How to create a content strategy: a practical guide for growing brands

What is a content strategy (in plain English)

If your content feels random, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common challenges we hear. Content is being created, but no one is quite sure why. Or worse, it’s not doing what it was meant to do.

That’s usually a sign the strategy isn’t clear. Or it doesn’t exist at all.

Think of it like this. Strategy is your map. Planning is the itinerary. One shows you where you’re going. The other tells you when the train leaves. Without the map, it’s easy to end up in the wrong place, even if your timing was perfect.

This is what content strategy solves. It’s the system that defines why you’re creating content, who it’s for, how it supports your business goals, and how you’ll stay consistent across teams and time.

Blank screen syndrome (also known as the modern marketer’s staring contest) is another common sign of an issue.

You know you need to post on Instagram or publish a blog, but you have no idea what to say. That’s because the golden thread (the core of what your brand stands for and how it communicates) hasn’t been clearly defined.

In this instance, I would suggest checking out our article on developing a brand voice.

The difference between planning content for B2B or B2C?

In B2B, content strategy for marketing often centres around trust, education and long-term relevance. Prospects might see your name 15 times before they ever start a conversation.

With a B2C ecommerce site for example, the content strategy looks different. It focuses more on reach, repetition and visibility across search and social.

That’s why defining your content strategy is not just about blog topics or campaign ideas. It’s about clarity. Knowing your voice, your value and your role. That way, the rest of your content doesn’t end up chasing its tail.

And, if you’re looking to get in the weeds developing a content plan or calendar system, we’ve got you covered with this content planning article.

This article stays a level higher. It’s about the why behind your content and how to make it work long term.

Why strategy comes before planning

You can have a perfect content plan and still be completely off the mark. That’s what happens when the content strategy is skipped.

78% of companies that believe their content marketing was very successful have a documented content marketing strategy.

The most common version of this is what we call product mode. It’s when teams default to posting the same messages on social media on repeat: would you like to buy this service? Do you want to book a call?

It’s not that those messages are wrong, okay actually I’ll say it, they are just wrong.

A good analogy for this is networking.

We’ve seen that person that walks into a room and immediately hands out business cards to everyone without even saying hello. That’s content without strategy.

Now compare that to the empathetic networker (the one who doesn’t treat LinkedIn like speed dating). Someone who listens, asks good questions, and makes people feel understood. Who would you rather hear from next week?

The strategy shifts the conversation from “Here’s what we sell” to “Here’s what you might be dealing with.” It starts with questions, pain points, misconceptions or goals. That’s what pulls people in.

That’s what signals expertise without having to say it outright.

One client we worked with had been posting the same three social messages for months. Minimal engagement, no visible interest. Once we built a proper content strategy, every post had a purpose.

The messaging was clearer, more human, more varied, and the results followed. Dozens of likes and new service enquiries.

This is the difference between a content strategy and a content plan. One defines the message. The other schedules it.

The strategy aligns the content to your audience, your positioning, your goals. It’s the part where you decide what to say, and most importantly, why you say it.

Strategic messaging puts the audience first. It respects their time, their questions and their decision-making process.

Once that’s in place, the plan becomes much easier. Because now, you’re not guessing. You’re guiding.

Building a Content Strategy Framework

Setting content goals that support business objectives

Lets be blunt here, your time (or getting budget for this) will need to be justified to someone more senior (who may not get it).

Which means aligning it to some business goals.

A good content strategy doesn’t start with what you’ll write, but who you’re writing for and why it matters.

That means doing the deep audience work first.

Getting specific about who you want to reach, what they care about, and what stage of awareness they’re in. We’ve written a full guide on building customer personas to help you with this.

Then there’s the customer journey they will go on, a delightful ride of research and credibility checking.

A piece of content is never just about what it says. It’s about where it fits and what happens next. Are you educating someone? Nudging them toward action? Reinforcing a belief? Making them curious? Each piece has a role to play.

Finally its worth considering the visibility of the content, Google has created a framework of grading content by Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness & Trust (EEAT – More on that later).

All of this might mean the strategy needs to be aligned with the business goal of building authority in a new region or sector, supporting lead generation, reactivating previous customers, or driving organic search performance.

When you align the two (what your audience needs and what your business needs) the strategy becomes clear and also becomes measurable.

So, speak to whoever holds the sales or marketing plan, what does the customer want? What content would support them?

Creating your content strategy framework

This is where structure comes in. Not just publishing schedules, but the actual system behind your content, what the industry might call the “content ecosystem”.

Lets break it down in human terms. No jargon, no whiteboards, no coffee-fuelled existential crises.

Imagine your brand is a book. Your services are the chapters. The blog posts, case studies, videos and campaigns are the pages.

Each one builds on the last, reinforcing the narrative and connecting the dots.

This ecosystem needs to reflect the full content journey: what people see first, what they explore next, and what gives them confidence to take the next step. It also needs to stay consistent across formats, across teams, across time.

If you are starting out, there’s a simple visual model for this: Pillars and content clusters.

Take your product/services, core themes and connected stories and create a mindmap of clusters.

