I would put money on the fact that one of the most popular words in marketing right now is none other than content. 

50% of marketers also stated that they’re increasing investment in content marketing in 2024, signaling the growing importance of a solid content strategy. 

Simply producing content isn't enough in the crowded digital landscape that all us marketers are operating within—you need a plan that drives results. A strong content strategy guides your efforts, ensuring your content connects with the right audience, supports your business objectives, and maximizes impact across all channels.

So let’s get started. 

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What is a content strategy? 

A content strategy is a comprehensive plan that guides how a brand creates, publishes, and manages its content to achieve specific business goals. 

It’s more than just producing blog posts or videos—it’s about delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time, all while building a consistent and engaging brand presence. 

A strong content strategy focuses on understanding your audience’s needs, establishing your brand’s voice, and leveraging different content formats to create meaningful connections (all of which we’ll cover below). 

Ultimately, a content strategy is about delivering value to your audience in a way that builds trust, nurtures relationships, and drives sustainable growth for your brand. 

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What’s the difference between content and copy? 

There has long been a debate over what truly counts as content or copy. And I’ll be honest, I find some grey areas within the discussion myself but Alexander Santo from Brafton summarizes it well, “Content tells, copy sells.” 

Content is associated with planning, creating, distributing, and managing various forms of content, such as blogs, videos, podcasts, and social media posts, to build trust, engage your audience, and drive long-term growth. 

Copywriting is more focused on crafting persuasive text aimed at driving specific actions, like clicking a CTA. Think of your marketing website, billboards, ads, etc. Both are essential, but they serve different purposes.

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Why do marketers need a content strategy? 

A content strategy is meant to support marketers in multiple areas: 

• Content roadmap: A content strategy acts as a roadmap for creating and distributing meaningful content. The keyword here is “meaningful”, with a set strategy, you can more easily decide what and where to create content.  
• Align audiences: Ensure the content you’re distributing is aligned with what your audience wants (a.k.a what they actually find helpful) and where they live online (a.k.a the channels they frequent).  
• Identify purpose: Establish the purpose that every piece of content has and provide value back to your brand and audience. Different purposes will be placed at different levels of the funnel (e.g. top-funnel content is typically focused on awareness vs. bottom-funnel content is focused on conversions). 
• Track performance: A content strategy identifies the overarching goals of your entire content mix but also breaks it down into individual channels. This makes it easy to identify KPIs (key performance indicators) and measure whether or not objectives are being hit. 

Without a strategy, efforts can become disjointed, leading to inconsistent messaging and wasted resources. As the entrepreneur and author, Joe Pulizzi, states, “We need to create a business strategy for our content. That means saying no to many channels and content types, and focus on where we can build an asset, an audience, over time.”

Simply put, a content strategy gives marketers the direction and structure needed to deliver impactful, goal-driven content.

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Steps to create a valuable content strategy

Building a content strategy might initially feel overwhelming, but it’s crucial for any brand aiming to connect with its audience and drive real results. To help get your strategy off the ground, we broke down 10 steps to creating a valuable content strategy below: 

1. Set clear goals and objectives

Before you dive into creating content, you must define what you want to achieve. Without this, you fall into the pit of creating content for the sake of creating content. And unfortunately, this typically leads to wasted time and budget. 

Personally, I like to add a content section to our marketing department’s OKRs (objectives and key results). Within this section, I add the KRs for our content performance, basically, the indicators that will tell me whether or not the content is performing well. 

When setting goals and objectives, think of the classic SMART methodology. The SMART methodology is almost a checklist for goal setting, ensuring they’re:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Some examples of goals that you might set for your content might include: 

• Increase brand awareness: Increase brand searches by X% 
• Boost engagement: Increase time on page for blog posts by X%
• Grow audience: Increase newsletter subscribers by X%
• Generate leads: Increase inbound SQLs by X% 

2. Know your audience and develop personas

I like to say if you’re writing for everyone then you’re writing for no one (very original, I know).

Unsurprisingly, your content won’t resonate if it’s not tailored to the segment you want to be reading it. And I can guarantee your brand does not target everyone, therefore, you have a target audience and persona. 

Ann Handley, author and writer once said, “When we create something, we think, ‘Will our customers thank us for this?’ I think it’s important for all of us to be thinking about whatever marketing we’re creating; is it really useful to our customers? Will they thank us for it? I think if you think of things through that lens, it just clarifies what you’re doing in such a simple, elegant way.” 

I’ve always loved how she framed an audience-first approach and its importance. It’s such an easy question to ask ourselves, “Is this valuable to our customers?” yet, many marketers forget to. 

So start your content strategy with your audience in mind. Ask questions like: 

• What are their interests? 
• What are their pain points?
• What are they motivated by? 
• What are common behaviors? 
• What are they passionate about? 
• What type of language do they use? 

