A content strategy is a framework for deciding what kind of content you will create, who it will be for, and how you will deliver it. One of the best ways to build trust and connection with your customers is through a content strategy.

“Content is a free tool to build brand awareness and traffic,” says Anaita Sakar, co-founder of Hero Packaging . “Especially when you’re starting out with limited funds, it’s important to consistently produce content, whether it’s educational or product-focused. The more content you create, the more trust you build, which in turn will lead search engines to actually point to your website.”

A well-thought-out content strategy can showcase your brand's unique perspective and compelling products, ultimately helping you attract more (and better) customers.

What is content strategy?

Content strategy is the practice of planning marketing content that reaches your target audience and achieves your business goals, whether it be blog posts, emails, posts on social media platforms, videos, podcasts, etc. A successful content strategy is a framework that helps you plan what information to deliver to whom. Content without a strategy can be repetitive work, while a solid strategy should deliver a return on investment (ROI).

How to Develop a Content Strategy

1. Select a template
2. Define your goals
3. Target Audience Research
4. Review existing content
5. Competitor Analysis
6. Decide what type of content to create
7. Creating engaging content
8. Building an editorial calendar
9. Measuring Content Effectiveness

1. Select a template

You don’t necessarily need a content strategy template to create a content marketing strategy, but having a good one can make the process easier. The free content strategy template linked in this article includes everything you need to get started.

2. Define your goals

Set specific goals for your content strategy and choose KPIs to measure success. Think about the types of content that will help you achieve those goals.

Examples of content marketing goals include:

• Triple your social media followers in 6 months

• Grow your customer conversion rate from 2% to 4% in 6 months

• Increase organic traffic (visits from non-paid search results) to your landing page by 20% within one year

3. Target Audience Research

Study your target demographic’s interests and preferred content channels so you can create engaging content on the platforms they use. Here are two ways to identify your target audience:

1. Market research. Use market research tools to analyze consumer behavior and trends, and conduct direct research such as surveys, customer interviews, and customer feedback analysis. This will help you understand your target audience’s purchasing tendencies, preferred social media channels, and content consumption patterns.

2. Use web analytics. Web analytics provides information about not only who visits your site, but also how long they stay on your site, which pages they visit, and how they found your site.

As you go through this process, consider creating a buyer persona. A buyer persona can help you create content that resonates with your audience. Give your persona a name, job title, age, hobbies, location, income, goals, and list the types of content they consume. A buyer persona will serve as a valuable guide to shaping your content marketing strategy.

4. Review existing content

If you have already created content, review your existing assets. Ask yourself these questions:

• Is the current content still valid?
• Will the planned content be significantly different from existing content?

Now may be a good time to clean out that old content. Use social media analytics tools and Google Analytics to see which content is most popular and which content is not getting as many responses. Consider stopping the production of content that is not resonating with your audience or is not meeting your goals. This review process will help you refine your future content strategy and make it more targeted.

5. Competitor Analysis

Compare content strategies of similar companies and measure their success with competitive analysis. First, make a list of your direct and indirect competitors, then visit their sites and experience their customer experiences. Identify what content you like and what you don’t, sign up for their newsletters, read their blog posts, and follow them on social media. Also, see what type of content they publish and how often they publish it.

If you like your content approach, consider what you could do better or differently. Also, use SEO tools to find out what keywords are driving traffic to your competitors’ sites. This can help you decide which keywords to use when building content to make it easier for your audience to find.

6. Decide what type of content to create

Understanding how your target audience interacts with your content will help you make content decisions. One important tool in this process is the sales funnel. The sales funnel is the process through which potential customers become aware of your brand, consider your product, and ultimately make a purchase.

By creating different types of content tailored to each stage of the funnel, you can drive your target audience to the purchasing stage. Here are some examples:

Awareness stage
At this stage, it is important to introduce your brand. You need to create educational content to grab the attention of your audience. For example, you can use articles, blog posts, e-books, explainer videos, newsletters, and social media posts. The goal here is not to directly promote your product, but simply to pique the curiosity of your audience.

