Content for Content Success

Are you struggling to make your content stand out on any digital channel? You’re not alone. A lot of businesses face the challenge of developing a content strategy really engages their target audience and boosts performance. Without a cohesive approach, your content efforts can feel like you’re talking to a wall.

The Bad Effects of Poor Strategy

A flawed content strategy can have severe consequences, including:

• reduced brand visibility, 

• an alienated audience,

• and wasted budget.

Without clear objectives, your content may fall flat or just fail entirely. Investing in premium content (*more on this in a sec) only to see minimal engagement can erode trust in your brand and demoralize your team.

You need quality content. Quality does not equal premium all the time though.

The Long-lasting Strain

Misaligned strategies don’t just impact the immediate; they widen the gap between you and your audience over time, making reconnecting even more challenging. Constantly shifting from reactive to proactive content creation can exhaust resources and lead to burnout.

However, with a strategic overhaul, you can change this trajectory.

Crafting an Audience-Centric Content Strategy: The Comprehensive Way

1. Target Audience Analysis: The Foundation of Strategy

   • Dig into demographic and psychographic data to create comprehensive user personas. Don’t go too deep, no one should talk to John 32.1 years, old with 3.5 kids, who drives a 2023 Navy Blue Toyota Corolla. Use surveys, social media insights, and customer feedback (you can ask for this as well) to map deep-rooted audience insights. Understanding your audience, their interests, problems, and behavior is crucial for creating content that resonates.

2. Content Audit and Strategic Gap Analysis

   • Do a thorough audit of your existing content to identify strengths and weaknesses. This analysis will help you discover gaps that need filling to better align with audience demands and SEO opportunities. 

   • Use tools like SEMrush or AHrefs to evaluate keyword performance and identify content types that rank highest in search engine results pages (SERPs).

3. Define Success: Goals & Key Performance Indicators

   • Be clear on objectives, whether it’s increasing traffic, boosting engagement, or generating leads. Set a North Star one, and perhaps a couple to support. For example, if your goal is to generate leads, your KPIs might include landing page visits, but form completions is the North Star KPI.

4. Content Creation & Strategic Planning

   • Develop a solid content calendar that targets each stage of the funnel / user journey, ensuring consistent and full funnel audience engagement. The calendar should outline the type of content to create, such as blog posts, infographics, videos, and podcasts, and the channels through which to distribute them. Make sure to align it with a promo calendar.

   • Use collaboration tools to streamline the content creation process and ensure all team members are on the same page.

   • Key thing, do not make sharing creatives and content over e-mail the default SOP! Bound to go wrong. Settle on a shared way of access, that is the single source of truth in term of final and approved assets

5. Smart Distribution: Reach and Engage Efficiently

   • Select the most appropriate channels to cater to your audience’s preferences. A blended approach that includes email marketing, social media, SEO, and PPC can amplify both reach and engagement. 

   • Be aware of seasonality and media budget and play with organic and paid to get the most bang for buck year round.

6. Ongoing Optimization & Strategy Iteration

   • Regularly assess your content performance using analytics tools and embrace data-driven feedback paired with user insights to refine and adapt your strategy. This continuous optimization ensures your content remains relevant and effective over time.

Real-World Success: A Case Study at GrandVision

Putting together a compelling content strategy involves more than just following trends or filling in SEO blank spaces; it’s about orchestrating a dynamic narrative that resonates with your demographic. Wow, how poetic.

At EssilorLuxottica (GrandVision at the time), I was faced with a massive challenge where multiple operational companies (opcos) were creating content in isolation, leading to inefficiency, lots of double work, and lack of alignment.

To address this, we created a cross-opco content program. Here’s how it worked:

• We mapped articles created across the opcos, identified the best ones, and pinpointed blank spaces in terms of SEO content and customer needs.

• We created new content to fill these gaps, redistributed existing content from one opco to another (including trans-creation, updating canonicals, and providing visuals), and centralized content management through a CMS.

• This approach reduced the budget and time needed to build pages, as opcos only had to check and approve their localized copy.

This centralized effort streamlined processes, promoted efficiency, and turned strategic challenges into growth opportunities. And on top of that, it created shared learning and more connection between the opco’s.

Avoiding Common Issues

You want to avoid some of the potential backlash of poor strategy by enhancing your approach and delivering consistent, audience-focused content. Here are some key takeaways:

• Align Your Team: Ensure all stakeholders, including your sales team (if applicable), technical team, designers, brand managers, copywriters, and whoever needs to be in it are involved in the strategy development process to ensure everyone is working towards the same goals.

• Use the Right Tools: Leverage tools like Google Docs, paired with a project management tool like Asana or Monday.com, for collaborative content creation, and analytics software to track performance and make data-driven decisions.

• Maintain Consistency: Develop editorial guidelines and an information architecture to ensure your content is consistent and easy to navigate.

• Local People to Check the Content: Translating is the one thing that I’ve seen cause issues in every single multinational. It needs a cultural translation as well, not just a word for word one. So make sure you get a local to check the final version.

By adhering to these best practices, you can transform your content strategy from a hurdle into a potent tool for brand success. Implement a strategy that not only captivates your audience but also drives quantifiable growth and engagement.

Short-Term vs. Long-Term?

Content strategy is not a one-time task; it’s an ongoing process that requires continuous improvement and adaptation, and really should be a key element of any digital marketing strategy in my opinion. So here’s a question for you:

Should brands prioritize short-term engagement metrics over long-term content value?

Share your thoughts in the comments below.