The Best Guide to Content Marketing Strategy

With AI taking centre stage, 1 in 2 content marketers are known to use AI for content generation. None to be successful without a solid content marketing strategy. 

Content marketing is the cape-worn hero that saves your content from getting wasted. It is the craft of curating and distributing content in ways that generate value. You can check out the top 10 content marketing tools to help you reach your goals.

Content Marketing and its importance 

What is content marketing without a strategic plan? A good content marketing strategy involves several steps but to know what makes good content, you should know what it means. 

By definition: Content marketing strategy is curating, distributing and managing content that generates tangible results and leads. 

81% of marketers agreed that content marketing effectively boosts their brand awareness, while 63% agree that it helps nurture the brand further. 

Here’s why content marketing is an essential part of gaining organic traction: 

1. It aligns your goals and objectives with popular content 
2. It streamlines your content creation and distribution process. 
3. It provides strategic timelines for performance tracking and analysis 

A good content marketing strategy allows you to plan, change and make strategic changes that bring value to your brand. It lets you track and prepare for the future – and has a few key elements. 

Steps to create a content marketing strategy

1. Set goals and Objectives

Goals in content marketing should be set before content creation. If you don’t know where you are going, you won’t know how to get there. 

Setting goals in business and brand can look like: 

• Increase 50% organic traffic 
• Get 1000 backlinks to your website in the next 6 months 
• Get 50% Click-through rate 
• Increase customer engagement by 30% 

Regardless, setting goals will keep you on the path to increased engagement and reach. Once that is done, it’s time to identify your audience.

2. Identify Target Audience 

You can create out-of-the-world content but it will go to waste if it doesn’t reach the right people. Narrowing your target audience will give you an idea of the kind of content you should be pushing for your brand. Since the product or service already has a target audience, working along similar lines may help. Here are some questions to consider when identifying an audience: 

• Who are they? Their demographic, tax bracket, down to their favourite food. 
• Where is the pain? What problems do your target audience have and how can you solve them? 
• What platform does your audience refer to? Is it Instagram, Linkedin or Email
• What kind of action or ideas are they interested in? 

Identifying a target audience isn’t just about data and demographics, it also requires a certain level of arbitrary emotional connection. Some tools allow you to identify your audience through various data points including income and behaviour. 

3. Gather Content Buckets 

Now that your audience is sorted, it will be easier to make a content bucket. Content buckets are broad topics that are relevant to your audience and your brand. This comes easy when you know your brand USPs and match them with the pain points of your target audience. 

Now, you can find a middle ground and connect both to build content buckets. Let’s take an example of a fine jewellery brand that is targeting GenZs. Therefore some of their content buckets look like this: 

• Emotional storytelling 
• Showcasing the product as an everyday use 
• Valuable content on its sustainability 

4. How to find the right content 

Once you have discovered the broad topics under your content bucket, it’s time to create content. Broad topics are fine but how to break them down into bite-sized content? 

A lot of tools are readily available to help us with this problem. Use tools like Answer the Public or Google Trends to understand where the buzz is at. Once you find something relevant to your industry, create value and make your content. 

5. Create a content calendar 

This is one of the most important parts of content marketing. Every client holds great value to a content calendar. This is because it makes the process easy and you have all the information in one sheet.

Experts report that there is a 538% chance of success in companies that use content calendars as a part of their content marketing strategy. 

Your content calendar should consist of the date of posting, the copy and the content itself. By doing this, your content management strategy will become seamless and efficient. Here’s what will improve: 

• Seamlessness and consistency. Buffer saw that there was an increase in content engagement by 340% when posting regularly. 
• Understanding what works. When you have all posts consolidated in one calendar, you can always go back to understand what worked when and why. 
• Performance Tracking. When you have the calendar at your beck, you can modify and track performance with ease. 

6. Analyse and monitor performance 

Content marketing isn’t a “set it and forget it” game — it’s an evolving process that thrives on data and performance analysis. Once your content is out in the wild, tracking its performance helps you understand which direction to run. 

Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) like:

• Traffic: Are people actually visiting your content?
• Engagement: Are they liking, sharing, and commenting?
• Conversion Rates: Is your content driving sales or sign-ups?
• Bounce Rates: Are visitors sticking around or leaving after a few seconds?

Tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush make it easy to track how your content is performing. If a particular type of content or format is driving results, double down on it. If something’s not working, tweak it or try a new angle.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 72% of top-performing content marketers use performance data to refine their strategy. The ability to adapt based on real-time insights separates successful content strategies from mediocre ones.

Now that we have covered how to build a good content marketing strategy, let’s dive into different examples of content marketing strategies. It is divided into: 

• Text content – Blog posts, newsletters and Ebooks 
• Social media posts 
• Podcasts 

Text Content: Blogs, Newsletters and Ebooks 

Blogs have two different purposes — informational and promotional. But both serve one purpose – to rank in SERP – The first page of the Google results. A large part of content marketing strategy involves uploading content and backlinking them. 

 

Hubspot 

Hubspot has a consolidated content marketing strategy involving: 

• Blog posts 
• Emails 
• Ebooks 
• Courses and research 

Hubspot is heavily dependent on providing valuable content. Their blogs have in-depth research from surveys, channels and more. The average website attracts 375,773 unique visitors every day, the trick is to keep them coming back and Hubspot does a great job at it. 

The result: Blogs and content like these result in a high-converting audience who sign up for emails, buy services and spread the word! 

Ebooks are another ballgame. 47% of marketers recommend incorporating ebooks in their content marketing strategy. The global market for ebooks and digital content is set to grow to $14.92 Billion by 2025

While HubSpot is leading the game, LinkedIn Marketing Labs is no far behind. Covering a range of topics, Ebooks are categorised into different genres through objectives and industries. According to current trends in book sales, there has been a steady 9% growth in 2024 – big strides for book lovers. 

Social Media Posts 

Social media user count is projected to be 5.42 billion in 2025. Ever since its inception, it has been steadily growing which makes it one of the most important channels of content marketing strategy. 82% of marketers resort to social media marketing and that has led to some great examples: 

Duolingo’s Tiktok and Instagram 

Duo died recently and believe it or not everyone was upset. This is the campaign they ran when they updated their UX and interface. The animation is different, now duo dies every time you miss a streak. What a way to keep em engaged! 

Their social media content marketing strategy was no less. There a multiple components to take note of in their content marketing strategy: 

• Duo – the adorable owl mascot 
• They engage with their users in quirky replies 
• Hopping on every trend and collaborating with influencers is a long way to go. We know about Duo’s relationship with Dua Lipa – makes no sense but works! 

The result: 16.8 Million followers on TikTok 

Podcasts 

Podcasts are the new way to learn new things, get life coaching or just have two boys laughing in the background. Statistics show globally, there are about 546 million listeners.  Youtube has been an honourable podium for hosting podcasts but Spotify and Apple have quickly gained momentum. About 25% of active podcast listeners are from Spotify! 

In these two examples, we will look at the difference in audience and content between an informational and infotainment podcast. 

Joe Rogan 

Joe Rogan has an exclusivity deal with Spotify since 2020. Yeah it’s valued at $25M+ in licencing which is blasted off Spotify listener numbers. When talking about Joe Rogan’s content marketing strategy his channel is a good example of using content properly, it consists:

• Broad target audience who are interested in culture, politics, space and entertainment. 
• Prominent high-profile guests across all industries including Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, comedians like Bill Burr, and authors like Sam Harris – the author of Lying. 
• And this magic trick of repurposing content – as short clips on YT and Instagram. 
• His diverse content strategy includes publishing e-books and long-format content along with updates and guest information. 

Conclusion 

Content marketing strategy isn’t about churning out content after content – it’s about crafting a narrative that connects, engages, and converts. From setting goals to creating content calendars and monitoring performance, a well-executed content marketing strategy builds brand authority, drives organic traffic, and increases customer loyalty.

And the proof is in the numbers: businesses with strong content marketing see 6x higher conversion rates than those without it. A good content marketing strategy isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s a business multiplier. So, set those goals, define your audience, and let your content do the heavy lifting. After all, a good piece of content doesn’t just tell a story — it builds a brand.