Developing a content strategy document is essential if you’re ready to take a more strategic approach with your content. The first step is to know which content strategy deliverables you can expect.
Whether you want to develop it in-house or let the agency take care of that, it’s crucial to know the must-haves in content strategy. And in this blog post, we’ll tell you exactly what to expect regarding content strategy deliverables.
Let’s dive in!
What Is a Content Strategy?
Content strategy is a document (usually PDF) that outlines absolutely everything about your content marketing efforts.
From types of content and content marketing mission to content style guidelines – content strategy deliverables represent the website content strategy framework of everything you need to create, write, rank, distribute, and succeed with your content.
What Are Content Strategy Deliverables?
We’re all about straightforward and valuable content, so let’s cut straight to the chase. These content strategy deliverables are absolutely a golden standard and a foundation for your content:
Content Audit
The first step should be a content audit if you’ve already published content. Why?
By analyzing your current content and its performance and seeing what worked and what didn’t, you won’t repeat the same mistakes and start with content strategy from zero. However, it’s even more important to figure out WHY things worked or didn’t. That’s what content audit is all about.
What questions should content audit answer?
- What type of content have you created? (Blog posts, case studies, explainer videos, landing pages, etc.)
- What’s the percentage of top-of-the-funnel, middle-of-the-funnel, and bottom-of-the-funnel content pieces?
- What’s the main traffic source for the content? (Is it organic traffic, paid traffic, or social media referrals?)
- Is content optimized for search engines? If not, does it make sense to do SEO for existing content (spoiler alert, it does – the question is whether it’s your priority)? If yes, how can you improve rankings and drive more organic traffic?
- What are the current metrics of the website? Focus on the number of high-quality backlinks and domain authority, the number of organic keywords that bring traffic to the website, average engagement time, and of course, clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and conversions.
- Conclusion outlining why your content performs the way it does.
For example, if your website generates traffic, but your conversions are relatively low, you’d want to create more middle-of-the-funnel and bottom-of-the-funnel content and naturally interlink it with top-of-the-funnel content. That’s how you move potential customers from one stage of the buyer journey to the next until they convert.
Content Marketing Mission
Why do you create content? Go beyond “We are a business; we have to make money.” If that’s why you create content, you’re doomed. As a content strategy deliverable, the content marketing mission is something everyone in the company should live by.
The key content strategy deliverables, including its mission, must come from the heart. A vital part of developing your mission is talking with employees, from C-executives to the customer support team, and getting everyone’s perspective.
Use the following content marketing mission framework to develop yours:
YOUR IDEAL CLIENT + WHAT + WHY
For example, Phrase It’s content marketing mission is:
A place where established businesses non-exposed online learn how to get online visibility and traffic, build brand awareness and increase their revenue.
Pro tip: Brainstorm with other team members using this framework and find overlapping ideas.
Content Execution
This content strategy deliverable is what makes it or brakes it. It needs to have types of content you’ll create, for which stages of the buyer journey, and in-depth keyword research (we’re talking thousands of keywords).
The art is finding low-hanging fruit and choosing the priorities among thousands of different options. Content execution is all about tactics that will fuel your content strategy.
Will you focus on creating top-of-the-funnel content in the form of blog posts and target keywords with informational intent? You don’t want to write blog posts and optimize them for keywords that have commercial intent. You also don’t want to optimize pages on your website for keywords irrelevant to your offer.
The choice you make with your content execution should be backed with thorough research and data to get the best results (or any at all).
After creating this content strategy deliverable, you should know the following:
- What will you create and share? Here are some ideas:
- Explainer videos
- Instagram reels
- Blog posts
- Case studies
- Landing pages
- Roundup
- Lead magnets
- Customer success stories
- Original research
- Checklists
- Comparisons
- Guides
- Service pages
- Thought leadership content
- What part of the funnel is your primary focus? Create a healthy balance between top-of-the-funnel (awareness), middle-of-the-funnel (consideration), and bottom-of-the-funnel (decision) content.
- What are the core topics you want to cover in your content? This is individual and based on your industry and the product or services you offer.
- The keywords you want to rank for. Every keyword on this list should have appropriate metrics, including keyword difficulty, monthly search volume in your targeted country, and global monthly search volume. The art is to start with keywords you have a high chance to rank for that also have decent monthly search volume.
- How to create and connect everything above in a strategic way to increase your chances of achieving desired results.
Content Distribution
SEO is great, don’t get me wrong. But SEO is just one of the hundreds of potential content distribution channels, and you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. The main disadvantage of SEO as a distribution channel is that it takes time (from months to years). And that’s where other content distribution channels play a vital role.
Before SEO takes off, you shouldn’t just sit and wait. Instead, create a content distribution strategy by repurposing every piece of content you publish for different channels.
