When it comes to creating effective content marketing strategies, there is a disconnect between the advice given in industry guides and reality.
Most of these guides present a very loose definition of what constitutes an effective content marketing strategy by offering three simple concepts:
- Find an audience;
- Select a topic;
- Publish your content.
It is clear that these are not actionable strategies and should never be produced without additional documentation.
To create a sustainable effort for organic growth, marketing organizations need to have clear processes established for each component of the content creation process.
Every component should be managed with a standardized procedure that includes defining the topics, approving the editorial processes, determining the search intent for each piece, and governing the content to ensure it is aligned with the organization’s mission.
Marketing teams will generally throw their newly created blog posts at the corporate website without any defined workflow for producing, executing, and measuring.
These so-called content strategies will result in no real change in traffic, as there will be little or no lead generation, and budgets will typically need to be reallocated.
To develop a content strategy that is successful, an organization must provide its employees with repetitive, fillable checklists with clear milestones, assigned responsibility, and objective pass/fail criteria.
Framework for content marketing strategy
An effective content marketing strategy should serve as a bridge between high-level, strategic business plans and daily, tactical execution.
The most successful content marketing strategies share a number of traits that are evident:
- A.) Content is not produced on an ad-hoc basis;
- B.) Each piece of content is linked to a certain stage of the purchaser’s journey;
- C.) Search intent is prioritized over raw search volume; and
- D.) All processes for producing content are documented so that when employees leave or change roles, the marketing strategy does not suffer.
In conclusion, execution wins out over the theoretical aspects of creating a successful content marketing strategy.
A mediocre strategy implemented consistently will provide a higher level of success than a perfect strategy that exists only in a presentation.
Most content strategies fail to publish
An industry-wide study of publishing patterns in the content industry has shown there's a pattern here that exists.
A lack of effective process is often the reason why companies fail at content marketing, not a lack of ideas.
Many teams continue to use very vague definitions of audience personas, that do not help when you want to produce real content topics that work.
There is an over-reliance on proprietary search engine optimization (SEO) tools and platforms, without human judgement applied to the data collected.
In addition, they often have a shallow level of implementation detail.
When stating the type of steps involved in a strategy—"keyword research" vs execution of the keyword research itself—there's an enormous difference in the fullness of information presented.
If an execution strategy does not specifically state what will happen if a piece of content does not pass its editorial checks, that strategy is not a complete document.
Without empirical data as proof, defined methodologies, and sufficient levels of operational detail, content production eventually becomes just a numbers game.
Because of the way that certain sites operate and publish fewer articles with greater relevancy and more SERP, those sites typically convert a higher percentage of their audience into clicks and sales.
How to build a content marketing strategy: A step-by-step list
The following framework will eliminate the uncertainty of theoretical framework planning and replace it with a grounded, detailed, execution-based framework for implementing a content marketing strategy in real life.
Step 1: Set solid business goals and KPIs for your content marketing strategy
All content produced for consideration must have a business use.
If that business use cannot draw a direct correlation between an article you have produced, and a commercial outcome(s), you are wasting your budget.
Avoid savings metrics that provide a surface level of data. Examples include page views, or social media impressions.
These types of metrics may create the illusion of success on your quarterly report, but, they do not translate into money in your pocket.
All your strategic goals should support an actual pipeline, revenue, or are based on a specific operational efficiency, such as: "Decreasing customer service tickets."
Establishing Target Goals:
- Set your primary target goal (e.g., Improve Organic Trial Volume by 15% in Q3).
- Set your Secondary Marketing Target Goal (e.g., Build Top of Funnel (TOF) Subscribers).
- Set your Key Performance Indicator to Evaluate Progress (e.g., Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), Organic Traffic, Conversion Rate).
- Set a Baseline to Measure Future Growth (e.g., Current Performance Percentage).
Pass/Fail Testing: Can you provide an explanation of how the next published content will assist in achieving the Primary Target Goal? If No, Stop Creating Content.
Step 2: Audience mapping & search intent
Knowing who your audience is does not mean knowing their favourite colour, or breakfast foods, it means understanding what problems they are facing, and their technical competency level, as well as what they search for when they need help solving those problems.
Intent Mapping is critical.
When someone conducts a search using the phrase "Best CRM Software," they are looking for a list that compares the various solutions offered in the marketplace, not a 3,000-word definition about what CRM is.
Therefore, it is only through matching the content type to the user's expectation that you will achieve a good ranking.
Audience & Intent Mapping Checklist:
- Conduct interviews with users in the sales team and customer success team, to get a better understanding of the real questions being asked by actual customers.
- Group prospective audiences according to their level of awareness about your product: Inexperienced (Problems), Aware of a Solution, and Aware of a Product (Using).
- Review the current Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for the target query and reverse engineer the format of the content needed to be ranked as a top listing.
- Identify and document the unique terms and industry-specific lingo that your audience uses to communicate.
Step 3: Perform an existing content audit based on the needs of the business
Evaluate the content currently existing on any web presence before creating any new materials. Many businesses keep a lot of “dead weight” content on their sites.
