I often find there’s a point in the growth of a business where the marketing that got you this far suddenly stops being enough.
It’s not necessarily because you’ve been doing anything wrong. Quite often, it’s because you’ve been busy running the business.
You’ve posted on LinkedIn when you’ve had something to say. You’ve written the odd blog. You’ve sent an email when there’s been something worth telling people about. Perhaps you’ve updated the website in fits and starts or created a case study when a particularly good project reminded you that you ought to.
Clients often tell me some version of: “We are doing marketing but it just doesn’t feel very joined up.”
And that, I think, is the important bit.
All the activities I listed above are individual ingredients. What’s often missing is the recipe that brings them together.
Strategy must be at the heart of everything
Strategy has always been one of my favourite parts of the work I do.
The writing matters, of course, but the strongest content usually starts much earlier, with an understanding of where the business is going, who it needs to reach, what those people care about and what the business genuinely has to say.
The bit I enjoy most is finding the golden thread that brings all of that together into a clear, consistent message.
Strategy is what stops your marketing becoming a collection of disconnected activities. It gives you clarity about who you’re trying to reach, signposts the purpose that underpins what you want them to understand about you and, done properly, it should lead your audience through whatever needs to change in their thinking before they’re ready to buy from you.
I often find businesses are doing plenty of marketing, but they haven’t really decided what all that activity is meant to achieve beyond ‘more visibility’ or ‘more leads’.
That’s where strategy earns its place.
And, importantly, this is also why strategy and planning are not the same thing.
It’s a common area for people to mix things up but a plan says you’re going to publish three LinkedIn posts a week, send a monthly email and write six blogs over the next six months.
It’s useful but it doesn’t tell you what you should be saying in those individual pieces of content.
If somebody isn’t doing business with you already, there’s usually a reason. They might simply not know you exist. But they may also believe they don’t need what you offer, that there’s an easier alternative, or that they could get much the same result another way.
Your content needs to shift that belief and that can’t be done without a deeper exploration of why you do what you do, or how you bring benefits to your clients.
Let’s look at an example of these belief shifts. I use this one in my own business, and it’s focused on AI. Someone might believe it’s cheaper, quicker and easier to use AI to create their content than to work with a copywriter.
If this is the case, I need to help them see that AI curates what already exists. But your own unique experience, opinions, examples, judgement and personality are the things that make your content distinct.
Producing words has never been easier. Knowing what you should be saying, why you’re saying it and who needs to hear it takes more thinking than ever.
That’s the strategy. The blog, LinkedIn post, email or conversation I use to communicate it comes afterwards.
Storytelling is how people remember the strategy.
Once you understand those messages, you need to make them interesting enough for people to notice.
This is where the power of storytelling lies.
I sometimes find clients think “our story” means the story of how the company started. That can be part of it, but there’s so much more.
Your stories are happening all the time.
They’re in the client conversation that made you rethink something. The problem you’ve solved for the tenth time and realised other businesses probably have too. The way you approach a piece of work differently from your competitors. The mistake that taught you something. The opinion you hold because you’ve spent years actually doing the job.
And the narrative keeps unfolding.
Over six or twelve months, the core strategy might remain remarkably consistent, but the stories you use to bring it to life change. That’s what stops consistent marketing becoming repetitive.
It also means you don’t have to keep dreaming up completely new things to talk about. Your core messages give you something to keep coming back to, while your experiences, conversations and stories give you fresh ways to bring them to life.
Being heard in a very noisy room.
This matters even more now because creating content has become incredibly easy.
If there’s one thing the bots have done, it’s highlight the importance of strategy when it comes to marketing and content.
AI means almost anybody can generate a competent blog or LinkedIn post in seconds. The result is a lot more content competing for the same attention.
I don’t think the answer is to shout louder or publish more for the sake of it.
The businesses that stand out are the ones that know what they want to be known for and keep finding interesting, human ways to demonstrate it.
That means taking your strategy, layering in your own experiences and stories, and then surrounding yourself with consistent, high-quality content.
Your blogs can explore an idea in depth. Your emails can bring people back to it. LinkedIn can start the conversation. Your case studies provide the proof. Your website makes the positioning clear.
Different pieces of content, one recognisable story and a single golden thread running through all of it.
This becomes particularly important at the point when a business owner is trying to grow but can no longer personally hold every part of the marketing.
If your messages, voice and thinking only exist in your head, they’re incredibly difficult to delegate.
My advice is to build the strategy first, turn it into a body of content and, over time, you create something other people can work with too. A junior marketer, an external specialist or a wider team has a much clearer sense of what the business should sound like and what the marketing is actually trying to achieve.
That’s when the recipe becomes repeatable.
Having a strategy makes all the individual pieces add up to something bigger. And surrounding yourself with content means those messages keep showing up consistently, wherever and whenever somebody encounters your business.
Not content for the sake of it. Content that spreads the word, builds your reputation and helps your business stand out from the crowd.
If you'd like to discuss a more strategic approach to your content marketing, drop us a line or book a discovery call.
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