How to create an enterprise content marketing strategy

What is enterprise content marketing?

Enterprise content marketing is designed to attract and engage a large-scale organization’s target audience. 

Scale and complexity sets it apart from traditional content marketing. While traditional content marketing focuses more on individual campaigns and smaller target markets, enterprise content marketing takes a more holistic and integrated approach. You want your brand to be the one that everybody looks to as an expert in the industry.

When it comes to content marketing, the most successful enterprises create spread the wealth across multiple channels that each cater to larger, more diverse audiences. This strategy aligns content efforts with broader business goals to drive brand awareness, thought leadership, customer engagement, and, ultimately, business growth. 

How to build an enterprise content marketing strategy in 7 steps

We’ll assume you already know how to build a content strategy, so we won’t go through every step of that process. Regardless, enterprise content marketing requires its own set of tools and strategies to be successful. Here’s what you need to scale your current strategy.

1. Choose the right CMS

You probably already have a CMS. Does it make publishing content easy or is it an obstacle to be overcome? The right CMS will streamline workflows while you grow your content strategy. Here are a few characteristics to look for in a CMS:

• Simplicity: Simple doesn’t mean simplistic. An easy-to-use interface makes it easier topublish and update content without extensive technical knowledge or training. Ideally, you never need someone from the dev team to make a quick website copy change.

• Flexibility: Different teams have different publishing needs. A CMS should support various content formats, include customizable templates, and allow integration with other marketing tools in your tech stack.

• Scalability: You need a CMS that will grow with you. Look for an option that easily integrates with emerging technologies and supports evolving content management practices. 

2. Expand your team

A one-person content team won’t cut it as you shift to enterprise content. If you want your content to stand out,  consider adding to your team include: 

• Content writers

• Editors

• SEO analysts

• Strategists

• Project managers

• Designers

• Art directors

• Front- and back-end developers

Alternatively, you could hire freelancers or contract with a third-party agency that specializes in enterprise content marketing. If you go this route, take extra care to outline your needs and processes with the following documents:

• Content strategy

• Style guide including voice and editorial notes

• List of approved topic categories

• Design notes and examples

• Workflow notes

• Stakeholder contacts

• Timelines for creating, editing, and publishing content

3. Create content for all stages of the funnel

You need content that reaches potential customers in every stage, not just top-of-funnel customers. Examine your target audience’s pain points and create content that addresses those challenges every step of the way. 

Top-of-funnel (TOFU): Top-of-funnel content should immediately grab the reader’s attention with an answer to a common question or a digestible explanation for a complex topic. You might subtly tie back to your product or service, but you aren’t selling to them—yet. Examples include:

• Listicle blog posts

• Definitional blog posts

• Infographics

Middle-of-funnel (MOFU): Middle-of-funnel content provides more in-depth information that addresses your audience’s specific pain points. The goal is to move them closer to making a purchase decision. These readers are interested in your product or service, they just need a little more information. Examples include:

• Downloadable templates

• Email newsletters

• Podcasts

Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU): Bottom-of-funnel content should be the most specific to a niche audience. Ideally, it addresses any remaining concerns with highly specific answers and incentives to help customers make a decision. Examples include:

• Webinars

• Ebooks

• Competitor comparison blog posts

• Demos

• Pricing pages

• Product pages

4. Extend your list of competitors

As your content strategy scales, your list of competitors may as well. Develop this list further to stay informed about the market landscape and emerging trends so you can position your content strategically. Revisit your competitor analysis to account for: 

• Direct competitors: You need to expand your list of direct competitors when your target market grows. Analyze your new direct competitors’ pricing strategies and value propositions so you can position your content accordingly.

• Content competitors: Some brands you compete with for keywords won’t be your direct competitors. Identify who creates the same types of content as you and take note of their strategies, topics, and formats. Use this research to fill in any content gaps or explore new formats to minimize the divide between what you and your competitors' content offers.

You should also examine your competitors’ content at each stage of the customer journey. What pain points are they addressing? Which content formats are they using and at what stage? 

