Starting with Content Strategy: The Key to a Successful Content Marketing Plan

A successful content marketing plan requires more than publishing more content. It requires starting with strategy -- defining why you're creating content, for whom, where, how, and when -- before you create a single piece. Without that foundation, you're just running a production line for content nobody needs.

What Is Content Strategy, and Why Does Your Content Marketing Plan Need It?

For decades, product designers asked "What features should this product have?" instead of "What do people need this product to do?" The result was a marketplace full of products packed with bells and whistles that weren't actually usable or meaningful to real people.

By the 1990s and 2000s, human-centered design and user experience design started to change that. The biggest innovations since then have come from brands that start with researching, empathizing with their users, and defining the problem that needs to be solved -- only then do they brainstorm, build, and test solutions.

The same shift is now happening in marketing. Content strategy is doing for marketing what UX did for design: putting the emphasis back on the user. And by focusing on user success, marketers are unlocking greater business success in return.

More Content Does NOT Equal Better Results

Almost 90% of businesses report using a content marketing plan, according to Content Marketing Institute's 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends studies of both B2B and B2C companies. Most are dedicating around 26-29% of their marketing budget (not including staff) to tactics like:

• Social media
• Blogs
• Email newsletters
• In-person events
• Ebooks and whitepapers
• Video
• Infographics
• Webinars

So with everyone capitalizing on content, the results must be amazing... right?

Not quite.

Less than 40% of businesses surveyed say their content efforts are "very" or "extremely" effective. Yet over 80% plan to keep their content marketing budget the same or increase it over the next 12 months.

Wait a second -- doesn't that seem like a waste? Why would you continue investing in tactics that are somewhat or completely ineffective? Wouldn't it make more sense to figure out better ways to actually achieve the results you're looking for?

The answer to both questions is yes. And it all starts with strategy.

What Is the Difference Between Content Strategy and Content Marketing?

"We must work to define not only which content will be published, but WHY we're publishing it in the first place. Otherwise, content strategy isn't strategy at all. It's just a glorified production line for content nobody really needs or wants." -- Kristina Halvorson

These two disciplines are related but distinct. Here's how they break down:

What Does a Content Strategist Do?

Content strategists guide planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of content. Their responsibilities (and no coincidence here) overlap significantly with UX design:

• Collaborating with internal stakeholders and users to identify the real problem and create useful, usable, engaging content that achieves business goals and user needs
• Conducting audience research and leveraging existing research to understand the user's journey, tasks, wants, and needs
• Identifying and implementing the appropriate research tools (surveys, interviews, empathy mapping, content audits, user intent analysis, SEO audits, etc.) to understand user needs, analyze existing content, and plan new content
• Documenting the overall content strategy and associated tactics (brand foundation, audience personas, voice and tone, brand story, messaging architecture, editorial plan, etc.)
• Championing the value of quality content internally and externally
• Collaborating with other team members and stakeholders to deliver the right content, in the right place, at the right time, in the right way

What Does a Content Marketer Do?

Content marketers create and distribute relevant, valuable content as a "soft sell" to build interest in a brand without directly selling the product or service. They typically lead on:

• Creating and managing an editorial calendar or content marketing plan that meets business goals and customer needs
• Publishing and distributing content to drive awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, and other key metrics
• Collaborating across departments to gather information from subject matter experts, ensure content is designed and implemented as intended, and integrate content marketing with other marketing initiatives
• Overseeing governance to ensure existing content is relevant and up to date
• Measuring progress and optimizing for improvement

Why Do the Best Results Come from Blending Both?

"More is not better. We need to create the minimum amount of content for the maximum amount of impact." -- Joe Pulizzi

Using content strategy OR content marketing can support your brand's sales goals and produce decent ROI. But the key to success isn't doing more content marketing or shifting all resources to content strategy. It's blending both to ensure you're delivering the right content, to the right people, in the right way.

The Content Marketing Institute studies show that only around 40% of B2B and B2C companies have a documented strategy. No wonder their results haven't been stronger.

Anchoring your content marketing plan in a solid strategy leads to more substantial, sustainable results, including:

• Better outcomes and KPIs (conversions, sales and revenue, churn, satisfaction and NPS, loyalty, employee satisfaction)
• Higher ROI
• Less rework

These improvements won't happen overnight. But by starting with strategy, implementing and testing tactics, and optimizing along the way, you'll start seeing the impressive results everyone will be buzzing about.

What Does an Effective Content Marketing Plan Actually Include?

Traditional marketers have been doing the same thing old-school product designers used to do: loading up on tactics and asking "what content will we create?" without ever addressing the why, who, where, how, and when.

An effective content marketing plan covers all of it. Content strategy serves as the foundation -- and without it, you're producing for the sake of producing.

How Did InVision Build a Winning Content Marketing Plan?

InVision, one of the leading design prototyping tools on the market, attracted over 3 million customers, hundreds of thousands of followers, and over $132 million in funding in just a few years -- largely thanks to content.

