Sports Marketing Examples: 12 Campaigns That Scored Big
Content marketing consists of many moving parts.
You’ll have to brainstorm, create, publish and distribute content that aligns with your business goals, solves your customers’ pain points and converts.
That’s not all. You’ll have to test and measure the success of your content across multiple platforms.
Without a content marketing plan, things can get pretty overwhelming. According to the CMI's B2B Content Marketing Report, 60% of the top-performing marketers have a documented content marketing strategy.
Creating a content marketing plan is like having a treasure map that leads to marketing success. It outlines how you'll use your content to reach your target audience and achieve your marketing goals.
So how do you create an impactful content marketing plan? Or even if you have one, how do you revamp your existing plan?
In this blog post, we'll explore how to create an impactful content marketing plan that will help you connect with your audience, build brand awareness, drive traffic, generate leads, and ultimately increase sales.
A content marketing plan is a strategic roadmap that outlines how your business intends to execute a content marketing strategy. It serves as a guide to consistently produce, distribute and monitor content that aligns with your brand and resonates with your customers.
Of all the marketing plans your business uses regularly, the content marketing plan is one of the most important. Ideally, it would help if you used a content marketing plan alongside a digital marketing plan and a social media marketing plan. Combining these ensures that your marketing efforts align with your company's goals.
The terms plan and strategy are often interchangeable in business. But when it comes to content marketing, it’s more effective to distinguish between the two.
A content marketing plan can’t exist without a content marketing strategy. Without a strategy, there is nothing to plan!
The content marketing strategy is the “Why” behind your content, and the content marketing plan is the “How” and “What.”
During the strategy process, you define things like:
The plan, on the other hand, takes care of things like:
A content marketing plan is vital because, without it, you and your team wouldn’t know how to execute the content marketing strategy.
There are a few more reasons why a content marketing plan is an important business activity.
A content marketing plan is a digital document that includes all the essential information about the content marketing strategy and everything the team needs to know about executing it effectively. Here’s a list of what typically goes inside a content marketing plan. We’ll look at each in detail in the following section.
Your content marketing plan combines several smaller plans, processes and workflows. Since the plan is the “how” for the strategy, you’ll need to have a strategy in place first.
Then in the plan, you’ll summarize the strategy to keep track or reference. Ideally, create your content marketing plan as a digital document that includes links to all the other marketing and sales-related documents.
For an optimal plan creation process, have an outline ready to help you build from.
Let’s get started.
On one or two pages of the plan, provide a summary of the overall marketing strategy. Pinpoint essential bits and pieces of the strategy and, ideally, build a sort of dashboard with the following key sections:
If you need guidance to create a comprehensive content marketing strategy, read our indepth guide.
The following section in your content marketing plan is the first How of the equation; the content creation process and workflow.
First up are the content types that’ll be produced during the plan’s timeframe and the frequency of their output. You’ll also want to share the repeatable process for all the pieces of content, from brief to publication.
Use a process map visualization to describe precisely what steps to follow. Ensure that the steps are clear, and add notes to explain who is in charge of what step and who has approval rights when applicable. Better yet, define roles and responsibilities of everyone in the content team with an organizational chart.
Apply hotspots and popups for extra descriptive information, like what happens when a piece of content isn’t approved or when it’s taking longer than its scheduled due date.
Here’s a typical step-by-step content creation workflow process:
Decide on what type of workflow you want to work with or make it adaptable for what you need to keep track of. Two workflow styles you’ll want to consider are task-based workflows and status-based workflows.
A task-based workflow is like a chronological system that follows tasks in a particular order, while status-based workflows depend on ongoing status reports for the completion of all tasks. In both cases, there are dependencies, and those need to be clearly stated throughout the process workflow.
Finally, identify what tools your team will use for the workflows and processes for content creation, distribution and promotion. First of all, you’ll need Visme and, ideally, a Monday.com account to integrate with.
The Visme content team, for example, uses a status-based Notion board to keep track of blog content briefing, writing, editing, designing, optimization and publishing.
Share an overview of brand voice, tone and messaging guidelines. In this section, highlight key terms to use that are vital for the brand tone. Also, mention which terms that cannot be used under any circumstances. Other messaging and tone guidelines include:
Don’t have brand guidelines or style guides? Use a Visme brand guidelines template to create a comprehensive style guide for the content team and beyond. It’s always a good idea for everyone who’s creating content for your brand to know all the details.