I was listening to the exitfive podcast recently and a guest shared the idea of “method marketing”. Stemming from method acting, method marketing is about putting yourself in the shoes of your audience to get a deep understanding of who they are, what they feel, what motivates or excites them, what frustrates them, what they find funny or annoying, etc. 

Be a method marketer for your content strategy. 

3. Conduct a competitive analysis

Before we get into this one, I want to strongly preface with the fact that I believe some marketers can become too laser-focused on what competitors are doing and thus, fall into a reactionary content strategy. By this, I mean that marketers see what other content teams are doing and quickly try to do the same thing but a percentage better. 

It’s not bad to stay on top of competitors but your entire content strategy should not be led by them. A good way to think about it is your line of sight is on your brand’s goals and direction with competitors in your peripherals. 

Alright, rant over. 

Take a look at what your competitors are doing to understand what’s already in the market and identify gaps your brand can fill. Analyze areas like: 

• What messaging they’re using
• How they engage their audience
• What content types are working for them
• The types of responses their content is getting from customers

This will support you when crafting a strategy that stands out and addresses unmet needs in your industry.

4. Perform a content audit

For most marketers reading this, I’m going to assume that you’re working with a brand that already has a content library. For the odd ones out that are starting a company from scratch with zero content, feel free to skip this step! 

It’s so easy for us to get in the habit of continuous content creation without taking a step back to assess the direction we’re going in. So as you’re building your content strategy, take a look at what you already have and identify what’s working, what’s not, and what can be improved. 

Ideally, you can benchmark your existing content’s performance against the goals and objectives you set earlier to know what drives the most traffic, engagement, or conversions. From here, decide whether to update, repurpose, or retire older content, while identifying gaps that new content can fill.

How to perform a content audit: 

• Gather existing content: Compile all of your content across channels, including blog posts, videos, social media, and more.
• Analyze performance metrics: Review key data like traffic, engagement, conversions, and SEO rankings to evaluate how each piece is performing.
• Categorize content: Organize content into categories like high-performing, underperforming, outdated, or irrelevant.
• Identify gaps: Look for areas where new content is needed to address audience needs or business goals.
• Make decisions: Determine whether to update, repurpose, or retire each piece of content based on its current value and potential.

5. Define core themes and messaging

I’ve heard some marketers argue that it’s not quality plus quantity but quality plus consistency and I couldn’t agree more. Effective content strategies build consistent themes that align with both brand values and audience needs.

What do we mean by core themes and messaging? 

Core themes, or as some marketers say, content pillars, are key areas your brand speaks about across channels like social media, blogs, websites, videos, etc. Examples of core themes include ABM strategy, brand storytelling, or startup growth. Core messaging is the main position or unique viewpoints your brand takes on those themes.  

Why do marketers use core themes and messaging? 

When you have themes and messaging to revert to, it ensures a common thread throughout your content. So if an audience member reads one of your blog posts, then watches a video, and finally, follows you on social media, they still find consistency in who your brand is and what type of content is shared – even though they tuned in across different mediums.

Now it’s time to identify your unique themes and messaging. Here’s how to get started: 

• Understand the mission and values: Identify your brand's mission, values, and unique selling points. Your themes should reflect the brand’s purpose and what sets you apart.
• Know your audience: Your themes should resonate with what your audience cares about, making your content valuable and relevant.
• Identify key industry topics: Look at trends, challenges, and opportunities within your industry. Choose themes that allow your brand to offer valuable insights or solutions.
• Align themes with business goals: Make sure your themes support brand objectives, whether that's increasing awareness, driving leads, or educating customers.
• Craft unique messaging: Once themes are set, define the specific message/viewpoint your brand will take on each. This should reflect personality, expertise, and stance.

6. Choose content formats and distribution channels

Bringing back some wise words from Joe Pulizzi, he states, “The easiest way to turn off your community members is to broadcast the same message across multiple channels. Instead, determine the kind of content that interests the members of your community in a way that is useful to them.”

To summarize, not all content works for every audience or channel. There’s no “one size fits all” approach to content creation and distribution. Thus, we have to adapt content to the channel we’re growing (and of course ensure that our audience lives there). 

Decide which content formats will best communicate your message, some common channels/mediums include: 

• Branded podcasts 
• Blogs
• White papers or eBooks 
• Newsletters
• Social media 
• Videos 
• Webinars 

Simultaneously, choose the distribution channels where your audience is most active, maybe it’s: 

• LinkedIn 
• X (previously Twitter)
• TikTok
• Email 
• Website blogs
• YouTube 

Diversifying formats will help you reach a broader audience and cater to different consumption preferences. But as Joe stated above, don’t overstretch your content strategy and end up copying and pasting the same content across all channels, and hope it resonates. 

