Easy steps to create a simple content marketing strategy

Did you know that 63% of companies don't have a documented content marketing strategy?

On the flip side, 46% say the lack of a strategy is the biggest hurdle to achieving their inbound marketing goals .

We all get it: content marketing is becoming more and more popular. There is always more content. But most of it just makes noise. It is often not of really good quality. There may be a lot invested in content creation , but not enough in the content strategy behind it.

Be honest, do you have a written strategy? Or do you do everything on the fly?

Maybe you think you don't need this. But at some point you have to sit down and build a solid foundation if you want to get good results.

The nice thing is, it doesn't even have to be complicated. I wrote something about inbound marketingstrategy before . But honestly, that was way too big. I never looked at it again even after creating our strategy. That's why I've simplified the framework again.

Since the term "strategy" has a different meaning for everyone, let's define it first.

What is a strategy?
The term "strategy" comes from the Greek and means army command. A strategy describes a long-term approach to achieve a vision .

It provides guidelines , rules and thus a direction for making decisions. So it helps you to prioritize your daily to-dos.

Tactics are quite different. Strategy is somewhat long-term . Tactic something short-term . A strategy would determine whether the fight should be fought at all. Tactics, on the other hand, how the individual troops should proceed.

Bruno Klumpp sums it up perfectly :

Strategy is sometimes simply the rules by which we make tactical decisions.

In general, strategy and tactics should not be separated too much from each other. It should be a smooth transition. Just like all of life itself.

And related to content marketing?

What is a content marketing strategy?
First of all, we need to distinguish between content strategy and content marketing strategy.

Content strategy covers pretty much everything related to content. This includes things like the website, social media, business cards, invoices, etc. Kristina Halvorson has written a comprehensive book on this with “ Content Strategy for the Web ”.

The content marketing strategy, on the other hand, focuses on a sub-area of ​​the content strategy. A content marketing strategy describes the how . How do you plan to do marketing using content? How do you want to build an audience with useful, entertaining and inspiring content and thus achieve your business goal?

More specifically, a content marketing strategy essentially answers the following questions:

Who do you want to reach?
Why are you creating content?
What makes you unique ?
And how it all looks in detail, we will now take a closer look.