Here’s an eye-catching template you can use to create one right away.
Content calendars keep your team organized. Tools like Google Sheets, Excel, Notion, Monday.com or a Visme content scheduler are great options to have on hand. Here are the elements you should include in your calendar:
Made with Visme Infographic Maker
You can take a page out of this content marketing plan and brainstorm ideas for your content:
The beauty of using Visme is the content scheduler is right there on your dashboard. You can plan, create, schedule and distribute content for posting to multiple media channels without switching to another platform.
This tool is ideal for distributing visual graphics, carousels, and videos to your social media followers. To get started with the Visme social media scheduler, first connect your business’s social media pages. Then start adding content created with Visme into the calendar, matching the best channels and best times to post according to your content audit.
Next is the section where you explain your promotion and distribution plan. These are the steps to take after a piece of content has been approved and published. Include the chosen distribution channels and how each content will be shared. Some instructions could potentially include statements like:
This section proves that a content marketing plan isn’t just for the content marketers in your team but also for the social media manager, community manager and email specialist.
Continuing from the distribution and promotion plan is the communication plan. This section describes who the people in charge are, how team members can communicate with them and when.
Include a list of collaborators and stakeholders along with their role, approval status and if they’re active or inactive in the content marketing strategy. Here’s an example of a list of people who could be involved in a content marketing plan:
To create a comprehensive communication plan, use one of Visme’s templates and then link to it inside your content marketing plan. The advantage of doing it this way is that you can take full advantage of all key sections that make up a communication plan.
These sections include topics like specific instructions about your company’s communication processes, key messaging explained in detail, a schedule for reporting deadlines and strategies to measure communication success.
Another section you’ll need in the content marketing plan is information on how to track and monitor KPIs and performance, both for how the content is created and how it performs once it’s been published, distributed and promoted.
The KPIs you track are directly related to the goals you set in your strategy. The point is that by tracking KPIs aligned with your goals, you can get a good idea of whether the content you’re producing is giving you the results you seek.
Below are the essential KPIs for each content marketing goal.
KPIs for increasing brand awareness:
KPIs for generating more leads:
KPIs for increasing conversions:
Performance, on the other hand, is twofold. You can track the team’s content production performance using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). With OKRs, the team leader helps team members set clear content objectives that align with the strategy and create a list of key results they must achieve.
You can track content performance with KPIs like referral traffic, social media likes, comments and shares, follower growth over time, content click-through rates, bounce rates and other performance metrics with tools like heatmaps.
For increased productivity and ease of use, include a link to a pre-designed template for reporting content KPIs. Collaborate with your team to track performance at every step of the process according to the predetermined strategy.
In the KPI report template, include branded data visualizations for team members to edit with relevant data. Alternatively, add a live data feed from your social media or blogging platform straight into your Visme report.
You might be asking why these three sections are last. It’s because you’ll do a better job of them once the body of the plan is complete and you have a good idea of what’s inside the document.
Starting with the table of contents or summary will only force you to return to them and adjust any changes that weren’t in your outline to begin with. By doing them at the end, you save time and effort.
For the cover, add the plan's title and include the time frame it covers. For the visual, use a brand photo, one of the millions of stock images or even better, create your own AI-generated image with the Visme AI Image generator inside the editor. You can prompt the AI to use your brand colors and brand tone to create an ideal image that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Use the automatic page numbering feature to add a page number to each slide/page of your plan. Then use these numbers to build up the table of contents. Take advantage of the vast collection of icons to create a table of contents that’s dynamic and interesting.
The executive summary introduces the reader to the content marketing plan with a quick overview of what’s inside. You can make the executive summary personal or formal; mention exactly what to expect from the plan.
If you need help writing an executive summary, read our comprehensive guide on the matter.
The final step before sharing the plan with all stakeholders is to proofread, double check and edit the information inside the plan. Use your workspace feature to ask team members for feedback on any section of the plan by assigning it to them.
Once finalized, share your content marketing plan as a live link or a downloadable PDF. Remember that if you add any interactive elements, they will be left out of a PDF file. That’s why it's better to share the document as a live Visme link that people can view on any device. Plus, when you share a live interactive document with Visme, you can track who opened it, when and from where.
