Why Content Strategy is Important Long Term

Answering why content strategy is important seems straightforward, right? However, as you dive deeper into the components of a long-term strategy, you’ll soon realise there’s a lot more to it than we originally thought.

Why content strategy is important?

Typically the answer to why content strategy is important would be to achieve goals. Your content strategy lends itself to so many different aspects of marketing you may as well utilise it.

What can I do with a long-term content strategy?

A content strategy provides a roadmap for your content. It makes sure that content supports every aspect of the business and is connected to the overall business goals. While 86% of brands have someone in charge of their content strategy, why wouldn’t you get your foot in the door of the benefit they’re experiencing?

Set Goals

Should I get us started with something we all thought of first? 

In an ideal world, every piece of content should be linked to a goal. 

The goals you link to content should be S.M.A.R.T – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.

For example, let’s say your overarching goal is to increase quarterly online bookings by 100.

Look at your site data, see how many site visits it takes to reach 100 bookings and use this to break down your goal.

Your SMART goal may look like this:

“Increase the number of visits to the site from 1200 to 1500 per month” 

Audit and assess

Auditing your situation gives you insights into what you have right now and what you may need in the future.

For content marketing, there are two main audits you should consider. These are content audits and event-based audits.

A content audit helps identify all assets used within the content you already have to engage and attract your audience. 

Check out our blog for a in-depth guide on how to run an SEO content audit for your website

An event-based audit identifies upcoming projects, priorities or events that would involve some form of content creation.

You may consider using a spreadsheet to compile all of your team responsibilities. This will allow you to see where priorities lie in the long term for content output.

When you break down events, add blog topics for each event to link back to. It may also be useful to note an inbound marketing campaign for events to tie it all together.

Know your buyer journey and persona

Your buyer persona is mainly based on the real data from your business. Although there will be some educated speculation on demographics, behaviours, motivations and goals.

This will help you to understand information about who your buyers are. Generally speaking, it’s recommended to have 3 – 5 personas for an effective content strategy.

This links to your buyer journey which is the process someone goes through leading up to a purchase. There are 3 key steps included in the journey: awareness, consideration and decision. Think of the steps as a flowing stream and they should seamlessly flow one into the other, especially on the buyer’s end.

When you combine the buyer’s journey and persona you can understand both the goals and the challenges experienced by the buyer. This opens up the runway for you to tailor content to support their knowledge from the beginning to the end of their journey. 

Where do we go from here?

By now you’ve either realised your content strategy needs some work or you are smug as can be after realising your strategy does cover all of the above all you had to do was organise it. 

We’ve unpacked why content strategy is important in the long term and how this strategy will benefit the business not just you as a marketer.

If your strategy still needs some work, every day is a learning day and nothing has to be right the first time. Although with your newfound knowledge you won’t feel out of the content loop for a long time. 

We know the Digital Strategy isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

Here at ROAR, we offer Digital Strategy Consultancy to run a fresh pair of eyes over your business.

Book a call with one of our specialists today