Marketing is a game. We know the objectives, the rules, and the players, but the board is always changing.

Consumer tastes, technology, strategies, and economies all impact the way the game is played. So sometimes, it can be helpful to consult a strategy guide and make sure you’re still headed in the winning direction. That’s why I thought it might be helpful to create a strategy guide to the game of content marketing.

No matter what level you’re at, it never hurts to make sure your strategy is still on course. Hat tip to Oliver Emberton for the inspiration.

Choosing Your Character

Your game starts with choosing your character. In content marketing, there are a lot of options available to you. You don’t have to just be a copywriter to excel at content. Great content marketing can be created by designers, developers, and even a quick eyed marketer with a flair for strategy.

But the best part of content marketing is that you aren’t stuck as one character for the whole game. In fact, the more characters you can be, the better the content you’ll be able to create. Somebody who can switch seamlessly between writer, designer, and developer characters will be able to generate some cutting edge interactive content.

Your Objective

The objective of the content marketing game is simple: build relationships with your audience that eventually lead to creating customers. Reaching this point in the game requires you to unlock four achievements: 1) Creating relevant content 2) Generating leads 3) Developing workflows 4) Analyzing your results.

Understand Your Audience

You’re first task is the mini-game of understanding your audience. This task will help you get your bearings and understand what you need to do later in the game. Think of this as your training session before you take on more difficult levels.

To beat this stage of the game, you need to create a firm understanding of your target audience. What are they interested in? What is their biggest pain point? What would make their lives easier? You must be able to answer all these questions before you can proceed.

Quick hint: Creating personas for your different target audiences can be a useful exercise and make it easier for you to envision who you are creating for.

Deliver Relevant Content

Congratulations! You made it through the first level. Now it’s time to apply the knowledge you acquired in level one to deliver relevant content to your target audience.

Identify your audience’s major pain points and start developing content that can help your audience solve them. Write down a few of your audience’s interests in or out of the workplace, and provide a fresh new perspective or new ideas.

Quick hint: This level requires a lot of trial and error. However, your audience will respond to content that hits the mark with increased engagement, showing you the areas you should be focused on.

Master Distribution Channels

You unlocked your first achievement! Only three more to go. The next level is all about mastering the distribution channels you have available to you in order to give your relevant content the most reach.

These channels can include your blog, email, social media, forums, 3rd party site, guest blogging opportunities, and much more.

Quick hint: You don’t need to master ALL the channels to pass this level. Just identify a few channels that are effective at reaching your audience and focus your attention there.

Drive Qualified Leads

Once you’ve mastered your distribution channels, it’s time to start generating real business results. This level is all about generating quality leads for your business. You are already creating relevant content for your audience and making it easy for them to find. The next step is to create gated content, or content that requires completing a form to access.

This type of content should have enough value that your audience will gladly exchange their information to obtain it. White papers and e-books are the bread and butter of this level, but you can vary your offers depending on the content your audience enjoys.

Quick hint: take a look at the ungated content that has performed well and look for opportunities to expand those pieces into more substantial downloads.

Sales Enablement

Two achievements down, two to go! The next level is all about serving “the second audience” of your content: your sales team. While your external audience loves your relevant, high value content, your sales team likes it even more.

Working with your sales team to create useful content assets will not only make it easier for your sales team to reach out to prospects and build relationships, it will make you a hero in their eyes!

Quick hint: To beat this level faster, sit in on sales meetings or have a sit down with sales reps once a month to assess content needs, discuss which pieces are performing well, and plan upcoming deliverables.

Create a Content Machine

You are virtually unstoppable now! You understand your audience perfectly. You are creating content that is relevant to their needs and you have your distribution channels humming. You are generating leads with your e-books and enabling your sales team to sell more effectively. This level is all about putting these pieces together into one cohesive process.

As you scale your content operation, you need to create well defined processes and workflows for your common content projects. This keeps everything running efficiently and smoothly.

Analyze Your Results

The last level! You made it! Now the only thing standing in your way is the final boss, and it’s the scariest one of them all: analytics.

While many content marketers shy away from analytics, they are a crucial part of your content operation and you can’t beat the game without them. Define the metrics that are key to your success and start tracking them weekly.

While there are countless players in the game, many are ambling around without the right strategy or attempting to jump to a level they can’t reach yet. Winning the content game is all about unlocking the right achievements on you quest for the finish line, and building a sustainable content marketing machine in the process.

Good luck!