One important consideration in any marketing strategy is whether you should use a long-term approach, take things campaign-by-campaign, or forge some combination of the two.
Of course, neither is inherently better than the other; each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Understanding the value of each strategy can help you determine when and how to best use that approach.
To help with this, 13 members of the Young Entrepreneur Council share their insights on their preferred approach and why it works for them. Use their insights to inform your own content strategy.
Should Your Business Develop a Long-Term Content Strategy or Continually Reinvent Itself?
- A long-term strategy reveals strengths and weaknesses.
- Use both strategies to achieve different objectives.
- Long-term produces evergreen content.
- An 80/20 evergreen-to-market content strategy works best.
- A long-term strategy builds traction.
- A long-term strategy lets you plan around workflow.
- Long-term strategies produce long-term results.
- Weigh your goals.
- Long-term strategies work for big brand reveals.
- Long-term content Is an asset.
- Long-term content builds customer connections.
- Campaigns provide fresh ways to engage audiences.
- Campaigns should align with KPIs.
1. A Long-Term Strategy Reveals Strengths and Weaknesses
A long-term content strategy allows you to understand both the weaknesses and strengths of your content. Although it takes longer to implement, you’ll end up having a much more robust strategy that touches all parts of the buying cycle and really prepares your business for addressing the needs of customers and prospects. A campaign-by-campaign approach can often be short-sighted and still leave you with gaps. —Maria Thimothy, OneIMS
2. Use Both Strategies to Achieve Different Objectives
Both are important! A long-term content strategy keeps leads coming in and warms them up by providing value. A campaign-by-campaign approach is a great way to implement promotional launches and to evaluate what’s working and what doesn’t work before another campaign launches. The companies that are most successful are the ones that figure out how to do both of these strategies well. —Diego Orjuela, Cables & Sensors
3. A Long-Term Strategy Produces Evergreen Content
Both strategies have benefits and you should use them together. If you can only choose one, however, I’d recommend implementing long-term content strategy. This approach typically yields evergreen content whereas campaign-by-campaign content usually has a shorter shelf life. Writers should strive to make evergreen content because one piece may continually bring new people to your website. It also doesn’t expire. —Nick Friedman, College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving
4. An 80/20 Evergreen-to-Market Content Strategy Works Best
We recommend an 80/20 split between evergreen and market content to most of our clients. Evergreen for us means long-term nurture content. Market content is based on an industry’s ever-changing market conditions. With an 80/20 approach, you can build campaigns based on both evergreen and market-dependent content. Measure everything using volume, velocity and value. —Kara Brown, LeadCoverage
5. A Long-Term Strategy Builds Traction
There’s a saying that goes “anything worthwhile takes time.” Content strategy is a good example of this. Seeing the fruits of your labor in terms of content creation may take many months, but over time those results can compound. A content strategy that takes a campaign-by-campaign approach never has the time to get traction before the campaign is over and you have to start again, so the rewards appear meager. —John Murphy, eBike Generation
6. A Long-Term Strategy Lets You Plan Around Workflow
When you create a long-term strategy, you can ensure that you don’t miss important things. For example, you’ll be able to build marketing campaigns for relevant holidays and events. Your team can also arrange their holidays and work activities to better manage these campaigns. Many such back-end jobs become easier when you have a long-term campaign strategy. —Blair Williams, MemberPress
7. Long-Term Strategies Produce Long-Term Results
The answer is simple: Long-term content strategies produce long-term results, and short-term ones produce short-term results. You can throw together 10 500-word blog posts that may get instant success, or you can put together one comprehensive 1,500-word, accurate and detailed post that is likelier to achieve evergreen status. —Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
8. Weigh Your Goals
With a campaign-by-campaign approach, your process is limited to an event or smaller time frame. This may temporarily boost profits, business or traffic, whereas a long-term marketing strategy will prime your business to succeed for the long haul. A short-term strategy is short-lived, whereas long-term is permanent. —Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz
9. Long-Term Strategies Work for Big Brand Reveals
I prefer long-term content strategies because they have a buildup. Smaller campaigns are quick, and it doesn’t feel like there’s a grand reveal if campaigns are continually changing. I like to develop an annual plan and build content that leads up to a massive, end-of-the-year product update. —Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
10. Long-Term Content Is an Asset
Long-term content is an asset, whereas campaign content is a marketing expense. Your library of long-term content is a timeless resource that will build your brand, establish relationships with your audience and increase your exposure. Much like a marketing expense, campaign content will create a buzz, drive short-term sales and then end. Focus on providing long-term value to your customers and sales will follow. —Shaun Conrad, Guitar Repair Bench Online Lessons
11. Long-Term Content Builds Customer Connections
Long-term content strategies are a great way to connect with people who are genuinely interested in your products and services. People don’t want a basic overview that explains your industry and value proposition. They prefer particular pieces of content that address pain points or goals. We simply don’t have enough space to explore in-depth topics with short-term campaigns. —John Turner, SeedProd LLC
12. Campaigns Provide Fresh Ways to Engage Audiences
Our content strategy takes place on a campaign-by-campaign basis. We like to keep things fresh, so we’re always looking for new ways to keep our audience engaged with the industry. I’ve found that sticking to one type or format of content for too long leads to readers getting bored and moving on to other websites for information. —John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC
13. Campaigns Should Align With KPIs
Neither is better than the other and, usually, campaigns are based on the long-term content strategy or overall goals of the company. Each campaign should closely align with the business KPIs set forth and add value to the brand story and customer experience created at the onset of a smart content strategy. You always want to resonate and be true to your values and authentic to your mission as a brand. —Terry Tateossian, Socialfix Media
