How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy in 10 Steps

How to Use AI in Your Content Marketing Strategy (+Free Template)

A content marketing strategy provides an organized, thoughtful approach to creating and publishing content. It ensures each piece of content is tied to specific marketing goals, which can be measured and adjusted accordingly.

As an account manager at a writing agency, I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing marketers and learn the key aspects of planning, developing, and executing a content marketing strategy.

In this article, you'll find step-by-step instructions for creating your own strategy, with examples and links to helpful resources.

Benefits of a Content Marketing Strategy

All too often, strategy falls to the wayside.

Deadlines have to be met, content has to be written, and planning, research, and analysis take a back seat.

In fact, a report by the Content Marketing Institute showed that 57% of marketers didn’t have a documented content strategy in 2020. 21% had no strategy at all.

Nearly 60% of B2B marketers in 2020 had no documented content strategy.

But to truly succeed in marketing, a coherent content strategy isn't a luxury — it's a necessity.

Without one, there is no clear path to success. It's difficult to know what to prioritize and nearly impossible to track progress and measure results. Mistakes are more common, and the process of creating and delivering content becomes disorganized and inefficient.

On the flipside, having a proper strategy in place allows you to:

Align content with business objectives. An effective marketing strategy starts by tying content production and distribution to specific business goals: revenue, engagement, and any other key performance indicators (KPIs) that are important for your organization.
Spend less, more wisely. Better resource allocation is one of the most significant benefits of a solid content marketing strategy. Better planning means fewer mistakes, greater alignment on marketing efforts, and a sharper focus on revenue-generating activities.
Stay accountable and data-driven. A content marketing strategy offers a framework for testing new approaches and — even more importantly — measuring results. This ensures your content is optimized for maximum performance and allows content marketers to focus on activities that boost leads and conversions, such as creating more content and exploring additional distribution channels.

Types of Content and How to Use Them

A good content strategy takes into account the different types of content available to you and their unique benefits and challenges. These include:

Blog posts. Writing top-ranking blog posts is one of the most effective ways to generate traffic and attract new customers. They draw visitors to your website, provide value to your audience, and contribute to your authority and brand identity. Focus on quality and regularity for best results.
eBooks & white papers. These long-form pieces allow you to demonstrate authority and expertise. They can be placed behind a sign-up wall, offering the reader a valuable resource in exchange for their email address and consent to be contacted. Typically, they're more costly to produce than blog posts, so focus on creating a few, high-quality pieces. Then, promote them via your blog and social media profiles.
Case studies allow you to share your success with the world. They are flexible in format and lend themselves to blog posts, podcasts, and infographics. They are especially effective for B2B marketing, as business customers like to see evidence of effectiveness before making an investment. They require a strong narrative, so start by creating an outline to ensure your thoughts are focused and impactful.
Videos are engaging and highly shareable. They're one of the most successful forms of content in circulation today. Production costs can be higher than with written content, but you can minimize these by creating a clear budget and outlining a good video or YouTube script.
Social media posts’ value comes from their inherent shareability, discoverability (thanks to #tags), and the loyalty of existing social media followers. They require a special kind of writing: concise, clear, and full of value. Achieving this isn't always easy. Wordtune includes tools for writing more concisely, adjusting tone, and even generating statistics, analogies, and quotes — all good tools for short, impactful posts.
Podcasts. 82 million Americans tuned in to podcasts in 2021, and that's expected to grow to 100 million by 2024. Podcasts are an excellent medium for interviews, news, discussions and exposés, and industry updates — all effective for building authority. Plus, podcast listeners tend to be a loyal crowd, which makes the investment well worth it.
Templates are a great way to offer extra value to your audience. They allow users to quickly create documents, videos, spreadsheets, and more, saving them time and energy. Offering useful templates is a great way to increase your value, authority and expertise in the eyes of your audience. And if they use your templates frequently, they won't soon forget your brand. For example, our How to Write a Great YouTube Script article includes a script template that anybody can use to create an impactful YouTube video.
Infographics summarize complex information and present it in a visually appealing way. They add visual interest to a piece of writing and make it easier for readers to understand the key points. They are also super shareable. You can try your hand at a tool like Venngage or hire a graphic designer. The latter is more expensive, but well worth it for high-quality graphics.

How to Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy

Preparation

1. Identify your marketing goals

By clearly defining your marketing goals, you can ensure that all of your efforts are directed at achieving them. This will help you to be more efficient and effective in your marketing activities and make it easier to measure your success.

Some common marketing goals include:

Generating high-quality leads
Boosting brand awareness
Acquiring new customers
Increasing website traffic
Establishing authority
Increasing engagement
Increasing revenue

The more content you create, the more goals you can target at a time. But be wary of spreading yourself too thin. It's better to focus on just two or three goals than try to achieve all of them and succeed at none of them.

2. Determine success metrics

For each marketing goal, decide what data needs to be collected and what success will look like.

3. Define your audience

Together with your marketing goals, your target audience will determine key aspects of your content, including the topics you cover, the tone and language you use, the types of content you create, and the distribution channels you use (see Point 5 below).

4. Audit existing content

An audit of your existing content will help you understand what topics, formats, and channels worked best in the past and which require tweaking.

5. Decide on channel distribution

There are many different distribution channels at your disposal. Different channels lend themselves to different audiences and types of content, so think carefully about which channels will best help you achieve your objectives and reach your target audience.

6. Determine content volume and frequency

While it can be difficult to define an ideal volume and frequency of content for every scenario, there are several key factors to consider:

Execution

Now it is time to put your strategy into action. This includes three steps: ideation, planning, and generation.

1. Ideation: relevant content topics.

Start with keyword research. Keyword research is the process of identifying relevant and popular search terms for a given topic. It allows you to identify topics that relate to your product or service in the eyes of your target audience.

2. Planning: content calendar and briefs.

A content calendar allows you to plan the distribution of your content well in advance. This ensures consistency in posting, helps avoid last-minute rushes, and facilitates collaboration.

3. Generating content: in-house, via an agency, or with freelancers.

The most important factors here are quality and alignment with marketing goals.

Measure and adjust

Your strategy is in place, you've created and published content, and now you are tracking metrics.

Conclusion

A well-structured content marketing strategy is essential for success in digital marketing.

By utilizing various types of content such as blog posts, eBooks, case studies, videos, social media posts, podcasts, and templates, marketers can generate traffic, attract new customers, and build authority in their field.