Outdated content that is underperforming diminishes the business' overall topic authority, and waste crawl budget (all search engines purchase Internet connection time via a crawl budget).
A thorough content audit should separate out those pages that its owner will be moving forward with from those that will either need to be removed, updated or otherwise merged with other content.
Prepare to perform the Content Audit using the following checklist:
- A.) Export all URLs from the Business' Current Website and current Traffic Data.
- B.) Classify all URLs into 1 of the 4 four groups; (Keep, Update, Merge or Delete).
- C.) Determine if there are pages that used to be generating traffic, but then started experiencing Decay in terms of Traffic over the last year.
- D.) Determine which pages that are generating good Traffic should be mapped back to the Business Goals of today.
Pass/Fail Criteria: For every page that is underperforming, has the business assigned a specific action item (Redirect, Rewrite, or Prune) and established a date by when this must be done.
Step 4: Identify relevant topics and build a keyword framework
In order to create effective content, the process of topic research must take into account two categories of metrics: search volume vs. ranking difficulty vs. commercial value.
New businesses will frequently chase "high search volume" but "low intent" keywords, which is one of the most common beginner mistakes.
Therefore, when building topic clusters around core pillar content pages, these pages will cover a broad topic, while the pages that will support those core pillar content pages will be varying degrees of specificity, and will include many keywords, including long tail keyword variation with an easily identifiable commercial intent.
Checklist for building a Keyword Framework: Identify 3-5 Necessary Core Topics Related to the Business, and then use various SEO Tools to determine the Keyword Variations of Long Tail Keywords and Commercial Intent.
Grouping of keywords
Group your keywords into clusters so you don't have duplicate content on multiple pages within your site competing for the same keyword.
Create groups of keywords according to their importance to your business rather than just according to their search volume.
Pass/Fail Criteria: If you have mapped the target keyword to a specific cluster and created a linking path internally then this will meet the criteria.
Workflow design and format selection
Your keyword is simply a signal that tells you what type of content you should develop.
The actual form that the signal takes is where your strategic plan becomes an operational plan. For example, does the topic need to be a long-form guide, downloadable template, original research report or quick reference checklist?
Once you have decided what format the content will take you will need to create a workflow to document how you will produce the content.
Workflow Checklist:
- Define the specific types of content the team will produce.
- Create a standard content brief template including target keywords, entities, word count guidelines and competitor analysis.
- Map out the production processes for your content starting with ideation and going through to publishing.
- Clearly assign the responsibility of each step in the workflow.
Pass/Fail Criteria: Is it possible for a freelancer to pick up a content brief from an out sick Editor and produce the content according to the workflow guidelines?
Execution ready content calendar
Your content calendar is not just a repository for good ideas; your content calendar should be viewed as a strict production calendar that will drive the consistency of your content.
The content calendar must take into consideration your team's actual capabilities including potential bottlenecks, such as legal reviews or client approvals.
The checklist for calendar planning provides a systematic framework for organizing the workflow of the editorial calendar.
It includes four steps: create an achievable publishing schedule (e.g. Two high-quality articles each week), input all approved project briefs into a project management tool, assign each brief a due date for draft, edit and final publication and allow enough time in case of unanticipated delays (e.g. Creating material based on an interview with an expert).
The pass/fail criteria must be met, including evaluating whether or not the total workflow shown in the completed calendar accurately represents the total amount of time each team member is capable of handling at any given point without assuming perfect or smooth execution.
Step 7: Checklist describes content distribution and promotion
Once published, content is more like a physical book on a shelf at a bookstore than it is an evergreen piece of content that can survive indefinitely if it is optimally distributed.
A content strategy that depends solely on organic search traffic will correlate strongly to changes in search algorithms.
The purpose of distribution is to put the content in front of your audience where they're already spending their time.
To do this effectively, you'll have to recreate the core piece of content into multiple smaller versions that fit the format of the designated distribution channels.
The checklist for distribution is designed to help identify where the best opportunities exist within the four key steps: Define which set of distribution channels will work for your business model (e.g. LinkedIn, Email newsletters, Industry forums), Segregate long-form content into "Zero-click" social posts, Establish a formal process for internally distributing assets and Encourage Content Syndication and Outreach for Link Building.
Pass/fail criteria must be established beforehand as well. For example, is there a defined marketing plan for this asset prior to drafting?
Step eight of the checklist covers the measurement of and governance over content strategy.
Measurement will provide feedback on the original content strategy, while governance will ensure that the established brand standards are met.
To establish an accurate picture of performance, a reporting dashboard should be created for measuring traffic, keyword rankings and conversions from each piece of content.
Schedule a monthly review to analyze what worked, what didn't, and why.
Develop a content refresh cadence (i.e., reviewing the top 5% of Posts for Performance every 6 months).
Document the QA process to ensure that every piece of content goes through an extensive QA process prior to publication, including checks for broken hyperlinks, invalid statistics, and formatting accuracy.
Pass/Fail Criteria: Can these individuals identify the single largest revenue-generating content item for the previous quarter?
Business model variations
The "one-size-fits-all" approach used for generic checklists does not work because different businesses will have completely different approaches to content marketing.
