Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy
Quite often, when I talk to marketing teams about their social media strategy, they start to explain by saying, “Our plan is to post three times each day….”
Posting to social media may be part of a good plan, but it’s not the strategy.
Strategy focuses on achieving a competitive advantage in the market. It’s about the firm’s long-term direction, and often involves making trade-offs. This is about positioning and answers the questions: Why are we in this game? Where will we compete? How will we differentiate ourselves?
The plan is all about implementation. It focuses on specific tasks and resource allocation (budgets, timelines). It is about performance and measurable, actionable steps. This is where professional managers live and work.
The manager’s work is easier if the strategists have done a good job of putting them on the gameboard in a position of strength. Without a good strategy, it’s very tough for even the best managers to win the game.
Before the work even gets underway down on the front line, someone upstairs must ask and answer the most important question of all: Who will we serve?
Segmenting Your Target Publics for Success
Every business has one or more primary customers. These are the people who buy the firm’s goods or services. They make up the company’s target market. But other target audiences must be considered before a content media strategy can come together.
The firm’s employees make up an important group, as do company partners, vendors, suppliers, and the media. In many industries, government regulators at various levels must be included. All of these must be considered in your strategy.
You must decide how you will interact with each group, what information you will share with them, and your goals for each. Then, list the needs of the members of each group and which of your offerings may meet them.
This will allow you to write your value proposition for each target public you serve.
Going on the Buyer’s Journey
Each person you hope to influence will go through a buyer’s journey, starting with absolutely no knowledge of you or your offerings and culminating, if you do your job, with the person becoming an advocate for your company.
At each stage in this buyer’s journey, the person will have different questions. Answer them, and your prospect, partner, or potential employee will feel comfortable moving to the next stage of the journey.
Fail to provide the information they need, and the game is over.
Your content strategy is just the work of answering these questions. You can do it with a white paper, a feature article, a blog post, a radio message, or a social media status update. Choose whichever you like or come up with something else (does anyone still use aerial banners?), but you must provide an answer.
The companies that struggle here churn out content, but fail to answer the questions that will move their prospects along their buyer’s journey. That’s not a content problem; that’s a thinking problem.
A topic pops into someone’s head, it sounds timely or interesting, and before long, it’s published and shared. Then everyone wonders why it didn’t drive engagement, generate leads, or move a prospect any closer to a sale.
If you want your content to actually work for you, you have to stop thinking like a writer and start thinking like your buyer.
Start With the Buyer Not the Blog Post
A strong content marketing strategy doesn’t begin with keywords or editorial calendars. It begins with a clear understanding of who you need to influence and what matters to them.
That means identifying your target audiences and getting very specific about their needs, challenges, and goals. For each audience, you should be able to articulate exactly what they’re trying to accomplish and how your offering fits into that picture.
From there, you can define a value proposition that speaks directly to each group. Not a generic statement about your company, but a clear answer to the question every prospect is asking: “Why should I choose you?”
Only after this work is done does it make sense to map out the buyer’s journey. What does your prospect need to understand at each stage? What questions are they asking as they move from awareness to consideration to decision?
If you don’t know the questions, you can’t provide the answers. And if you’re not answering the right questions, your content isn’t doing its job.
Every piece of content you create should have a purpose: to answer a specific question that moves a prospect one step closer to doing business with you.
At the top of the funnel, that might mean educational content that helps them better understand a problem or opportunity. In the middle, it could involve comparisons, use cases, or deeper explanations that position your solution. At the bottom, it should address the objections and concerns that stand in the way of a final decision.
When you approach content this way, you stop guessing about what to write. You build a deliberate list of stories based on real buyer needs. Over time, this creates a body of work that not only attracts attention but also builds trust and credibility.
And that’s what ultimately drives results. Prospects don’t move forward because you published more content. They move forward because you answered their questions better than anyone else.
If your current approach feels scattered or inconsistent, that’s a signal to step back and do the strategic work first. Define your audiences. Understand their journey. Identify the questions that matter.
Then-and only then-start writing.
Because the companies that win with content aren’t the ones who publish the most. They’re the ones who make every piece count.
If you’re ready to build a content strategy that actually supports your sales efforts, it’s probably time for a deeper conversation. Reach out to RGA PR to get your content machine set up and running.
