The 8 Most Important Elements of Content Strategy
Many businesses run their content marketing like vacation: Create what you want whenever you have the time and will, write whatever you want to say, and good things will just happen. Umbrella optional.
In reality, content marketing is a lot like the military: To work at peak performance, it must be regimented, goal-oriented, and adequately funded.
If you want to start any kind of content marketing, even a humble blog, you absolutely must have a content strategy. Without a strategy, you will waste your time and your money.
Here are all the elements you need to build a successful content strategy.
1. A detailed understanding of your target audience
Knowing your audience is one of the most basic essentials of marketing. As I like to say, if you build a taco stand for a hot dog audience, you’re going to have a lot of extra guacamole at the end of the day.
Understanding your target buyers comes in two parts: Who they are, and what they need.
Who they are includes general demographic information: Are they developers or sales people? Do they understand your industry or are they totally new to it? Do they make the buying decisions, or do they have to convince someone above them?
Many companies get into detailed personas that include characteristics like age, marital status, etc. In my experience, this is not necessary to a content strategy or even a marketing strategy. Just understand the basics of who your buyers are.
What your target buyers need is a bit trickier. Most products or services boil down to saving money or time. But your understanding must be more nuanced to stand out from every other service shouting that they can save the same people time/money.
Consider the pain your target buyers are experiencing, even if it’s not related to your product. Do they spend too much time on email? Are they frustrated they can’t work from home?
Remember: Who are your customers and what do they need?
2. A product SWOT
Product SWOTS (aka strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) are often exercises limited to the product development team. This is a huge mistake. How can someone effectively market your product if they don’t understand it?
Your marketing team absolutely must have detailed understanding of your product in order to correctly position you in the market and create effective messages. If you find it hard to explain your product to people who aren’t building it, you’d better practice because no one can effectively market a product they don’t understand.
If you can’t include at least one person from marketing, at least provide them with the results. Experienced content strategists will weep with joy.
3. Key messages and positioning
Before you or your content marketing team write even a word, you should have an established framework of your key messages and positioning.
A key message helps your audience remember the value you provide, and if a writer/salesperson/customer service rep doesn’t know your key messages, you’ll see dissonance and confusion in the buyer’s journey, your website experience, and your conversions.
Positioning explains what makes you unique and who you are in relation to the rest of the market. Without clear positioning, you might have a hard time demonstrating why you’re better than the other guys. You might also have difficulty getting people to even learn about your product. Both of these can cause few leads, low conversions, and a friction-heavy sales process.
4. Goals and measurements
In war and business, you must define your strategy before you define your tactics, and you can’t define a strategy without knowing your goals. If you need to destroy an evil piece of jewelry in a volcano, are you going to ask your armorer for bullet-proof wetsuits?
No, because the tactics don’t match the goal. And if you ask for blog posts without knowing whether you’re fighting water or fire, well, you’ll confuse the Orcs.
Goals are not:
We want some blog posts
We need content
We should have some videos
Post something every week
We want to better educate our leads to convert them faster
We want a smoother onboarding process that will help our users remain engaged with our service long-term
Note: Your content goals must roll up into your overall marketing goals.
After you define your goals, indicate how you will measure them. I suggest you look at the metrics you already have and glean what you can from them. Broadly, you might look at overall site traffic for brand awareness or how many views you get on content pieces in different funnel stages.
5. Full understanding of funnel stages and the customer journey
In B2B, a person visiting a web page for the first time will not magically convert. That’s why there’s a funnel of awareness, consideration, decision-making, and purchase.
You must understand what each of those stages are for your company. When you have someone in the consideration phase, what information do they already have, and what do they need to know right then? What’s too much information that is more appropriate for the decision-making phase?
You can get this information from sales reps, customer service reps, and customer interviews. Investigate what worked and what they felt they needed more or less of. This will help you tailor the exact content you need for each stage.
6. Distribution methods
Simply putting up a link to your latest blog post on your mostly-neglected social channels will not create a sudden influx of traffic.
If you have no effective distribution methods, it doesn’t matter how pithy or well-tailored to the user journey your content is. If no one sees it, it’s a waste. So assess what your brand does and what works. Do you get a lot of response on PPC, or do you have an aggressive SEO plan? Do you engage a lot on social media channels, and which ones provide the best engagement?
You must also know which social channels your users are on. If they’re on LinkedIn but you’re hoping they’ll see you on Twitter, you won’t connect.
7. A production team
It’s really hard to enact a content strategy if you don’t have anyone to write your content. Will you be sourcing your content from an external agency or an internal team? Does your internal team have the bandwidth to regularly contribute?
Figure this out before you start trying to get going. I’ve seen so many initiatives fail because a month in, internal non-content teams could not keep up with writing and doing their jobs. Make sure you have sustainable production, because content strategy only pays off with time and consistency.
8. A process and a content calendar
Once you know who will create a piece of content, you need to know other steps. Who will edit and provide final approval? Will the writer be in charge of graphics, or a designer? Who will be publishing the content, and how and when?
I highly recommend that you implement a monthly content calendar. When building the calendar, you’re forced to think about what content serves your strategy and will help you meet your goals. You can assess which portions of the funnel need more content, or which topics need more detail. A content calendar keeps your whole team updated and accountable, and makes deadlines clear.
A content strategy shares many essentials of marketing strategy, but requires a special focus on KPIs and ongoing production. A plan isn’t “just write some blog posts;” all the elements I’ve mentioned here are critical to a successful content strategy that pays off well into the future.