What works for an enterprise software company may result in bankruptcy for a local plumber.
The difference between amateur execution and professional execution of a marketing strategy is the ability to describe the specific business reality of each organization and adapt the framework according to their specific needs.
SaaS workflow
SaaS companies often focus on educating their audience.
The buying process of the average SaaS company consists of many steps with many opportunities to interact with the Buying Committee.
In SaaS, the focus of the workflow should be on creating feature-led content and bottom-of-funnel comparisons.
For example, instead of writing a piece titled "What is a Project Manager?" the buyer, will want to read something like "Top Five Alternatives to [Competitor] for Enterprise Teams."
An important component of creating workflows in SaaS is the role of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
While the Product Manager and Engineer possess the necessary expertise, the latter often lack the time needed to develop the content.
The framework must account for this fact by incorporating an interview-based approach to content drafting, where the writer extracts the information and creates the final draft.
Changes to e-commerce content strategy
The content strategy for an eCommerce business is tied to the category and product pages of the eCommerce site. The blog is secondary to the primary purpose of the transactional architecture.
While the previous paragraphs focused on high-level business concepts, we will shift our focus to the product buying guides, product comparisons, and product styling or instructional tutorials.
The goal of these types of content is to target your audience that is searching for products with intention and lead them to a certain product as soon as they land on the page.
When creating content for an ecommerce site, you may find that there are content gaps, especially when it comes to product specifications and customer reviews.
You must have a plan that includes how you will get customer reviews and format those reviews properly, how to implement FAQ schema on your product pages, and how to make sure your persuasive copywriting does not run afoul of the rules that limit your technical SEO effectiveness.
Local service businesses
When dealing with a local service business, you do not need to bring in 50,000 visitors a month from all over the world.
Instead, you are looking for 50 of the best-qualified visitors in your immediate area (your local zip code).
The focus is hyper-local; therefore, the pages of the website should focus on the location of each business, specific landing pages based on what services your business provides, and localized "informative pages" that establish trust with your potential customers.
A checklist for executing this strategy for local service businesses should focus on optimizing the Google Business Profile, maintaining consistency in local citations within a specific geographic area, and generating localized case studies.
As with any business, if your budget is slashed or you lose writers, your content marketing strategy must remain as resilient as possible, even when faced with harsh realities like the inability to produce as much volume of new content.
What to cut when budgets reduce resources
If your resources are significantly reduced, the first thing to consider cutting would be top-of-funnel traffic (engagement) points, since these traffic points represent your lowest quality traffic and the highest possibility for potential conversions.
Without the budget for promotion, or the time to wait for the content to be ranked, there is no need to create definitive guides on broad industry terms; instead, focus on creating content that is at the bottom of the funnel and has high conversion rates.
Focus on protecting the revenue-generating pages and ensure that the money pages are continually updated, and high-traffic posts are optimised to keep converting; also focus on customer retention, as that should be the most important.
The volume of content is a nice-to-have, while being relevant is a must-have.
Bottlenecking in internal approval processes
The most common cause of lack of consistency in content marketing is internal bottlenecking due to the approval process.
When content gets stuck on a manager's desk for three weeks waiting for a signature, the calendar is lost.
The strategy will fix this by eliminating subjective opinions from the approval process.
Take a hard line on the service level agreements (SLAs) for the approvals. If a subject matter expert or legal reviewer doesn't respond within 48 hours with a response, then the content should continue without that feedback.
Also, the only things that should be approved by an SME or legal reviewer are the accuracy and the legality of the content, not personal preference regarding the style of the writing.
The content should only be judged based on the brief, and that brief must be approved prior to writing the draft.
By giving the company the means to define goals, develop workflows, and measure outcomes, this strategy allows for the creation of an actual business asset, rather than just a theoretical document.
The companies that will see the best results are the ones that treat their content as products.
Companies will create, iterate, quality control, distribute, and then throw away anything that does not work.
Use the provided checklist to represent a workflow to execute the process in order to achieve results.
Questions And Answers
How often do you need to update a content strategy?
A company should conduct a quarterly review and an annual redesign of their core content strategy.
Due to the need for ongoing data analysis and changes in the SERP landscape, the execution calendar and specific keyword rankings must be more flexible and subject to change to confirm monthly data and SERP changes.
In the case of major algorithm updates, an immediate audit of the strategic plan must occur.
Do I have to have a large team to execute a content strategy?
No.
An individual can effectively execute an effective content strategy if they have a focused and specific goal for their content.
A small group should have the capability to produce quality content and publish it based on high-value, low-competition keywords with a more narrow focus.
To achieve scale, consistency is more important than headcount.
How long does it take to receive a return on investment (ROI) for content marketing efforts?
Companies with new websites typically rely on organic traffic for 6-12 months before seeing a return in the form of increased revenue.
Established websites with existing authority can achieve positive ROI within 4-8 weeks of implementing an effective content upgrade or new cluster.
What is the most common mistake that companies make when planning content?
Companies will create content for their website based on the content the company wants to say rather than what the audience is currently searching for.
When this occurs, there is no opportunity to be discovered via organic search, and it will become a costly echo chamber for the company.