For example, Charlotte Palermino, co-founder of skincare company Dieux , attributes her brand’s success on social media to her brand’s storytelling. “For Dieux, it’s always been about telling stories and focusing on different parts of the story of how we got here,” Charlotte tells Shopify Masters. “One of our most viral videos right now is a story about packaging. It’s a five-minute video about plastic and aluminum, and it’s really resonating because it’s story-driven.”

Consideration stage
At this stage, you should nurture a relationship with your audience and provide useful information that highlights your competitive advantage along with your product marketing. Content such as methodological articles, product reviews, and case studies that utilize your product can be effective at this stage.

For example, Fellow, a maker of electric kettles and coffee makers, has a variety of coffee brewing guides on its website. While these guides can be useful even if you don’t own a Fellow product, they do include a lot of product images. If you’re thinking about buying a new coffee grinder or kettle, this guide will naturally lead you to consider Fellow’s products.

Purchase Step

At this stage, your audience has already done their research and is ready to buy. Now is the time to leverage buyer’s guides, product videos, and user-generated content to highlight why your product or service is superior to others.

7. Creating engaging content

In the early stages of your business, you may be able to create your own content. For example, Charlotte Palermino of Dieux used her previous experience on Snapchat to create short-form video content. As your business grows, you may want to hire a dedicated team member to handle content creation, or hire a freelancer or content agency. If you plan to publish a series of articles, shoot videos, or run an entire social media campaign, you may want to consider adding a social media or writing-focused creator. This will help you deliver more professional and engaging content.

8. Building an Editorial Calendar

Create a content calendar to ensure that your content is published regularly and is consistent across channels. Establishing a system for publishing content on a regular and predictable schedule will help build your audience’s perception of you as a trusted source of information. This will help you maintain a consistent brand presence and strengthen your relationship with your audience.

9. Measuring the effectiveness of your content

Use a variety of analytics tools, including Google Analytics, email marketing software, and social media analytics tools, to evaluate how well your content is resonating with your audience. Track KPIs such as click-through rates, website traffic, social media reach and engagement, leads and conversions from mobile traffic, and search rankings. Depending on the results, you may want to consider adjusting or changing your strategy. This ongoing process of evaluation and adjustment will help you maximize the effectiveness of your content strategy.

Questions Your Content Strategy Should Answer

1. How will content contribute to your business?
2. Who is the content intended for?
3. What value will the content provide to your customers?
4. Which channel will you use?
5. How will your content reflect your brand?

There is no set way to create a content strategy, as it depends on your target audience. However, you can ask yourself these five questions to lay the groundwork for your content strategy:

1. How will content contribute to your business?

Content can serve multiple purposes for your business, and it’s important to be clear about your goals. Define your goals by asking yourself: What are the business goals associated with our content efforts? What key performance indicators (KPIs) will we use to measure success? Common goals and metrics include:

• Increase brand awareness, measured by exposure, traffic, and brand awareness surveys

• Drive customer acquisition, measured by sales and conversion rates

• Increase engagement, measured by email open rates, clicks, and time on page

• Increase customer retention, measured by customer lifetime value and repeat purchase rate

2. Who is the content for?

Identifying your ideal customer will help you understand how to communicate with them and what value your content can provide. Ask yourself these questions:

• What is my target audience group?
• What are their needs or challenges, and how can you meet them with good content?
• What content formats will connect best with them?
• Where do you consume content?

The answers to these questions will provide important information for the next steps of your content strategy.

3. What value will your content provide to your customers?

Once you understand the needs, wants, and challenges of your target audience, you can focus your content on solving those problems. Be clear about what value your content will provide. For example, if you sell fishing lures to novice anglers, your content might focus on providing information. In this case, you could provide content such as a series of articles on lure selection, casting techniques, and types of reels to provide useful information to your customers.

4. Which channel will you use?

Content is most effective when it reaches your audience on channels where they already consume content. For example, for a B2B (business-to-business) company, that might be LinkedIn, for a skincare brand targeting Gen Z, that might be TikTok. Or, you might want to reach your audience through paid search ads or SEO-optimized blog posts when they search on Google.

5. How will your content reflect your brand?

Does your content have a specific point of view? A unique brand voice is crucial for businesses to reach their target audience and build connections and communities. Maintaining your brand voice with consistent messaging allows you to communicate in a language that resonates with your target demographic.