Using a template for a document like a content marketing plan is a good idea. Not only do you save time with design and layout, but a lot of the guesswork is removed as well. Templates lay out the groundwork for you to build upon.
This template, for example, includes sections for the content goals, the content types, the editorial calendar and the promotional checklist. All you need to do is add your further areas, and you’ve got a great-looking content marketing plan for your team to reference and work with.
With Visme, you can keep all marketing plans organized and easily referenced. Not only can you create PDF plans, but you can also create digital and interactive plans that will make work easier for yourself and your marketing teams. Plus, when you use the Brand Wizard, you can ensure that all your plans, strategies, and business documents align with your branding.
If you’d rather create a compact content marketing plan, use this infographic template. By summarizing critical information, you can build a dashboard-style content plan that can divert to the complete plan through a link.
Have you got pressing questions about content marketing and content marketing plans? Here are some frequently asked questions that will clear up any doubts.
The Golden Circle is a business strategy framework designed by Simon Sinek. Visually, the Golden Circle is made up of three concentric circles. The smallest one in the center is the Why, the second one outwards is the How, and the outermost circle is the What. Since the Golden Circle is a versatile framework, it’s easily adapted for content marketing.
Applying the Golden Circle to content marketing helps understand the reasoning behind why you can’t have a content marketing plan without a content marketing strategy. The Why in content marketing involves creating a strategy that aligns with company values, strategic goals and your customer’s needs.
First, figure out Why you’re working on your content marketing, then solve the mechanics of How to create the What by using a content marketing plan.
A content marketing mix combines content types that align with your strategic vision and are relevant to your readers and customers. Not all content marketing mixes are the same because they depend on what you want to achieve with your content.
The most effective content marketing mixes are the ones that cover every stage of the customer journey through your sales and marketing funnel. These mixes include not only blog content but also social media, video, educational material, experiential content and many more types.
The 4 Cs of content marketing are a group of critical factors that help marketers create better and more effective strategies.
The 4 Cs stand for Consumer, Cost, Convenience and Communication, which in turn are a new and updated version of the 4 Ps of Marketing; People, Place, Promotion and Price.
Consumer (People)
The first and most important of the Cs is the consumer. All the content you create must be consumer-centric and consumer-first. You need to know the consumer as well as you possibly can. And to do that, you need a customer persona or buyer persona.
Cost (Price)
The following C is Cost. The cost of content marketing doesn’t only include the price of creating the content and publishing it. It also has the cost for the reader to reach the content and your content creators’ tools to be able to do what you require from them. Other costs include content distribution and promotion, optimization, software, human resources, studio rentals, etc.
Convenience (Place)
Convenience refers to how easy it is for the reader or consumer to see your content. It's not just about the place where it’s published or shared but also about how easy it is to get there. Does it take lots of clicking to get to a blog post? Do social media links direct people to the right landing page? Are the emails directed to the best possible content location? In essence, how convenient is it for your content to be consumed?
Communication (Promotion)
Content isn’t just promoted anymore; it’s part of a communication process between your brand and the consumer. Content doesn’t move in one direction (from you to the consumer); it's more about community and information exchange. With communication, you can personalize content to match your consumers’ needs better than simply sharing content.
Created initially by SmartInsights, the Content Marketing Matrix is a visual tool that helps marketers audit, ideate and plan content for a content marketing strategy.
Along the horizontal axis, content is displayed along the awareness and purchase stages. On the vertical axis, content is mapped according to its rational or educational value. The two quadrants at the top from left to right, are Entertain and Inspire, and the bottom two are Educate and Convince.
The idea is that the content is balanced across all four quadrants for a comprehensive content marketing strategy. You can then emphasize certain areas depending on what section of the funnel you’re creating content for.
In this guide, we discussed why it’s essential to incorporate a content marketing plan into the mix. When you use a content marketing plan, you remove all guesswork and potential confusion for your team.
Ready to make it count? Visme has everything you need to streamline your content marketing efforts. First off, you can easily create the content marketing strategy and plan, plus all sorts of other marketing plans, proposals, briefs and other business documents.
Visme has an extensive library of templates for creating content for every stage of the marketing funnel, including infographics, videos, social media posts, podcast visuals and whitepapers, ebooks, courses, product and sell sheets and more.
The best part? Visme’s online content calendar and social schedule keep your team organized. You can easily plan, publish and automate your content—all on one platform.
Create your team account today and give your business the content boost it needs.
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