1) Tie content marketing to goals

It’s important to have a goal for every piece of content you put out there. But those goals must be related to a business goal ‒ either directly or indirectly. 

For example, establishing a certain amount of website page views as a goal will help you understand your inbound traffic. But, that doesn’t have a direct correlation to business goals such as revenue or leads. This is often referred to as “vanity metrics.” 

However, if you have data showing the conversion rates of website traffic to a form fill (i.e., a lead), you have a baseline for strategic content goals.

Our content marketing survey report shows that businesses that are more successful with content marketing lean toward three metrics for their goals:

• Website analytics
• Form fills
• Email performance

In general, content marketing is great for audience building, making opt-in subscribership and form fills ideal conversions to measure. But you can build virtually any strategy into your desired outcomes. 

If you don’t have internal data to build strategic goals, try a web search to find benchmarks for whatever you want to measure (e.g., form fills conversion rates, completed eCommerce purchases, etc.) 

2) Create a content marketing mission statement

Some might feel that a mission statement for content marketing is one of those “soft” marketing activities that get filed away and forgotten. But, in a world full of shiny-object marketing activity and non-strategic tactics, having a vision keeps all your effort rowing in the right direction. 

There are plenty of resources out there for writing a content marketing mission statement. Our take is to build a one-sentence declaration that shows your “who,” “what,” “where,” and “why” behind content. A statement typically: 

Here’s an example mission statement for a content marketing agency, such as New Leaf Marketing Solutions: 

“New Leaf Marketing Solutions builds trust and subscribership with values-driven businesses by delivering quality educational materials SMB marketers can use to improve their content marketing effectiveness.”

This mission statement: 

• States the value of your content to the audience (your who and external why)
• States the value of your content to the business (your internal why)
• Highlights key channels (your where and what)

Don’t worry about making a mission statement perfect. They’re malleable, and you just need something to act as a “true north” when making content decisions. It’ll be a lifesaver the next time someone comes to the marketing team with a shiny object like, “I think Tik-Tok is super fun. Let’s do marketing there!” 

3) Strategic content marketing is audience-driven

If there’s one word to take out of this entire blog, it’s “trust.” Building trust is the foundation that makes content marketing a reliable lead-generation tool. Content marketing is rarely promotional or sales-y because you can easily create skepticism when talking about your products (even if you have the best intentions). 

Instead, focus topics on your prospect and customer challenges. What are they trying to solve? What should they be thinking about to get ahead? Answering those questions in content gives you a solid calendar of thought leadership with value to your audience and your business. 

Generating audience-based topics could be as simple as talking to customers directly. This could be a phone call, case study, or survey. Another popular way to learn about audience challenges is to cross the carpet and talk to your customer service and sales teams. They’re in the trenches every day and should be able to bubble up the top trends. 

4) Plan content marketing with a calendar

Strategic initiatives rarely work when flying by the seat of your pants. So, build accountability into your content marketing operations. The best way to do this is with a content calendar listing and prioritizing what you’re creating, where you’re publishing, and when. 

There are plenty of tools out there to try out, such as Trello or Asana (each with free and paid versions). 

For much-needed project tracking and visibility, you can build processes into your calendar that tracks projects from beginning to end. Workflows vary depending on the project, format, collaborators, and other factors. However, there are three high-level phases and common steps you can use to start your production process: 

• Pre-production
  • Approve topics
  • Gather SEO data (keywords)
  • Gather information (web research, interviews, etc.)
• Drafting
  • Write copy!
  • Design supporting assets (graphics, etc.)
  • Create landing pages (if necessary)
  • Create social media content (if necessary)
  • Review with stakeholders/subject experts
  • Edit and finalize
• Publishing
  • Post to your platform (website CMS, etc.)
  • Insert metadata, tags, or other back-end information
  • Go live! 

It’s a lot of work, but high-quality content is key. The highly involved process is one reason why our content marketing survey data shows that most successful content marketing operations use outside agencies. There’s simply so much content available these days. If you’re not providing value, you’re probably not going to get far with content. 

A tip to make better use of content marketing is to build your content calendar alongside your other marketing activities. Whether you have a marketing campaign or activity, be it a newsletter, product launch, webinar, tradeshow, or other marketing activities, content marketing is a great way to tie back to the larger marketing picture and increase awareness of high-priority projects. This builds extra value into the assets you develop and hopefully takes your campaigns to a higher level.