Steal my 1-page content strategy template

Helloooo content connoisseurs.

It’s Perrin from Content Bites.

Sometimes the toughest part of a content marketing campaign is just deciding what in the hell to do. And sometimes you spend so much time trying to figure out what to create, you lose time actually building and promoting content.

I created a 1-page content strategy framework that I’ve used for years and is built to get campaigns up and running in less than 24 hours. I’m going share that template with you today, and I’m going to walk you through it.

• Appetizers: Links from Ahrefs, Neil Patel, CMI, and more

• Main Course: Steal my 1-page content marketing template

Let’s dig in.

Appetizers: Content about content 🤯

• Tips For Writing A Blog Post In Under 60 Minutes (link)

• The CMO Disappearance Doesn’t Mean What Everybody Thinks It Does (link)

• Threads Rises to 130M Users, Seeing Steady Growth (link)

• Content Repurposing Strategy: 180k to 1.2M Followers (link)

• 11 social media trends you need to know in 2024 (link)

Main Course: My ruthlessly simple 1-page content strategy template

First things first: If you’d like to crack open (and steal) my 1-page content strategy template and follow as I explain it: view it here > and make a copy for yourself. 

While you’re doing that, a quick rant.

I’ve always thought the way people are taught to do content strategy is stupid. 

When people learn content strategy (in the content marketing sense), usually, the very first thing they learn about is… buyer’s journeys. 

They learn about all these different phases of this mythical journey, and the point of a content strategy is supposed to be to bring people in at one end (“awareness”) and nurture them all the way through to making a purchase. 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been able to hold onto customers in that orderly of a process. It’s not what people do.

People don’t show up and read your content in a sequence because you want them to. They also don’t show up, leave, and then come back and pick up where they left off. 

In other words, I’ve really never seen the buyer’s journey actually happen in the real world. 

And most of the time, the rest of the stuff people learn is similarly… I don’t even know how to describe it… PowerPointy? 

You know what I’m talking about, though: that stiff, corporate stuff.

I thought it was dumb. 

In my opinion, content strategy should just = just deciding (1) what content to create & promote and (2) prioritizing everything.

feeling like a good content strategy also had to answer the following questions:

• Who do we want to talk to?

• What content should we produce & promote?

• How should we actually do it & measure it?

But that’s about it. 

Not much more needed. 

And because of that realization…

I created a one-page content strategy template. 

I’m going to walk you through it. 

You can access it here: Link to 1-page content strategy template. 

It’s view-only, so if you want to rip a copy for yourself: file > make a copy. 

Is this a replacement for a full, robust content strategy? No. 

This is designed to get something off the ground quick. 

It’s designed for solo founders who know content marketing is crucial but also have to worry about every other part of their business.

It’s designed for the multi-functional marketing team who doesn’t have a full team of strategists and has to do a million other things. 

And It’s designed for teams who prefer to spend more time creating than strategizing.

But this is a good template that I’ve used a lot. 

If you’ll allow me a bit of horn-tooting, I don’t think there’s any more efficient way to boot up a plan for a content marketing campaign. 

It’s broken into three parts:

• Audience

• Topics

• Execution

Let’s walk through them.

Section 1: Audience

The goal of this section is to answer the question: who do we want to talk to? 

The very first thing we have to do is articulate who our ideal customer is (ICP, or ideal customer profile). 

You might have more than one, and that’s okay. It might also feel silly. But I’ve found that understanding who you’re actually talking to is mission-critical for any content strategy – and it really helps content creators in particular. 

Then, we have a section where we list our audience segments (screenshot). 

This is what I do in place of buyer’s journeys. And I think this is better: instead of slotting every possible person into a singular journey, this records specific audience segments you know you want to talk to and how you hope to talk to them. 

**Note: If you’re following along in the example, I’m imagining we’re selling B2B sales software. 

 Here, we’re recording 4 data points (screenshot):

• The segment. One of these segments will almost always be a cold audience. The other segments will depend on your business. In the examples in the template, I’m building a campaign that will market to a cold audience, sales prospects, and our current VIP customers. 

• The goal. The goal of marketing to each segment. What are we hoping to accomplish? Are we looking to expand the top of the funnel with a particular segment? Do we want to sell more stuff to current customers? Etc. 

