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Do you have a solid content marketing strategy?

Josh Burns
Date: February 18, 2021 | Time: 2 min to read

What does your content marketing strategy look like today?

Marketing is impossible without great content

Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, generate profitable customer action. Content is and will always remain king. Whether we have a video, audio, or text it is the driver. Content strategies are critical to the success of any brand.

Your strategy should define your key business and customer needs, as well as how your content efforts address them. No two strategies are alike, but all need to have a few essential components:

Business model – the investment strategy your content initiatives fall under, the role content plays in your organization, and the way you structure your team to put your plans in motion successfully.
Objective and goals – why your content exists, what you want your audience to do once it has consumed your content, and the value you expect its actions to provide for your business.
Audience/Personas and buyer’s journey – defining characteristics of the audiences that will benefit most from your content and an estimate of how goals may evolve.
Differentiated editorial mission – unique perspective and approach to creating content and how customers distinguish your content from your competitors.

The next step is to focus on building and managing an editorial plan. Plans need to allow for flexibility since content will likely need to adapt to shifting business priorities, emerging trends, audience preferences, and other changes over time.

An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing. — Josh Burns

Someone once said "Give us permission and budget to create content, and we’ll produce awesome stuff that will be more successful than advertising at driving top-of-the-funnel results." I did not believe this at all before, but found it to be spot on in the real-world.

One common mistake with content is that we tend to think more is better. In fact, we might have a ton of fantastic content, but unless it is optimized and visible it can defeat the purpose behind producing all the materials. Focus on content quality and making sure it is discoverable by the masses.

Some great resources for content strategy: