The Ultimate Guide to Developing a Winning Content Strategy

A content strategy is a specialist marketing process designed to respond to a set of commercial objectives in a very specific marketing style. 

As a content strategy example, if a business goal is to increase sales in a particular sector, content marketers identify the audiences that have potential to deliver those sales. They look at those audience demographics and what interests them. Then they set out to appeal to them by sharing content that will resonate with them. The objective may be sales, but the approach is anything but the hard-line tactics of the sales team.

The strategy is the framework that connects different tactics, channels and activities and ensures everything is done for a commercial purpose. It comes before content marketing and planning so before launching in… stop, collaborate and listen. This is about business objectives.

Content marketing flows from the content strategy. It’s the process of engaging your audience through relevant messages and content across a number of platforms or channels. 

Over time, and through the process from engagement to conclusion, brand awareness develops, the audience warms to and engages with the brand and develops trust in it. That trust is the trigger that transforms into sales – or whatever other objective the organisation might be looking to achieve.

The keys to successful content marketing are audience understanding, planning, consistency, creativity and quality content. It relies on bespoke, relevant, quality content delivered through a number of channels, creating touchpoints over the customer journey that eventually become persuasive and compelling for them.

We will each have brands we respond to in this way. It might be John Lewis or Lidl, The White Company or B&M, Porsche or Mini. Different brands that each have strong appeal – but to different people for different reasons.

What is content strategy?

Focusing on content commercially and holistically with a content strategy sets solid foundations for campaign planning and delivery. The content plan and content marketing are informed by it.

The strategy drives the campaign to deliver commercial objectives. It’s the “why” for any activity. Why am I doing this social post, video whitepaper or blog? What broader objective is it looking to deliver?

Your content strategy is the framework that takes your business goals and then looks at:

• what you’re trying to achieve – your commercial or marketing objectives
• who you want to speak with to support delivery of those objectives – your target audiences 
• what you want to speak with them about – bespoke audience messages 
• how you’re going to reach them – the forms of content, platforms and tactics you’ll use and who will take ownership of content.

Content strategy vs content marketing

Content marketing strategy is about taking business objectives, identifying the target audiences that support delivery of them and developing bespoke messages for each. 

Content marketing is the tactical nurturing process – it’s about the brand and the audience getting to know each other over time through shared content and engagement.

Developing your content strategy and then responding to it with content marketing is best practice for businesses – giving your campaign the maximum chance of success and delivering meaningful return on investment.

Your content marketing plan includes comprehensive tactical campaigns for each audience over the planning period. Messages are formed as part of the content marketing planning, developed into creative ideas and delivered over time through the most powerful channels for each audience.

Why do you need a content creation strategy? 

The importance of strategic steps in all PR, marketing and comms

A strategic approach – where all activity is devised to feed into core commercial objectives – is best practice for businesses, ensuring commercial objectives are covered off and every important audience gets their slice of the action.

Impact

The Polymedia mantra is “Impact. Not noise.” Working to a content strategy framework ensures the most commercial impact from your resources – and the maximum ROI.

Increased engagement

Tailoring content to your audiences generates deeper engagement and builds stronger relationships.

Consistency

A content strategy ensures your messaging is consistent across all platforms, building brand awareness, recognition and trust.

Efficiency

With a clear plan in place, you can allocate resources more effectively, reducing wasted effort and increasing productivity. It makes the campaign roll-out more streamlined, simpler, easier for a broader content team to engage with and support, and acts as a discipline, however your workflow changes.

Measurable results for your content development strategy

A well-defined content strategy includes detailed metrics that allow you to identify content stats, track performance and make data-driven decisions. Be specific.

Defining your business goals 

Public relations and content marketing are about strategic communications with audiences to achieve commercial objectives which may, of course, include business growth. 

Those objectives are many and varied. They may be to sell, but they may also be to position, create interest, convert, persuade (think planning consultation), protect (think reputation management), retain (staff comms), recruit, reinforce, counter or raise awareness.

As part of the content marketing process, look at the commercial objectives. You should have a business and marketing plan that outlines them. 

Then ask, how do the business goals or marketing strategy inform my content marketing plan? What does the content need to be achieving? 

It’s important you have a firm understanding of what you want to achieve – you might want to boost sales in certain markets, drive website traffic or improve audience engagement. Whatever the objectives, lay them out and set measurable targets against them.

Tone of voice and branding consistency

With all brand comms, it’s important to have clear, consistent branding and tone of voice (TOV). Content marketing is often contributed to by broader team members, so a written TOV document can be really helpful to ensure maximum benefit from the content. This consistency is essential for developing trust and credibility and for fostering warmth and loyalty from your audiences.

Developing your content framework – a ten step guide

Start with your content marketing framework plan.

Step 1: set objectives

Set clear objectives for the content marketing programme – whatever they may be. For example:

• increase brand awareness
• generate leads
• drive traffic to your website
• improve engagement with certain target audiences
• drive sales
• drive sales in certain sectors
• and so on.

Step 2: establish key performance indicators for activity (marketing KPIs) 

KPIs measure effective content strategy and content performance. Be specific where you can. Relevant metrics might include:

• social media reach
• social media likes and shares
• Google Analytics metrics – page views, sessions, duration, enquiries
• lead generation form submissions
• conversions from potential customers
• retention rates of existing customers or clients.

Step 3: audience identification, segmentation, understanding and messaging

Understanding your audience is key for your content strategy to be successful. There are a number of steps you can take and questions you can ask:

• Identify each of your target audiences as real people and assess their profiles, what they like and why they would engage with your brand.
• Review their demographics – their age, gender, income and geographics.
• What messages are important to each?
• How do they find their information? What search terms or hashtags do they use to narrow searches?
• What’s their preferred comms method?
• Who influences them?

Step 4: develop bespoke messages for each audience

Consider the various stages of the engagement to conclusion process. 

Step 5: conduct regular content audits and reviews

As well as planning, creating and disseminating new content, you should be constantly reviewing your existing content too.

• Create a content inventory with ownership included. 
• Undertake a content audit of every piece of digital content you have including tracking on how it has performed, what elements are most successful and why.
• Remember, it’s about quality not quantity, and there’s lots to learn from this catalogue.
• You can start the audit with content that is most often accessed.
• Use the audit to identify aged pieces as well as gaps to plug.

• Review your content types as well as themes – do you have any gaps or missed opportunities?
• Look at what your competitors do – is there anything to be learnt from them and how do you differentiate yourself from them, elevating your brand above theirs?

Step 6: develop your marketing content strategy with this information as the foundation

As a content strategist, take your business and content goals and how you can deliver those to form your successful content strategy – who you want to speak with (your target audiences,) what you want to speak with them about (bespoke audience messages and content themes). Then look at how you are going to reach them (platforms and tactics).

Step 7: consider the type of content and content formats to reach audiences and engage with them

There’s a wide range of content pieces you can utilise, a list of core topics and a host of actual content ideas – create a matrix to ensure you’re using a cross section. Consider popular content formats such as:

• media
• blog posts
• social media with a good social media content mix
• influencer partnerships
• thought leadership and whitepapers
• video content 
• photography
• podcasts
• webinars
• email marketing
• exhibitions and conferences
• networking, partnerships and ambassadors
• LinkedIn
• advertising
• sponsorships.

Step 8: creating an editorial calendar 

As content creators, it’s now time to create your content calendar, informed by the steps you’ve gone through so far. 

Remember –  be guided all the time by your strategy.

• What are the business goals? Objectives.
• Who are you going to talk with? Audiences.
• Why are you going to talk with them? 
• What matters to them? What are you going to talk with them about? Bespoke audience messages.
• How are you going to reach them? Platforms and tactics.
• What types of useable content will you include in your content marketing efforts
• How can you plan with topics they relate to?

Take each audience and map out their activities before scheduling into your annual editorial planning calendar.

Focus on creating high-quality content that is valuable, relevant, and engaging.

Step 9: planning and scheduling 

Outline the types of content you will create for each audience, the topics you will cover, and the channels you will use. Create an editorial calendar to schedule your content and ensure consistency.

This is the creative element – the content creation process and content ideation.

Content creation framework and annual plan

A content creation framework ensures the freedom for creative ideas, along with the discipline of making them happen. It makes creation simpler, more achievable, more controlled and, in turn, more likely to happen.

The power of storytelling

Telling stories, or painting pictures, is the best way to make your audiences feel connected to your brand. But remember your brand story is real, alive, breathing and changing. It’s not just what you put on your website – it’s about your ethos, values and activities of your brand on every level. Make it personal.

Managing content deadlines

Different pieces of content need different lead times. A national consumer magazine works on four to six months’ lead time, while a social post can be written and shared instantaneously. As part of the planning and scheduling posts process, build in these lead times and add forward planning deadlines to each.

Step 10: promote your content

Effective content promotion and the sharing of content are key to achieve maximum reach – include a promotional plan for your content. 

Every piece of content you produce represents an investment, so it’s important to deliver reach and impact to maximise your return on that investment.

Leverage social media, email newsletters, social media, email subscribers, search engine optimisation and partnerships to amplify your content’s reach. This integrated, multi-platform approach will reap the greatest rewards.

Utilising email marketing

Email marketing is a good way to promote the content you have invested in – and also repurpose it for maximise exposure with minimum investment. Here are a few pointers for best practice:

• Use attention grabbing subject lines and A/B test them.
• Personalise the e-shots. 
• Include clear calls to action.
• Include teasers for your latest content.
• Automate as much as possible.
• Consider using specialist email marketers.
• Use email marketing as part of the touchpoint process and at different stages of the user experience.
• Use metrics tracking and reporting.
• Encourage feedback from users.
• Constantly review performance and adjust activity.

Reviewing and refining your content strategy

Use analytics tracking tools to track the performance of your content. Monitor key metrics such as website traffic, audience insights, audience preferences, audience engagement rates and conversion rates. Use these insights to refine your strategy and improve future content.

Optimising and measuring content performance

One of the greatest challenges with content marketing is effectively optimising and measuring content performance to ensure it meets your defined commercial goals.

Optimising content improves its visibility – there’s no point having great content if nobody can find it. 

Optimisation also enhances the user experience, boosts engagement and delivers conversions.

SEO best practices

Keywords

The impact of any SEO campaign is intrinsically defined by keyword research – using keywords and search terms that are the most relevant to your campaign (that preferably have high search volumes with low competition). Use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Semrush and Ahrefs to help with finding the best target keywords.

On-page optimisation

On-page SEO for websites entails optimising individual web pages so they rank well and organically earn more, and more relevant, traffic.

Header tags

Use H1, H2 and H3 tags and ensure they include some of your target keywords.

Meta descriptions and title tags

Draft detailed title tags and meta descriptions that include keywords.

Internal linking

Add links to other pages on your website – particularly your target category or service pages. It helps with engagement, drives authority to important pages and allows the search engines to better understand your site and its structure.

Use alt text

Don’t be tempted to skip the alt-text descriptions on your images and use keywords in them when possible and relevant. Make your alt texts descriptive enough for someone using a screen reader to understand the image.

Mobile optimisation

There’s been a massive increase in accessing web through mobile and ensuring content is mobile-friendly is critical to a successful campaign.

Quality content vs SEO

There’s always a push and pull between the brand and PR teams and their technical SEO colleagues. However good your technical SEO is, it can only deliver so much on both optimisation and conversion if the content isn’t high quality. By the same token, it doesn’t matter how amazing your content is if it can’t be found in search. 

