8 Templates for Planning Your Content Strategy

When I was a kid, my dad would always say:

“Anne and plan: rhyming opposites.”

Well, I’m sure he knew exactly what he was doing, because his reverse-psychology mind-tricks inspired me to get organized. Now, I love solid strategies and — in fact — I know I couldn’t do my job without them.

Planning — especially when you’re doing integrated marketing — takes time, communication, and collaboration. And it’s not always easy. There are lots of moving pieces to juggle, people to get on the same page, and timelines to consider. But it’s worth it every time. Because without a clear plan, your team won’t (can’t) deliver their best work.

I think most marketers would agree that planning is important. But even still, we don’t always take the time to do it. In fact, according to CMI, only 35% of B2B content marketers have a documented content strategy.

We’ve heard this from marketers across industries, which is why we made these eight planning templates for delivering relevant, persona-driven content across teams, channels, and technologies.

With that in mind, here are just a few ways you can ramp up your planning process.

Establish your goals and objectives.

Turns out, luck isn’t a very predictable business strategy. Set goals for your team, and make sure the objectives of each campaign or initiative are outlined. With goals in place, it’s easier to make strategic choices that will get you to your end-goal, whether it’s brand awareness, increased conversion rates, lead generation, or marketing-attributed revenue.

Take control of the ideation process.

99% of marketers say a steady stream of ideas is central to their success as marketers — but how well are you able to pull these ideas from internal and external sources? By planning upfront and creating easy avenues for your prospects, customers, salespeople, and internal experts to share ideas, you’ll make discovering and delivering impactful content a seamless part of your marketing strategy.

Map content to personas and the buyer’s journey.

In a report published by Gleanster and Kapost, we found that 60% of B2B marketers have target personas for content marketing efforts. Not bad. But when you look at the top-performing B2B marketers, that number jumps to 86%. The takeaway? Map the content you create to your personas and buying stages during the planning phase of your initiatives. Because if it doesn’t resonate with your audience, you’ve just wasted your time and resources.

Build a content pillar for strategic reuse.

90% of marketers struggle with redundant content creation for different platforms, and 64% say they’re inefficient at repurposing content. The content pillar approach solves these challenges. First of all, planning content for proper reuse requires collaboration upfront, which will get internal teams on the same page from the get-go and ensure you get the most out of every asset. Also, it allows your team to fuel every marketing channel with relevant, effective content from a single asset. What’s not to love about 269 pieces of content from a single eBook?

Define workflows for content and initiatives.

Only 45% of marketers use workflows or templates to replicate the production of similar assets, vs. 80% of top performers. That’s a 35% difference, and a major indicator of how proper planning and processes can deliver real results for your marketing organization. By mapping out the tasks, deadlines, and task owners for each project and initiative, you guarantee alignment for everyone involved and clear visibility into what needs to get done and when.

These are only five ways to start planning today. And as the data explains — and as you probably know from your own experiences — proper planning can be the difference between falling short and exceeding your marketing goals this quarter.

So make your next campaign a successful one. In case you’re looking for help, these eight templates are a good place to start.

Happy planning, marketers!