5. Update existing content

Don’t worry—you don’t need to start from scratch if you’re refreshing your strategy. You can revamp most of your existing content to fit your new content plan. Here’s how to make content updates part of your strategy:

1. Audit existing content: Take inventory of your content and evaluate each piece based on criteria like relevance, accuracy, alignment with goals, performance, and branding. Identify content gaps, outdated or underperforming pieces, and opportunities for improvement.

2. Perform SEO updates: Prioritize content that just needs a quick edit for freshness or keyword re-optimization. Then perform more extensive edits on content that’s still topically relevant but needs a full rewrite or design makeover to be successful.

3. Unpublish content: Pieces that are totally irrelevant or low-quality should be pruned from your website. Redirect this content to higher-performing pages that address the same intent, mark it as no-index, or unpublish it completely as a last resort. This will increase your credibility and make room for new and improved content to shine.

6. Track results (not just vanity metrics)

Brand awareness metrics like page views might suffice for a smaller organization, but larger enterprises need actionable metrics that show your content drives business results. Track these metrics to see the real impact of your content:

• Keyword rankings: A keyword ranking is where your post appears in search engine results when people search for a specific phrase or keyword. If you have high keyword rankings in relevant topics, it’s a sign your brand is an authoritative source on the topic and your content is hitting search intent.

• Conversion rates: Conversion rates shed light on relevant copy or effective CTAs by highlighting the percentage of people who take a desired action on your content. A conversion could involve making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. Conversion rates also demonstrate your content is moving people through the buyer’s journey.

• Click-through rates: A click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click a link compared to the number of people who saw it. This engagement metric tells you what content interests your audience enough to make them want to learn more. 

• Resource downloads: Downloads show your content is valuable as it tracks how many people have downloaded a specific resource like an ebook or whitepaper from your website. They also move prospective customers through the sales funnel. And if your resources are gated, you’re also generating leads.

• Leads: Leads, or potential customers who have shown interest in your product, indicate relevant content and optimization for the right stage of the funnel. They’re also a direct business result of your content that contributes to company growth.

• Sales: This ultimate metric tracks revenue generated from your content. Note which content drives sales and replicate those results wherever you can. 

7. Invest in the right content marketing tools

Content marketing software is a broad category, providing multiple functions for brainstorming, planning, publishing, and more. Tools like CMSs are often necessary to fully streamline and scale content creation, review, and publishing workflows. While there are plenty of content marketing tools on the market, Airtable is ideal for enterprise organizations thanks to the following features:

• Data sync: When you update data in one place, it will update everywhere else. This keeps content teams on the same page and saves time on manual updates.

• Flexible data model: Airtable is a great content marketing tool, but it can also be used for other marketing use cases like content calendars, marketing campaign management, event management, and more. You can connect all your teams and data within one tool instead of scattering them across multiple tools.

• Advanced automations for scale: Set rules to handle recurring, manual tasks like status updates throughout the content creation lifecycle. You can also integrate Airtable with other tools in your tech stack and create triggers like sending a Slack message to the relevant stakeholder when a piece of content is ready for approval.

• Drag-and-drop interface designer: Create a completely custom and interactive interface—no coding necessary. The Current User filter also lets collaborators view only the information that’s relevant to them. For example, writers can view just their assigned tasks and not the entire content plan. 

• Dynamic views: Choose from a variety of views so you can manage different types of content effectively. For instance, you can view upcoming blog posts in a content calendar or visual digital assets awaiting approval in a gallery.

Enterprise content marketing examples

These companies scaled their content workflows to drive sustainable growth. Airtable helps enterprises streamline workflows, collaborate across cross-functional teams, and create a source of truth to increase efficiency. 

Dropbox used Airtable to create a content tracker app to streamline the intake process, share personalized alerts on the status of a project, and send out automated weekly email digests of every piece of published content. This workflow upgrade helped their team produce blogs three times faster and contributed to a 30% increase in blog traffic.

Equinox also built a centralized content system with Airtable that allowed them to produce fitness classes 400% faster. This source of truth contains all their content data—from virtual classes to music licensing, making it easier to track performance and forecast needed resources. Personalized views also helped collaborators see only what was relevant to them to complete their tasks more efficiently.

Enterprise content marketing requires better resource management and streamlined workflows. To level up every aspect of your marketing department, check out how Airtable works as a marketing campaign management tool.