Content needs to direct and attract – and then engage. It must achieve its technical SEO objectives and then focus on the target audience and what they need from you – back to strategy.

Quality backlinks

Build high-quality backlinks from external websites to improve your site’s authority and search rankings.

Leveraging analytics for content insights

Use your analytics tools well – they provide invaluable insight into what works with your audiences and importantly, what doesn’t.

So, track across all your digital platforms. Importantly though, run the reports, interpret them carefully and act on the insight they provide.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics sets key metrics to monitor. Interpret them well – and act on their insight. Google Analytics offers insights including:

• page views
• bounce rate
• average time spent on the site in a session
• traffic sources – where your visitors are coming from.

Social media analytics

Your social platforms provide analytics that show how your social content is performing. Look at shares, likes, comments and engagement rates.

Heatmaps

Tools such as Hotjar and Crazy Egg enable heatmaps of user activity and can help with insight into which content is engaging and where you may lose visitors.

Evaluating content success through metrics

Set KPIs for your organic traffic performance:

• Organic search traffic – naturally driven traffic from search engines.
• Conversion rates and lead generation– count those who act on a call to action such as a newsletter sign-up, phone call, email form enquiry or a sale.
• Engagement – time spent on the site, on certain pages, social shares or comments.

A/B testing

Try a piece of content two or more ways and assess how effective each is and how you rank content. Email marketing is an example of effective A/B testing – you can test both subject lines, email design and email content (but be sure to only test one metric at a time).

Ongoing regular content audits

Review your content and metrics often – and act on the insight the review provides as part of an ongoing content maintenance plan.

Return on investment or ROI

Look at the cost of each element of your campaign, and then look at the results. Which proves to be most commercially viable? But remember – it isn’t always possible to evaluate the impact of brand awareness and engagement and that is key to any successful brand.

Distribution and promotion strategies

Leveraging social media for engagement 

Online presence, especially in consumer sectors, is dominated by social media, so how can we most effectively leverage social media marketing for increased and improved engagement?

Each of the social channels are different. Don’t be tempted to post the same content across Facebook and Instagram, for example, just because it’s easy. They’re different platforms with different audiences – treat them that way and it will improve results. In the same way you developed the overall content strategy and plan, feed from that to create a channel, social media content strategy and social media content plan.

Audience understanding 

Work closely to the strategy process you developed as part of the overall content strategy. Knowing and understanding your audiences, what interests them and how you can engage with them is at the heart of social media success.

Quality engaging content 

Some social media platforms, like LinkedIn, work well with text-based thought leadership content. But it shouldn’t be the only type of content you consider:

• Use high-quality imagery, video footage and drone shots.
• Use graphics and infographics – but ensure they’re good and in line with your visual brand.
• Consider interactive elements such as questions, polls and surveys.
• Go live!

Storytelling

Brand today is all about telling stories and painting pictures. Every time you create content, ask yourself whether it will appeal to your target audience. Then tell your story in a rich, evocative and engaging way that triggers an emotional response from your audience.

Content trends

Keep on top of content trends. It’s laborious but so important to ensure you’re not on the back foot.

For example, use trending music for Instagram whenever you can. Use hashtags, especially trending hashtags – but follow the channels and do regular research on what the algorithms are favouring at any given time, as they change often.

Frequently asked questions 

What are the critical steps required to craft a comprehensive content strategy?

• Stop, collaborate and listen. The content strategy stage is the foundation for all your content marketing. Get it wrong and you’re building on dodgy foundations.
• Make sure you understand the business or marketing goals the strategy is responding to.
• Understand your audiences and how each can be used to achieve those commercial objectives.
• Develop intelligent, logical and powerful messages for each audience in response to each objective.
• Develop a written strategy, possibly with a shareable strategic summary that others can refer to when making decisions about content development.
• Set quality, definable key performance indicators.
• Using the right tools to evaluate – platforms such as Google Analytics, Semrush, HubSpot and Hootsuite.
• Keep reviewing and tracking content – and adjusting your strategy in response if you need to.
• Analyse your findings and formally report on them regularly.

