Prepackaged content marketing is not a real strategy.

Strategy is not generic.

a rant/thread/thing

The building blocks of a content marketing strategy—tactics—are often re-usable.

That's true.

Tactics are things like evergreen guides, gated pieces, and thought leadership articles. They can play a role in many different strategies.

**But tactics are not a strategy.**

Strategy is about defining how all of those pieces work together to achieve specific goals.

It's not just a content calendar with plug-and-play keywords and titles.

If you're being sold "3 articles per month", you're not getting a strategy. You're getting a pile of tactics.

Now, maybe those tactics *will* work for you.

(They're bound to work for someone.)

But, would you pay for a plan built for someone else's goal?

Companies don't all have the same marketing strategy—so how could the content marketing piece be interchangeable?

I'm not just talking about creating different content or targeting different keywords here.

I'm talking about the actual strategy.

*How are these words and pictures going to lead to people buying our stuff?*

This is not a generic problem to be solved with a generic solution.

For some businesses, the content marketing strategy should focus (almost) entirely on generating backlinks and domain authority to prop up specific, programmatic pages on the site.

That's where their customers come from.

I've worked with @MikeSonders on many sites like this.

He helps them optimize 1000's or millions of pages. We build domain authority to help them rank.

Other companies have only a few key pages that matter most. Much of the strategy is supporting those key pillars.

@matthewbarby & others at @hubspot have evolved this into a pillar or hub/spoke model.

But, that's still just one piece of the puzzle for many companies.

Many SaaS companies use content marketing primarily to fill the top of their funnel and qualify visitors based on need.

Then retargeting and email drives warm conversions.

I did a webinar with @coreyhainesco a few years back discussing this approach for Baremetrics users.

Some co's use content for campaigns or ABM. Sequential content, with its own role in attracting prospects & driving conversions.

I wrote about work with @claire_murdough & the HelloSign team. We used an approach like this to drive growth for them.

https://www.yesoptimist.com/saas-content-marketing-framework/

Most companies, though, have a combination of these strategies in play.

They need a tailored content marketing strategy that lines up precisely with their sales and marketing process—not something that worked once for another brand.

And, those needs will *change* over time.

Generic strategy doesn't work. Neither does a static plan that never changes.

Strategy is an evolving roadmap based on specific goals, outcomes, and conditions.

That's why prepackaged content marketing is not real strategy.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk?