The art of content roadmapping

Content as a Product Series - Post 2: How to make a content roadmap and prioritize the right things

Aug 16, 2022

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If you lead content efforts at a startup, are the only marketer at an early-stage startup, or even a founder, you should make a content roadmap. You might already have one, but to be honest, it’s probably not doing you any favors in terms of helping you prioritize the right content —the content that will drive results. It’s also probably more of a list than a roadmap.

A content list has a bunch of ideas without much regard for the potential impact, required effort, and coverage of your marketing goals. A list doesn’t include the target audience or the goal. Your roadmap needs all of these things and more. If you put the effort into generating the right content ideas, adding the right details to your content ideas, and creating a prioritized roadmap—like how a product leader puts effort into a product roadmap—you will save a ton of time producing and distributing content later. Your growth team (even if that’s also just you) will thank you. And your content will perform better. The process may seem arduous at first, but it’s worth it—even in the early days of your startup.

This newsletter is part of a series I’m calling “Content as a Product”. The first post, Content marketing does not equal blog posts, was about creating high-impact content, this post is about content roadmapping, and the final post is about distribution. TLDR of the series: Think of content as a product. It’s not the software product you are creating, but it is another “product” for the same audience. Much like your product solves a big problem for your audience, so should your content.

This newsletter focuses on going from content idea to a prioritized content roadmap. Read the previous newsletter for more details on the “Solve problems test”, “GACC framework”, and “mileage check”

How to generate content ideas

I talked sh*t about content lists instead of content roadmaps above, but really you need both things. You need a place to park all of your content ideas (that’s the list) and you need a roadmap to make sure you produce high-impact content (that’s the roadmap).

In our previous newsletter, I covered in depth how you need to focus on writing content that solves your audiences’ problems—this is the content that will drive results. That’s the guiding principle for great ideas but its not enough to make a well-balanced roadmap. To get “full coverage” with your content roadmap—across all of your audience segments, across all the problems you solve, and across all stages of the funnel, you need to source ideas in the below ways.

Before you can create a proper content roadmap, you need to do some pre-work

Audience Analysis

What is audience analysis? For each audience segment and ideal customer persona (ICP), make sure you understand jobs to be done, challenges in workflow, other tools they use, behavior and content preferences.
How to do audience analysis: Make sure you have audience segments, not just ideal customer personas (ICPs). This means you include companies you are targeting and the ICPs within them. Talk to customers externally and customer-facing teams internally to get a full picture of each audience segment. More on this process in our previous newsletter and in our audience analysis template for paid subscribers (at the bottom of this newsletter).
Why you need this for a content roadmap? Great content starts from knowing your audience deeply, and not just how they will use your product, but a holistic view of their workday. You should have a focus audience for every piece of content you write.
How to use this to generate ideas: Researching workflows and jobs to be done for your audience is a great source for how-to content, templates, tools, and resources.

Perceptions

What are perceptions? Perceptions are short statements that serve as the brand tenets of your story for the next year or so. Marketing perceptions are what you want to be known for as a company. If done right, you’ll hear your audience repeat these back to you. All of your longer-form content, your big ideas, your potential data studies, the trends you want to weigh in on, the opinions you want to share, and your customer stories should ladder up to these.
How to write perceptions: We recommend creating 3-4 perceptions to guide your storytelling efforts. This should come after you do audience analysis. You’ve nailed it if no other company can claim this combination of 3-4 perceptions. Newsletter all about perceptions here: Perceptions: Our favorite marketing strategy exercise, including more examples.
Example of “hypothetical perception” for Salesforce at founding: “No Software” - Software is moving to the cloud. We are leading this movement.
Why you need this for a content roadmap? You need to know the overall stories you are trying to tell and the unique opinions your company holds. Otherwise your content will likely be all over the place and you’ll lack a good mechanism for prioritizing topics.
How to use this to generate ideas: Determine what content will drive these perceptions from your audience. Create a content idea list for each perception each quarter.

Basic SEO strategy aka focus keyword list

What is a focus keyword list? A list of keywords you are trying to rank for. Includes existing rank, page or post that ranks, traffic, competitiveness, and relevancy.
How to make an SEO keyword list? This is an art and science itself, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good here. Prioritize based on a combo of the above variables. It’s also helpful to have content pillars for SEO. Ahrefs has better content on these tactics than I ever will.
Why you need this for a content roadmap? It’s hard to create a content strategy without knowing what keywords you want to rank for. A focus list makes this less overwhelming and makes it easier to track progress.
How to use SEO keywords to generate ideas: While you need to make sure most content has a focus keyword, you will likely also need to come up with separate content ideas to rank for all of your focus keywords.

Funnel stages

What do funnel stages have to do with content? You need mapped out funnel stages for your growth marketing efforts (if you don’t already have it), but this funnel is also useful for content. Use that same funnel, and map existing “anchor” content to the stages by audience and ICP. Anchor content is just the most useful piece of content at that stage. Example funnel in our SDR newsletter.
How to map funnel stages to content: Make a content inventory by funnel stage. You may need a few different funnel diagrams and content mappings if you have a hybrid sales motion with a combination of a free product or free trial, self-serve, and sales-assisted motions. See the simplified example above and the detailed content inventory by funnel stage is available for paid subscribers.
Why you need this for a content roadmap? If you make content without mapping it to funnel stages you might end up with huge gaps and overlaps. This process ensures you have coverage of the full funnel—and that you have a measurable goal for each piece of content.
How to use this to generate ideas: On a quarterly basis, you should be mapping your best piece of content (aka anchor content) at each funnel stage by each audience segment and ICP. This should then guide what content you use in your growth/demand gen efforts. Wherever you have gaps, consider prioritizing content that fills those gaps.

Existing content

What? When generating content ideas, make sure you include existing content updates, expansions, and repurposes.
How to figure out which existing content to improve: Look at basic content reports that show traffic, new user traffic, sources of traffic, engagement (whether that’s CTA clicks, form fills, and/or shares). Then, identify which content you want to double down on, put more effort into distributing, and/or update. Remember, don’t look at these reports in isolation. The effort you spent distributing content matters here too. Don’t falsely assume a piece of content is “bad” if you’ve never properly distributed it.
Why you need this for a content roadmap? Your content roadmap shouldn’t just include “new” content. You should double down on things that are working. New is not the goal. Impact is.
How to use this to generate ideas: Somewhere between making a content ideas list and content roadmap, catalog what existing content you want to add to the mix. Then prioritize the new content and existing content updates together.

More from MKT1

✂️ Templates for paid subscribers: Paid subscribers can find all content & roadmapping templates here, including the audience analysis and content inventory by funnel stage templates, which are inputs into your final content roadmap (that’s in here too).

🧑‍🚀 Job board: Jobs from the MKT1 community. Paid subscribers can add jobs to our job board for free.

👁️ Related newsletters: Content Idea Generation, Content Distribution, Perceptions, Positioning Guide, and Marketing looks like product

📖 Keep reading: Paid subscribers get access to the rest of this newsletter which shows how to take the next step and move from a list of content ideas to a prioritized content roadmap.