• The outcome. If we accomplish our goal, what’s the outcome? Think: expanded reach, new leads, etc. The tangible business result you want from each audience segment. 

• Priority. Strategy is priority. You want to record the business priority for each segment here. If you’re in a growth phase, for example, you might prioritize marketing to cold audiences to build your brand. If you need to get scrappy and generate quick revenue, you might prioritize marketing to sales prospects or current customers. 

Overall, we want our audience section to clearly define audience segments and what marketing content to them will actually accomplish. 

Importantly, most content campaigns DO NOT need to list every segment of the business. Gets too muddy. Usually, you want to focus on a few important ones. 

Section 2: Topics

The goal of this section is to answer the question: what content should we create? 

Important: There’s some hidden strategy work here, which is to investigate the content your audience actually consumes. Don’t guess. No gut feelings here. Go find the information. I highly recommend SparkToro for this (not an affiliate link). This happens BEFORE you build this section. 

In this section, we need to decide on the broad topics we want to cover. 

We do not need detail here. This is not our content calendar. 

These can also change. So there’s no need to be precious. 

We’re looking for topical trends. 

What are people searching for in Google? What conversations are happening on Reddit? What are the major podcasts talking about? And so on. 

Here, we’re recording 5 data points (screenshot):

• The broad topic. Whatever the topic is, record it here. It might even be the same as last month or quarter or whatever. That’s fine; there are some topics your ICPs will always care about. The idea is just to get a solid handful of buckets. 

• “Seen most on”. Based on the “hidden” work you did above (investigating the conversations happening where your customers hang out), you should also be able to record where this topic is being discussed most. 

• High-reach examples. For every broad topic, link to some examples of that conversation actually happening. A Reddit thread. A trending YouTube video. A blog post with a bunch of traffic. Shoot for examples on different subtopics or angles. Judge reach via traffic, upvotes, views, etc. This is mostly just a reference point. 

• Reach opportunity. Based on the examples you found and the number of conversations you’re seeing, take a swing at the general reach opportunity. We’re in the land of art here – not science – so just take a guess. 

• Buying intent. Super important. How likely are people having these conversations to get their credit card out? People asking for sales software recommendations, for example, might be ready to get on a demo tomorrow. People talking about the emotional ups and downs of being a salesperson might just be venting and would be less likely to buy soon. That kind of thing. 

In other words, in this section we want to, in as small of a space as possible, create strong directional momentum for content creation. 

Section 3: Execution

The goal of this section is to answer the question: how do we actually execute on our plan and measure the outcome?

Obviously an important question. 

Here, we want to break down the 10,000-ft view of the content marketing campaign.

We’re going to break this down by audience segment, too, and we’re going to record 4 data points for each segment. 

• Content type. What kind of content are we going to produce? One row per content type. This is where you should start thinking about resources. If you’re a small team, don’t go too nuts here; even if your cadence is slow, each additional content type adds operational complexity. 

• Distribution. We also need to think about how we get this stuff in front of our customers. Take into account both your owned channels (your email list, social accounts, blog, etc.) and external channels (content partnerships, Reddit, paid traffic, etc.). 

• Cadence. Mostly a resourcing question. Generally, I try to shoot for whatever I think 70% of a full-sprint looks like. This can change, and you can ramp up to it, but you need a starting line. 

• KPI. Lastly, every content type will/can/should usually have it’s own KPI. That’s because each piece of content is for a specific audience segment, who in turn has specific goals and outcomes. You can track KPIs more broadly, but I think more granular KPIs help you fine-tune campaigns. 

And remember, this is not something a team will work from directly. You’ll have content calendars and project management systems and all kinds of other bells and whistles to get the work done.

This is just a battle plan. 

And hey… this is just my way of doing this. 

There are plenty of other great ways of doing content strategy. 

And there are certainly business cases for avoiding ultra-condensed strategies like this one. 

But I’ve found that 1-page strategies are: (1) fast, (2) easy to get buy in for, and (3) easy to communicate to a team. 

So they’re fantastic in lots of cases. 

Go forth & conquer.

—Perrin

Quick P.S. I’m piloting a program where I build & manage full content strategies/calendars for businesses. I’d love feedback from potential users.

If you’d ever be interested in this kind of service, reply to this email with “Interested”, and I’ll reach out to you.

It’s not ready yet, just looking for feedback.