If you want to think about the marketing funnel here too, then all the better.

Look on the left of the above image, it gives an idea of the types of content customers will expect to see as they move through the funnel.

That structure helps teams know what to create, where it fits, and how to link it all together.

If you’re already clear on your brand narrative, this part becomes much easier. The voice, themes and message are already defined, you’re just building the scaffolding to support it.

Adapting your framework by business type

No two strategies are the same. And trying to force a B2B model onto an ecommerce brand (or the other way around) rarely works.

Take House of Marbles, a business we’ve worked with for years, it wears multiple hats. They operate as a B2B wholesaler, a tourist attraction, and a B2C ecommerce store.

For trade customers, the content strategy focuses on building relationships. That might mean email campaigns ahead of trade shows, storytelling content that highlights craftsmanship, or direct messages that support account-based marketing.

For local visitors, the focus is more community-led. Seasonal events, behind-the-scenes content, social updates, all designed to keep people engaged and coming back.

And for ecommerce, the strategy shifts again. It’s about reach and repetition. Offers, product launches, campaign bursts. The content here needs volume, clarity and good timing.

Each audience needs something different. Each channel plays a different role. But the brand voice and strategic intent stay consistent. That’s what makes the strategy feel like a whole, not just a set of moving parts.

Knowing your audience inside out

Getting specific with audience personas

The first step is stepping out of your business head and into your audience’s shoes.

That means role play, assumptions (and ideally post-it notes). You’re not just thinking about what you sell, but what they want, what they need, and what gets in their way.

This is where customer personas come in.

Start with what you know. Recent sales. Past conversations. Customer service feedback. What job titles do they hold? What channels do they use? What do they value? You can build broad customer types and slowly give them shape.

If it feels hard to see things from the outside, you’re not alone.

Many businesses find it easier to involve someone external (ideally someone who hasn’t memorised your product brochure).

A third party (like a trusted workshop facilitator) isn’t emotionally invested in the product, so they can often spot the gaps faster, cut the waffle, keep the customer central and encourage participation from all.

According to Salesgenie More than 60% of companies that updated their buyer personas in the last six months exceeded their lead and revenue goals.

Knowing your audience pays off, but only if you update those insights as the business evolves.

We cover the top layer of this in our marketing planning workshops, then go deeper by developing personas through customer jobs, motivations and emotional hooks.

Understanding audience pain points and needs

Once you’ve identified your audience types, it’s time to get under their skin. What’s really going on in their world?

Pain points are where the best content starts. What’s causing frustration? What’s confusing or time-consuming? What are they trying to avoid, fix or achieve? And what does success look like from their side?

Start with your assumptions.

Then ask a favourite customer, or do some customer interviews if you can gather a few together.

You might get insights come from analytics. What’s getting read, clicked or shared.

Either way, they’re essential for making your content relevant and validating your theories.

The reason for this is that one common trap we often see is forgetting to update your assumptions as businesses evolve.

We’ve seen teams still writing for customers they had ten years ago, even though the offer, channel and audience have moved on.

That mismatch means it stops resonating, your current community don’t see themselves in what you’re saying.

Good strategy avoids that. It keeps your audience research alive. It uses personas to guide content that’s grounded in empathy and backed by evidence.

Creating content that performs

Creating content for different stages of awareness

Before content can convert, it needs to connect. And that starts with knowing where someone is in their journey.

We often use a sales funnel model to shape content: Awareness, Consideration, Decision. Each layer answers different questions and nudges people forward with purpose.

At the top, content is designed to introduce, not to sell. Think blog posts, social videos, PR, infographics. These pieces build recognition, not revenue. They spark curiosity, establish authority and open the door.

In the middle, content should help people weigh up. This is where case studies, webinars and comparison guides earn their keep. They show how the product or service solves a problem without forcing the pitch.

At the bottom, the content gets sharper. Now we’re talking product sheets, demos, pricing, FAQs. The audience is warm, the intent is high.

Your job is to remove friction, build trust and make the next step easy.

The biggest risk is mismatching your message to the moment. Trying to close the sale before someone’s even met you. That’s when bounce rates spike and trust drops.

A clear funnel ensures the right content shows up at the right time, if you want to dive a bit deeper into this then we have you covered in our article on creating a marketing and sales funnel.

Turning content into connected journeys

One blog on your website is not a content strategy. The real power lies in turning one great brand pillar into a connected journey.

Take our Digital Sustainable Transformation guide as an example. It started life as a 60-page PDF, we divided the guide into 8 pillars.

We turned the eight pillars into a weekly email series. With added check-in prompts, linked to deeper blog content and case studies.

Then we layered in an impact quiz to create engagement and guide people to the next step.

Its easier to envisage once you get started, this approach just makes content work harder. But instead of lots of small things becoming one big unrelated thing, make the big thing and break it down into small interrelated things.

The trick is planning these connections from the start.

Know what the customer journey looks like (what comes before the download, what follows after) and build those steps into your email platform, social content, and site structure.

Great content doesn’t sit in isolation. It mingles at the party and still knows when to leave.

It pulls people forward. Nudging them toward the next step, at their pace, in a way that feels natural.