7. Create a content calendar

Now that you know what types of content you want to produce, it’s time to get organized. 

Enter - content calendars. Content calendars are a way to visually organize every piece of content you have on the go, no matter the format, medium, or distribution channel. 

It should outline areas like: 

• Content type: What medium is it? Maybe it’s a podcast, blog, newsletter, or video. 
• Distribution platform: Where is the content being distributed? Think LinkedIn, YouTube, website, email, etc. 
• Timeline: When the content is being distributed. 
• Core theme: The theme the content falls under. Seeing this visually will show if you’re favoring some themes over others accidentally. 
• Funnel stage: What stage of the buyer's journey will a consumer be in? I like to outline this to ensure I’m covering all stages of the funnel. 
• Content owner: Who’s responsible for the content piece? 
• Editing timelines: When will drafts be sent? When will revisions be added? These are just as important as distribution dates. 

The content calendar helps you stay consistent, especially when juggling multiple content formats and platforms. 

As for what platforms to use for your content calendar, there are plenty of options. Personally, our team builds specific calendars in Google Sheets which are then transferred and combined in Asana to show our entire content landscape. 

But other content calendar platforms include: 

• Notion
• ClickUp 
• Canva
• Monday.com 

8. Optimize for SEO

Good content doesn’t just get created—it gets found. And no, I don’t mean that audiences are specifically searching for your brand and the content you’ve specifically created. 

That’d be an ideal world, but it’s not the one we currently live in. SEO supports your brand’s content showing up in results when an audience member is searching for an answer to a question or problem. 

I see marketers debating whether or not SEO is “dead” and my take is that it’s very much alive but looks different than it did a few years ago. Simply adding relevant keywords to your content is no longer enough (and actually, it can be looked down upon if you’re keyword stuffing). Instead, optimizing for SEO in today’s search landscape looks like the E-E-A-T:

• Experience 
• Expertise 
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness 

Keywords are still relevant, but showcasing how you’re a trustworthy source while providing genuinely valuable information to audiences is more important than ever. This goes back to Ann Handley’s quote earlier, ask yourself if the content is helpful. Because if it’s not, then even with optimized keywords, meta descriptions, and formatting, you’re going to struggle to build an audience and credibility. 

So as you create content, ensure it touches on at least one element of E-E-A-T. Even HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report notes Google has been prioritizing the “Experience” in E-E-A-T. The report states, “Your content must be personal, demonstrate experience, and address real needs.” 

9. Promote your content

Let’s start this one off with another quote by a marketing master– Andy Crestodina, the Co-Founder and CMO of Orbit Media, shares, “It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best-promoted content that wins.”

Some marketers might read that and disagree, arguing that you need the best content to win. And trust me, I see your point. But at the same time, you can have the best piece of content but no one ever discovers it because you never got it in front of your target audience. 

Therefore, the best-promoted content does in fact win. 

I also want to flag the difference between distributing content and promoting content. 

Distributing content is just getting the content onto its host platform. For example, publishing a video on YouTube or a podcast on Spotify. Promoting your content is writing a social media post about the YouTube video topic and sharing it on LinkedIn, adding your podcast episode to your weekly newsletter. 

Identify the promotion tactics you’ll use as content is distributed to different platforms. This is your time to get creative and leverage the audiences you have built across marketing channels. 

10. Iterate and scale

And finally, iterate and scale your content strategy.

If you’ve followed these steps, you’ll already have your KPIs identified. Give your content some time in the digital world and then begin measuring against them. You should be looking for answers to questions like: 

• What type of content performs best? 
• What distribution channels perform best? 
• What promotion tactics perform best? 
• What are our lowest-performing content types? 
• What are our lowest-performing distribution channels? 
• What are our lowest-performing tactics? 

Once these questions are answered. Ask yourself, the biggest question of them all, “so what?” 

For example, let’s say your lowest-performing content type is video. The so what of this might be that moving forward, you’re going to scale down on video content and instead, dedicate more time to newsletters because it’s the highest performing content. 

Wrap all these insights up into a report, typically done monthly, to share with the rest of your marketing team and leadership if necessary. 

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Examples of content in a content strategy 

Podcasts 

Podcasts have become a critical piece of many brand’s content marketing strategies. Companies like HubSpot, PwC, Netflix, Duolingo, Expedia, and so many more leverage podcasts for goals spanning from brand reach and perception to thought leadership and lead generation.  

In fact, 47% of marketers who leverage podcasts plan to invest more budget in 2024. And on top of that, 46% of brands find podcasts to be more effective at building thought leadership compared to other marketing mediums. 

Additionally, podcasts are easy to repurpose into other mediums like:

• Blogs
• Videos
• Audiograms
• Downloadables
• Social media posts
• Newsletter content 

Brand example: Behind the Review by Yelp and Entrepreneur

Behind the Review, powered by Yelp and Entrepreneur is a branded podcast series that features conversations with Yelp reviewers and small business owners about their experiences (whether good or bad). This gives listeners a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the minds of some reviewers and how the businesses manage reviews. 

Videos 

Video is on the rise within content strategies and there’s no doubt about that. It’s an effective channel for showcasing personality while forming deeper connections with audiences, similar to the benefits of podcasts. 

Just look at YouTube, which is the second most visited website in the world, receiving over 106 billion annual visits. Or based on HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report, 56% of marketers using TikTok will increase their investment next year, the highest of any other platform. 

Brand example: Duolingo on TikTok

I don’t think you can talk about video marketing without talking about Duolingo’s TikTok account. Taking the internet by storm during COVID-19, Duolingo turned their owl mascot into a witty, hilarious, and sometimes intimidating figure. They’ve generated a massive following and positive buzz around their brand through video content. 

Blogs 

Blog content has been a priority channel for B2B marketers for decades. 89% of content marketers actually stated that blog content is a top priority for them. And on top of that, 80% of blogs are driving results.

Brand blogs come with endless benefits including:

• Increased SEO
• Lead generation
• Lead nurturing
• Brand-building
• Relationship-building 
• Credibility & authority

Brand example: Gong blog

Gong has become a leading example of how to build an effective B2B content strategy, especially when it comes to blogs. With an extensive library of content, Gong’s blog revenue leaders throughout the stages of their pipeline – whether it’s a template, how-to, or deeper thought leadership content, they successfully support and educate their target audience. 

Webinars

We really saw the rise of webinars during the COVID-19 pandemic when in-person events were put on hold. And even post-pandemic, webinars are still a common medium in content strategies with 64% of marketers hosting a webinar in the last 12 months. 

Webinars are a great tool to offer your audience value without necessarily asking for anything in return. But at the same time, it showcases your expertise, builds partnerships within your industry, and gets you face time with potential customers. 

Brand example: Sparktoro Office Hours 

Every month, Sparktoro hosts what they call “Office Hours” with their Co-Founder and Marketing Lead, Rand Fishkin, and Amanda Natividad. These sessions bring on expert guests to talk through topics related to market and audience research, content, and growth. Whether you’re a customer or not, Sparktoro Office Hours are available to all and truly provide attendees with tangible value. 

Downloadable resources 

Downloadable content can span anywhere from templates, checklists, reports, guides, eBooks, whitepapers – I could keep going but I’ll stop there. Within the downloadable conversation, there’s a big debate about whether or not your content should be gated (asking visitors to give their information in exchange for the content piece). 

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For some marketers, they believe leaving content ungated is best to provide the most value and make it non-transactional. But for others, 17% of marketers stated gated content was their top-performing content channel. Whichever you choose, downloadable content is an amazing way to showcase industry knowledge while supporting target audiences. 

Brand example: HubSpot resource center

I don’t think this brand example is much of a surprise, but HubSpot has been a leader in content strategy for years now, especially with its downloadable content. Through reports, their academy, templates, eBooks, kits, tools, and more, HubSpot has built an incredible library of resources for marketers, operations, and sales professionals to take advantage of. 

Newsletters

Brand example: Demand Curve newsletter

The Demand Curve growth newsletter is one of my personal favorites. Twice a week, readers receive a newsletter that feels personal, is packed with value and resources, and builds Demand Curve as an authoritative figure in the growth space. 

Case studies 

A study by Uplift found that 49% of surveyed SaaS marketers said that case studies are ‘very effective’ at boosting sales, and therefore, a key bottom-funnel medium for many content strategies. 

Case studies are a content piece that allows potential customers to get an idea of the results your product or service can deliver. It’s most necessary for B2B marketers in SaaS or agency work. 

Brand example: No Good Agency case studies

As a growth agency, No Good does a great job at showcasing the success of their client’s growth through their services. They showcase the key metrics of success, in JVN’s case, it was ROAS and CVR, along with a short summary and visually appealing campaign images to accompany. Users then have the option to click “Learn More” and get a more in-depth breakdown of their work. 

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Creating winning content strategies 

After reading through this guide, I hope you’re able to understand how a thoughtful content strategy is critical for staying competitive and maintaining growth. 

It ensures that your content consistently aligns with audience needs and business goals, helping your brand cut through the noise. 

By implementing the steps we've covered, you can create a content strategy that not only engages but delivers measurable results. If you’re curious about how to boost your brand’s content strategy through mediums like podcasts and video, chat with our team of experts!