Has it been a while since you updated your content strategy? Or do you have the opposite problem, reinventing yourself a little too frequently? If you’re looking for a content strategy you won’t abandon in three months, this week’s guest on the Conex Show can help.

The Convince & Convert team has put together a comprehensive, seven-step guide to building a sustainable and successful content marketing strategy. In this episode of the Content Experience Show, Analyst Jenny Magic walks through each of those seven steps, reexamining conventional wisdom and exploring common pitfalls.

In This Episode: 

Why the “Crash Diet” Approach to Building a Marketing Strategy is Hurting Your Business

Magic compares implementing a good content strategy to maintaining a healthy diet. We all know that we should do small things every day to stay healthy, yet crash diet when swimsuit season comes around. We should be working on improving our marketing daily. 

“Get something that you can stick to. Maintain a healthy strategy little by little, course correct, learn from what's out there, and stay on track with your strategy.” – @JennyLMagic

Tips for Identifying the One Thing Your Business Does Better Than Your Competitors

One of Magic’s favorite exercises is to take all your brand and campaign messages and write them all down. Then, think about your top three competitors and cross everything off the list that is probably being claimed by them as well. What remains is your differentiator. 

“If you’re new in a role, take the strategy that’s in front of you and make the best of it rather than trying to throw it out and start over to stamp your mark on things.” – @JennyLMagic

An Audience Research Strategy That Brings Your Marketing and Sales Teams into Better Alignment

The Convince & Convert team has a strategy for appealing to audience needs called the five-by-five-by-five. It starts by identifying the top five audience segments that you’re trying to influence, then the five or six stages of the funnel that have interesting touch points for those audiences. Looking at it as a grid with audiences down the side and stages of the journey across the top, inside each of those boxes, think about the five questions that a particular audience member asks at a particular stage of their journey.

“It’s just so tempting to default to the kind of content that you like to create or that you like to consume or to default to the audience that is loudest or the easiest to empathize with or the easiest to reach.” – @JennyLMagic 

Special Thanks to Our Sponsors:

• Uberflip
• Emma
• Convince & Convert: Four Ways to Fix Your Broken Content Marketing

Resources:

• The Content Experience Report
• Emma
• New On-Demand Course
• Jenny Magic on Twitter
• Convince & Convert's Seven-Step Guide to Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

For more insights from your favorite marketers, visit the Conex: The Content Experience Show stream.