InVision bakes content strategy into both Product and Marketing. Their content specialists work with Product Managers and Product Designers to optimize existing products and design new ones, while also driving the company's wildly successful marketing engine.

They knew they couldn't take an "if we build it, they will come" approach. So they went all-in on content marketing, grounding it in a strategy aligned with their business objectives, mission, core values, and audience.

Their unique approach? Having their readers write the content.

In an interview with NewsCred, former Head of Marketing Clair Byrd explained:

"InVision's strategy on the blog has never been to be about InVision, but instead, to represent an accurate cross-section of what the design community cares about at any given point in time. We double-down on this concept by not actually 'authoring' our own content. 95% of InVision content is contributed. We want to give designers a platform for their thoughts and their processes as it relates to design skills, methodology, and leadership."

InVision's marketing team didn't put all their eggs in the blog basket, either. Designers crave a hub they can count on for industry insights, and InVision saw the possibilities for delivering those insights in many ways -- from in-person events and webinars to innovative ideas like the DesignBetter online library and the Design Disruptors documentary.

What Made the Design Disruptors Campaign So Effective?

Design Disruptors was a content marketing masterpiece. The film featured some of the design industry's brightest minds talking about the evolution of design. It wasn't about InVision and barely even mentioned the product -- but there's no doubt the documentary had real business benefits.

Byrd led both the creation and distribution of the film. "The distribution strategy was driven by the question, 'How can we get this film into the hands of the most relevant people?'" she explained. "The foundation of this was data (who we approached, when, why, and how) and communication design (what we communicated, in what cadence, in what form, and at what critical moments)."

Based on that strategy, Byrd and her team worked with InVision's designers and engineers to develop an array of digital content and features, including micro-video, disruptor profiles, competitions for pre-access, tools allowing people to organize community screenings, and built-in sharing functionality. They also partnered with companies in the community to host in-person events and screenings.

And wow, did that strategy pay off. In an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Growth Hackers, Byrd reported:

• 200+ community events with over 18,000 attendees
• Over 75,000 email signups
• Over 1,000 inbound requests to host screenings

Design Disruptors was just one example of InVision's content success. During Byrd's three-year tenure with the company, she and the Marketing Team generated staggering growth:

• Captured nearly 100,000 leads
• Increased traffic to InVision-owned web properties by over 800%
• Boosted revenue by over 130%
• Became one of the industry leaders in content marketing, including No. 1 on HubSpot's 2015 list for "Exceptional B2B Content Marketing," No. 1 on Forbes' list of "25 Digital Design Blogs to Follow," and No. 1 on The Next Web's list of "Promising Digital Design Blogs to Follow"

By starting with strategy and producing relevant, valuable content that consistently strikes the sweet spot between business goals and audience needs, InVision became a role model within the content community and a leader in the entire design industry.

It's All Part of the Customer Journey

Whether you're a content strategist, content marketer, or designer, your work plays a key role in optimizing the entire customer journey. Content and design are often treated as separate disciplines, but the leading companies know you can't have one without the other.

By investing in both UX and content -- and ensuring real collaboration between the two -- your brand can create effective, meaningful customer experiences that drive success for your business and your users.

Curious how you could take a more strategic approach to content and improve your marketing results? Our team at Drawbackwards has been helping companies tell their story through UX design and content for over a decade, and we'd love to share some of the things we've learned with you. Get in touch to tell us more about your content challenges and learn how we could help you solve them.

FAQ

What is the difference between content strategy and content marketing? Content strategy is the planning layer -- it defines why content is being created, for whom, and how it fits into broader business goals. Content marketing is the execution layer -- creating and distributing content to build brand interest and drive measurable results. The two work best when used together.

Why isn't my content marketing plan working even though I'm publishing a lot of content? Volume alone doesn't drive results. Less than 40% of businesses rate their content efforts as very or extremely effective, largely because most don't have a documented strategy behind their content. Without a clear why, who, where, how, and when, you're producing content for its own sake rather than for your audience.

How do I know if my content marketing plan needs a strategy overhaul? If you're measuring content success primarily by how much you publish rather than by conversions, engagement, revenue, or audience growth, that's a good sign strategy is missing. A content audit, audience research, and documented goals are usually the right starting points.

How does content strategy relate to UX design? The two disciplines overlap significantly. Both involve researching users, identifying real problems, and delivering the right solution in the right way. The most effective brands treat content and UX as collaborative practices, not separate ones, because a great product experience and great content work together to shape the customer journey.

What made InVision's content marketing so successful? InVision succeeded by grounding every content decision in a clear strategy tied to audience needs and business goals. Rather than creating content about themselves, they gave their community a platform -- 95% of their content was contributed by designers. They also diversified beyond the blog into events, webinars, resource libraries, and a full documentary, each with a deliberate distribution strategy behind it.