with them will actually involve.

Here are 15 questions I’d recommend asking, grouped into three areas.

You don’t need an agency that's worked with every company in your category.

But you do need writers who can get up to speed without relying on your marketing team to explain everything.

I’d ask:

1. Which companies have you worked with that are similar to ours, and what did you produce for them?
2. How would you approach researching our first article?
3. What happens when you’re assigned a topic you haven’t covered before?
4. How do you decide which topics are worth creating content around?
5. What would you need from our team during the first two weeks?

I’d pay particular attention to the second question.

A good answer might involve reviewing your product docs, speaking to an SME and looking at the questions your sales team regularly gets asked.

This is where I’d encourage you to get very specific, particularly if you’re comparing agencies with different pricing structures.

Two agencies might both quote £1,000 for an article, but one includes research, editing, visuals and revisions while the other only covers writing.

Ask:

1. What’s included in your fee, and what would we pay for separately?
2. How many revision rounds are included, and what happens if an article needs a substantial rewrite?
3. How quickly can you deliver an article once the brief is approved?
4. Are expert interviews, research, visuals and publishing included?
5. What happens if the finished article doesn’t meet the agreed brief?

I’d want these answers documented before signing anything.

Not because I expect the relationship to go badly, but because unclear expectations have a habit of becoming problems halfway through a project.

I think this is the part buyers sometimes underestimate.

You might find an agency with excellent writers and reasonable pricing, but if every article requires several meetings, constant follow-ups and three rounds of corrections, the arrangement can become difficult to manage.

I’d ask:

1. Who will be our main point of contact, and how will we communicate?
2. How much time will you need from our marketing and product teams?
3. How do you collect feedback when several stakeholders are involved?
4. How often will we review content performance?
5. What are your contract terms and required notice period?

I’ve always thought a paid trial is one of the best ways to find out whether a content agency is right for your business.

You can review portfolios, ask all the right questions, but there’s still a lot you won’t know until you’ve actually worked together.

Thats why I’d recommend starting with one paid assignment before agreeing to a three- or six-month retainer.

Here’s what a good trial looks like.

If you’re hiring an agency to produce technical buyer guides, product comparisons and case studies, asking for a generic article on the benefits of SaaS won’t tell you much about their ability to handle the actual work.

Choose something already on your content calendar, ideally a topic that requires some research and a reasonable understanding of your product.

One thing I’d be careful about is judging an agency against requirements you never communicated.

If you want the article to address a particular buyer objection, reference your product’s capabilities or avoid certain claims, those details should be in the brief.

You don’t need to write the article for them, but you should provide enough context for them to understand what success looks like.

Here’s what I’d include:

The finished article matters, obviously, but I wouldn’t judge the trial on writing quality alone. I’d also look at how much time your team spent supporting the work and whether the agency delivered what was agreed.

Here’s a simple scorecard you can use:

You can score each area from 1 to 5, with 1 indicating substantial problems and 5 indicating excellent performance.

Once the article is complete, I’d have a short review with the agency rather than making the decision based entirely on your score.

Discuss what worked, where the process slowed down and what you’d want to change for the next assignment.

I’d focus on three questions:

• Would we publish this article? Is the final work accurate, useful and consistent with our standards?
• Would the process work at scale? Could we comfortably manage four or eight articles a month using the same approach?
• Would we trust this team with more responsibility? Have they demonstrated enough judgement, reliability and product understanding to work with less direction?

If the answers are positive, you’ve got a reasonable basis for discussing a longer engagement. If the writing was strong but the process needs adjusting, you might agree on clearer briefs, different review stages or a second assignment before committing.

And if the trial exposed significant problems with accuracy or quality control, it’s better to discover them after one article than three months into a retainer.

By this point, you should have a good idea of what to look for in a B2B SaaS content agency, which questions to ask and how to assess whether the working relationship is right for your team.

My advice would be to keep the next step simple. Find an agency whose work you trust, give them a real assignment and see how they handle it before committing to a longer engagement.

If you’re still considering agencies, GrowUp is one option worth looking at. We specialise in B2B SaaS content across FinTech, HRTech and EdTech, and you can review our work here.

Our articles start at £950, while our monthly programme starts at £3,400 for four articles. Most clients begin with one article, so you can score our research, writing and editing against the criteria in this guide before deciding on more.

If that sounds like a sensible starting point, get in touch with GrowUp.