Keeping your content strategy alive

Adapting to what’s working

Once you’ve built up a decent archive of content, you may find that old articles no longer meet the standard or relevance of the business.

There are two common approaches here.

The first is to go back and audit what isn’t working. Review the keywords, update the structure, improve clarity or depth. SEO moves fast, and what ranked two years ago might now be outdated or buried by richer competitor content.

Especially with new layers like AI overviews changing how results are surfaced.

The second approach is to double down on what’s performing. Ignore the flops. Focus instead on replicating patterns that are working. The formats, themes or topics that generate engagement and traffic.

Neither approach is wrong. The best content strategies tend to use a mix of both.

At the end of the year, review what landed. What social post and image can be reused, what blog reframed or re-sequenced?

Archive your best work and reuse it with a new headline, angle or asset.

Making your strategy a team tool

A content strategy that lives in one person’s head isn’t a strategy. It’s a bottleneck.

To make strategy useful, it has to be shared. That means getting it out of the deck and into the tools people use every day. Whether it’s a shared drive or doc, an Airtable, or a slide in someone’s onboarding, the goal is the same: make the thinking visible.

This is especially important when content crosses departments. Sales, support, marketing, ops as they all write on behalf of the brand in some way.

A shared content strategy helps them speak the same language, even if they’re speaking to different people.

We often help clients build this into their workflows. That might mean creating simple templates for content briefs, building recurring reviews into team meetings, or adding tone guidance to campaign plans.

If you need a steer on moving forward with the plan now, then our content planning article is your next step.

Avoiding the “set and forget” trap

A strategy is only useful if you keep using it. Too often, a brilliant content strategy gets written, agreed on, and then filed away. Months go by, content keeps going out, but no one checks whether it’s still on track.

We’ve seen this happen when teams get busy, or when roles shift and new people don’t get the same introduction to the strategy.

The solution is regular check-ins. That might be a quarterly review of performance, a six-month content audit, or a quick refresh at the start of every campaign. However you do it, the key is to make time for it.

Good content doesn’t just come from good ideas. It comes from staying connected to the purpose behind them.

Content strategy in action

Real-world examples that moved the dial

When Gasket Guy first came to us, their marketing was broad and reactive. There were no clear personas, no strategy, just content going out without a clear purpose.

A decade ago, we helped them develop their first customer persona: Maintenance Manager Bob.

From that point on, everything changed. We started writing blog articles and service content directly with Bob in mind. Over time, we built out six more personas, from facilities teams in retail chains to area managers in the restaurant sector.

Each one with specific needs, pain points and preferred channels.

As the personas evolved, so did the strategy. Content wasn’t just about blogs anymore. It expanded to include trade show assets, email journeys, leave-behind brochures and paid campaigns, all mapped to the needs of each persona.

This wasn’t a one-off fix. It was the result of regular check-ins and structured planning.

Understanding who the business was serving now, what those people cared about, and how to meet them where they were.

The result was a more focused marketing team and a significantly scaled business. That’s what a working content strategy looks like in action.

Using AI in your content strategy (without losing the plot)

AI is like a very enthusiastic junior.

Fast, helpful, but also in danger of doing the wrong thing without asking the right question.

You can absolutely use tools to support your content strategy, but only if you’re driving the process.

Ask it for a content strategy and it will give you one, without the context of everything you have learned from this article so far.

Step one: give it the personas. This is where your audience work comes in. If you haven’t done that yet, start here with our persona guide. With just this input, AI can begin to generate top-level content ideas. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Step two: add your brand voice. What tone do you speak in? What do you stand for? Our brand voice article can help you define that. When AI understands how your brand sounds, it stops spitting out how to “elevate your business and foster a community” and starts creating posts that actually sound like you.

Step three: bring in your strategy. If you’ve already defined your brand, thought about content pillars or clusters, AI can help flesh new ideas or original research. Be cautious its a sycophant – so every idea (including the mad one at 4am will be genius).

In short, AI is a great tool but only as good as the brief it gets. Spend time with the thinking work and let it do the doing. That’s the goal: more good stuff, less guesswork.

How to scale your strategy as you grow

A good content strategy should flex with the business. What works for one product, market or stage of growth may not work forever. That’s why scaling doesn’t just mean doing more. It means doing smarter.

Start with a clear set of personas. Then build layered strategies for each one, not just based on channel or content type, but based on how their needs shift over time.

Give those personas to your team (with beautifully alliterated names) and ask the right question: what does this person need to know? What would be genuinely useful, engaging or reassuring at this stage of their journey?

As your business grows, the strategy should become a system, a repeatable way of identifying gaps, assigning resource, creating content and measuring its impact.

It also needs space to respond. Markets change, algorithms change, people change. A strategy that scales should be structured enough to hold the brand, and flexible enough to evolve with it.

How Vu can support your content strategy

For more detailed advice and practical support in how to create a content strategy and marketing plan, we invite you to bring your team to one of our strategic marketing plan workshops.

We will demystify the process through hands-on exercises (and zero mention of the word ‘synergy’) with examples tailored to your specific business.