How to Align Content With Business Goals: 8 Strategies
Ever wondered how successful business leaders ensure their content aligns with their business goals and target audience? In this insightful Q&A, a Business Owner and CEO share their best strategies to maintain that crucial focus. Discover how focusing on education and trust building can transform content creation, and why setting primary content strategy goals is vital. With eight expert insights, this article provides a comprehensive guide to refining your content strategy.
- Focus on Education and Trust Building
- Map Out Clear Content Strategy
- Define Specific Business Goals
- Start With Strong Marketing Brief
- Create a Content Roadmap
- Solve Real Customer Problems
- Use a Clear Content Calendar
- Set Primary Content Strategy Goals
Focus on Education and Trust Building
One strategy I use to ensure our content aligns with our business goals and target audience is focusing on education and trust-building. As a certified arborist with over 20 years in the tree care industry, I understand that customers want to work with professionals who not only solve their immediate problems but also help them make informed decisions about their property. For example, we often create content centered around tree health, safety, and proper maintenance-topics that resonate with homeowners in the DFW area. Recently, we shared a blog post detailing the risks of ignoring overhanging branches during storm season. By including specific tips and real-life examples from our past projects, we demonstrated expertise and showed how proactive care can prevent costly damages. This approach not only built credibility but also drove a 15% increase in customer inquiries during the fall season when storm risks are highest.
Maintaining this focus requires us to stay deeply connected to our customers' needs. Every piece of content we share stems from common questions or challenges we hear directly from our clients. Our team also reviews seasonal trends, like the surge in pruning services in spring, to ensure our messaging is timely and relevant. My background in both the technical side of arboriculture and customer service helps me bridge the gap between what customers need to know and how we deliver that information in an accessible way. By keeping our content customer-centered and solution-driven, we continue to align with our mission of providing high-quality tree care while fostering long-term relationships in the community.
Map Out Clear Content Strategy
At spectup, aligning our content with business goals and our audience's needs is a bit like navigating a ship using both the stars and a compass. I remember early on, we sat down and mapped out a clear content strategy that functioned as our North Star. This blueprint was built on two main elements: a deep understanding of our clients' unique challenges and our company's broader objectives. It's like creating a recipe that not only tastes great but matches everyone's dietary needs. By keeping our ears to the ground through constant feedback loops-both from clients and team members-we ensure our content doesn't stray off course.
One time, a client's feedback revealed they needed more content on narrative storytelling for pitch decks. We immediately adjusted our strategy to produce resources that addressed this need, merging our content smoothly with what our audience sought most. Plus, regular team check-ins help us reassess and calibrate our actions to ensure we're not only meeting goals but staying adaptable to ever-evolving market demands. Consistency in revisiting and refining our approach keeps us focused, aligned, and hitting the right notes in our content game.
Define Specific Business Goals
When setting goals for content marketing, the first thing I want to know is what the client actually wants out of it. Are we looking for leads? Sales? Just more followers to build up a brand?
And even within this, what kind of a business goal? For example: if we want leads, are we talking high-value business contacts or just anyone who might be interested? Phone calls, direct messages, ecomm, etc. Once we know what the overall business objective is, and who our target audience is, we can set a realistic content marketing strategy that actually makes sense.
We then make sure that every piece of content we create--videos, social posts, blog articles, ebooks, white papers, whatever the case may be--ties back to that overall goal in a certain way, and is not being created just for the sake of creating more content. Keeping our business objectives top of mind when drafting our strategy helps the rollout for however long we're working on the project, be it a month, quarter, or the full year.
Start With Strong Marketing Brief
My core strategy for myself and my clients is to always start with a strong marketing brief for every campaign (or for always-on marketing). A strong brief helps drive focus to hold together content marketing into a cohesive direction across channels - online and offline. The brief has to be effective and specific to this campaign in this market for these audience segments. It has to define the marketing goal, multichannel strategy, and how that best utilizes content to deliver messages to target audiences in a flow that works cohesively across a series of touchpoints leading them to the conversion that supports your objective[s]. The brief should include at least three audience segments, outlined as proto-personas to better gain a sense of who the marketing conversation is directed to. It should articulate in a crystal-clear way the voice and tone of the campaign, so that when planning content, you pull from that established baseline - it all must come from the same key message, whether the content is written, visual, multimedia. Most importantly, the brief seals in the brand story and brand promise so it becomes the consistent feature at the center of all activities, especially content development. The brief must clarify the differentiator and how this campaign defines why the product, service, or individual is completely unique. And the content must be planned and developed out from this brief to be actionable so that it, in itself, serves the audience by aligning values and offering usable and trust-building information. The calls-to-action built in the content should reflect that as well. Don't use weak CTAs (to merely follow or subscribe). Always ask yourself: What does this content do FOR my audience? Give your audiences a reason to connect with your brand, some measure that reflects how your brand will perform for them. What are you giving them in return for them becoming your customer?
Create a Content Roadmap
One strategy I use to ensure content is aligned with business goals and target audience is by creating a content roadmap based on clear objectives. This roadmap defines key business goals, such as increasing brand awareness, driving conversions, or educating customers, and then breaks these goals into specific content topics and formats that cater to the target audience's needs and pain points. I maintain focus by regularly revisiting this roadmap to ensure all content pieces are supporting those goals. I also use analytics tools to track performance and adjust the strategy based on data, ensuring content consistently resonates with the audience while driving business outcomes.
Solve Real Customer Problems
To align our content with our goals and audience, we focus on solving real problems. We think about what our customers struggle with and create content that helps them in simple, practical ways.
We stay on track by listening to feedback and watching how people respond. If something isn't working, we fix it. This helps us stay useful and relevant.
Use a Clear Content Calendar
I use to ensure my content aligns with business goals and target audience is by creating a clear content calendar based on key business objectives. This helps me stay focused on producing content that directly supports growth, whether through lead generation, brand awareness, or customer retention. I maintain that focus by regularly reviewing performance metrics and adjusting the calendar as needed. I also keep the target audience in mind with every piece I create, ensuring it's relevant, valuable, and resonates with their needs. This alignment helps maximize the impact of my content on business outcomes.
Set Primary Content Strategy Goals
The first step in any content strategy is the most crucial. A document that sets the primary goal of the business from its content marketing, including all content tools and platforms. This can be to convert sales, raise awareness of the brand, or gain market share by reducing the price point.
Before any content ideas are even discussed, a document is prepared detailing four points:
1-What is the objective all content pieces should try to meet?
2-How will the progress of the content be measured? This can be how many leads, sales, website traffic, or even vanity metrics such as engagement and follower count.
3-Who is the key focal point. A ship with two captains will sink, especially with something intangible such as content. There has to be one person who decides on key points and is responsible for the results.
4- Details of the brand personality and tone of voice that every content piece on all platforms need to align with
This document not only keeps all content focused on achieving a primary goal, it also helps solve 70% of conflict and miscommunication about content marketing.