You’ve published a 2000-word blog post? Great, use it to create & publish fifteen LinkedIn posts, make short-form videos explaining the main points, and include a call to action to read the blog for more information.
You also shouldn’t use dozens of channels for content distribution. Find a sweet spot and focus on three channels for starters, and take it from there. Here are some ideas for content distribution channels you can use depending on your industry, ideal client profile, and business goals:
- Facebook Company Page
- LinkedIn Company Page
- Instagram Business Profile
- LinkedIn Creator Account(s)
- Facebook Groups
- Display Ads
- SEO
- PPC Ads
- Facebook / IG Ads
- LinkedIn Newsletter
- LinkedIn Article
- TikTok
- Reels
- Twitter Thread
- Email Newsletter
- Medium
- Quora
- Youtube Shorts
- Youtube Videos
- Podcast
Ideal Client Profile(s)
Before you create, write, and publish content, you have to know who you want to attract & convert. Creating an ideal client profile goes beyond “We want to target C-executives in large corporations.” How do you nail it?
Content strategist(s) that create your content strategy needs to ask the right questions and do in-depth research on your ideal client. How? By conducting interviews with employees whose main responsibility is to deal with clients.
It can be your sales team, customer support team, a customer success team, C-suite, etc.
After creating your ideal client profile, you’ll know the following:
- What they are like in business and outside of business.
- Their role.
- Their pain points.
- The problems they want to solve.
- The priorities they have.
- Where do they get information?
- On which channel do they spend time?
- Demographic features (education, age, location).
You can create multiple ideal client profiles based on the products and services you offer.
The ideal client profile will guide you in other content strategy deliverables, such as content distribution, the type of content you’ll create, and your content mission, because all of these will depend on your ideal client’s preferences.
Competitor Analysis
There is a difference between direct and indirect competitors. Indirect competitors compete with you for the same audience, but they offer different solutions than you. Your direct competitors offer similar products and services as you.
The first step is to identify your competitors. Find a couple of direct and indirect competitors and analyze what they’re doing with content. This will provide you with basic insights into where you stand when it comes to competition.
Competitor analysis as a content strategy deliverable should also dive deeper and include things like:
- Content gap analysis (what do competitors publish that we don’t and vice versa)
- How often do your competitors publish content?
- What type of content do they publish?
- Which channels do they use to publish content?
- By utilizing the tools such as SERanking, you can get information about how much traffic your competitors have, the number of backlinks and domain authority, if they run ads, for which keywords they rank, and in which positions.
- How your business differentiates from competitors, what you could improve to rule the market, and competitors’ weak spots.
Content Style Guidelines
Staying consistent when multiple people publish content on multiple channels can be challenging. Content style guidelines are a content strategy deliverable for a reason. Consistency builds trust, and you won’t get far if you don’t stay on-brand with every piece of content you publish.
Everyone in your business who produces content, speaks to the clients, and talks about your company should have these guidelines in mind to ensure brand consistency.
Content style guidelines include:
- The tone of voice with examples.
- Unique selling proposition (USP).
- Mission & Values statements.
- Guidelines for producing content (grammar, punctuation, citing sources, scanability rules).
Content Strategy Goals and KPIs
What’s the point of content strategy? At the end of the day, content strategy is here to achieve some goals and get desired results. A vital content strategy deliverables are also goals and key performance indicators. How will you know if the content strategy is successful when you haven’t defined success?
Setting smart KPIs and measurable goals and including them in your content strategy is a must-have.
KPIs for website content strategy could be:
- 30% increase in organic traffic in a year.
- Increased time spent on the page by 15% in five months.
- Reducing bounce rate by 20% in three months.
- The overall increase in traffic by 200% in a year.
- One thousand more newsletter subscribers in 6 months.
KPIs are individual for your business, but you need to be realistic and consistent to achieve them.
Project Management and Content Calendar
Creating all of these content strategy deliverables is a time-consuming and complex task. However, it will all be worth it when you get to the implementation part.
With content strategy, you’ll get a clearer picture of who you are as a business, who you serve, and how content will help you achieve your business goals.
When you develop and implement content strategy, you remove the guesswork from content creation. But content strategy deliverables are nothing if they’re going to collect dust. Because of that, it’s essential to start with implementation right away.
Setting up a content calendar and project management software to track, edit, design, publish & optimize your content will hold everyone accountable and streamline your efforts.
Now You Know Which Content Strategy Deliverables to Expect
Pro tip: Not every piece of content you publish will draw attention, break records, and convert readers into customers. But these content strategy deliverables and the quality of their execution are your best bet to publish content that matters and get results that matter.
Remember, it’s not about one blog post that doesn’t rank well; it’s about cohesive content contributing to your overall marketing goals. Sometimes, content that doesn’t perform well is your biggest lesson and prerequisite to creating content that over-delivers.
And now that you have these content strategy deliverables examples, you have everything you need to kickstart your content!
