Strategic marketing starts with a content audit
The content audit is a strategic evaluation of your existing content. It enables you to assess it against your customer needs and your business objectives. Why does this content exist in the first place? What business or user goal was it created to achieve? To what extent is it delivering on these goals?
- Identify underperforming and outdated content.
- Identify content that you can update and re-use.
- You can use a scoring mechanism to rate content based on how accurate and up-to-date it is, its degree of fit with current customer needs, the part of the buyer's journey it's focused upon and more. A content audit can help you with planning new content initiatives.
When you’re planning a new website
This is a perfect time to inventory the entire content of your existing website to determine what to keep, what needs updating and what should be discarded. It’s also an excellent opportunity to determine if your existing content is on-brand, accurate and up-to-date.
Launching a new product
A new product launch creates a need for a wealth of new content to support it, such as product literature, publicity to announce its availability, mentions in your company’s blog, newsletter and social media channels, and much more.
Launching a major marketing campaign
In order to launch an integrated marketing campaign, it’s a good idea to take stock of your existing content that can be leveraged as part of it. The audit will also reveal gaps that must be filled in order for the campaign to be a success.
Commit to performing a comprehensive content inventory and audit once a year. Special projects such as a new website or a new product launch should include a content audit that’s focused on the specific needs of the project (e.g., how can existing content be repurposed to support it?).