How can I effectively measure the success of a content strategy?

Measuring the success of a content strategy demands a detailed approach and analysis with a range of metrics. 

Traffic metrics

• Overall traffic includes the total number of visits to your site – evidencing reach of the content.
• New vs returning visitors – how is your content attracting new visitors and engaging old ones.
• Organic – shows how your content is performing with search engines.
• Direct – visitors who search for your name or URL – that shows strong brand awareness.
• Referral – how much is coming from links from other websites or social media platforms.

Engagement metrics

• Average time on page – if users linger on your pages, it demonstrates genuine interest and engagement.
• Bounce rate – a high bounce rate may mean your content is falling short.

Conversions metrics

• Lead generation – completed online forms, newsletter sign ups, made purchases etc.
• Conversion rate – the percentage of visitors who actually convert.

SEO metrics

• Keyword rankings.
• Backlinks from other websites linking to your content demonstrates domain authority.
• Page performance – the speed of page loads and mobile responsiveness.

Measurement tools

Try Google Analytics, Semrush or Ahrefs and Hootsuite or Buffer for starters.

Analysis and reporting

Analyse these metrics at least monthly and report month-on-month to spot trends. Remember statistics are only as good as the interpreter of them.

How can I outline the essential components of a content strategy framework?

The component parts of a content strategy framework include:

• defining your business goals
• defining specific content goals 
• identifying the KPI metrics that will measure the success of your strategy
• understanding your audiences
• segmenting your audiences for best efficiency
• undertaking competitor analysis
• planning your content
• creating your editorial calendar
• outlining your brand values and TOV and adjusting for your audiences 
• creating guidelines for best SEO
• identifying channels and platforms
• developing promotion strategies
• measuring performance, assessing feedback, reporting and adjusting
• being aware of industry trends – the digital landscape changes all the time!

What are the best practices for aligning content strategy with overall business objectives?

• Understand your business objectives.
• Genuinely understand the audiences that will help deliver those objectives.
• Look at the messages that you need to disseminate to each audience.
• Identify where they get their information, who influencers them and what matters to them.
• Track, measure and evaluate – constantly.
• Adjust strategy according to your successes and failures.

In what ways can a content strategy be adapted to cater to different target audiences?

• Understand your business objectives.
• Genuinely understand the audiences that will help deliver those objectives – establish personas.
• Understand audience segments – the more specific the targeting, the more powerful the communication.
• Be informed by using demographics, lifestyles, values, beliefs, hobbies, customer surveys, feedback, website analytics, social media insights and trends.
• Each audience needs different messaging and a bespoke tone of voice that reflects the overall brand but is adjusted for maximum impact for each audience.
• Keep language simple, focused and relevant.
• Plan, plan, plan.
• Use layers of channels to reach audiences in a number of ways.
• Promote the relevant content to the relevant audiences.
• Make it personal.
• Track, measure and evaluate – constantly.
• Adjust strategy according to your successes and failures.

How should I approach creating a content calendar as part of a content strategy?

• Take the content strategy, review the business goals and audiences outlined in it.
• Really understand your audiences.
• Define bespoke messages and TOV for each audience.
• Determine where those audiences are and how you can reach them.
• Identify the channels for each audience.
• Understand where you are now – audit your existing content and create a content catalogue.
  • Can any existing content be repurposed?
  • Should any content be unpublished?
• Consider tactics and develop ideas.
• Allocate ownership and an action plan.
• Get everything onto a content calendar:
  • Post title.
  • Type of content.
  • Publishing platform.
  • Date and time.
  • Assigned team member.
  • Keywords and hashtags.
• Establish a posting schedule.
• Be disciplined to make it happen.

By Julie Fuge, Director at Polymedia