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Written by Amanda Milligan
Content marketing consists of ideation, content creation, and distribution — which is already a lot.
But what often gets overlooked is the strategy. In other words: how exactly will the content you create drive results, and what should you focus on now versus later?
I’ll walk through how to set up a content strategy in 2026 that actually hits your marketing objectives.
Important note: Have you done audience research yet? If not, start there. This is a critical step before developing a content strategy.
Content is not a marketing channel. It’s a foundational tool used across all marketing functions.
Just like words make up language, content makes up marketing.
This means we need to stop thinking channel-specific and start thinking holistically.
The greater question is:
What content are we as a brand qualified to create that will resonate with our audience?
Once we answer that, we can decide on the formats we’ll use and where we’ll distribute.
Let’s say, for example, we work for a new doorbell camera brand that’s trying to disrupt the industry. One of our primary audiences is homeowners and renters dealing with porch pirates stealing their packages.
Through content marketing, we want to drive some early purchases, build our brand awareness, and better compete in a crowded space.
Before jumping into research, we need to figure out what messages will bridge the gap between what we uniquely offer and what our audience wants. Ask yourself these questions:
The synthesized answers to these questions are what we call your “Content Perspective.” It’ll serve as the DNA of your content creation going forward, regardless of channel.
For our doorbell example, we can say that our belief is that the industry is too tied to the subscription model. Changing that would benefit customers by releasing them from a monthly fee and allowing them to have more control over recordings (and thus their safety). We’re set to contribute to that change by offering top-notch video recording for just one up-front cost.
Note: This is not the only way to create a content strategy. But from my experience, starting with an open mind and then narrowing down your options based on marketing priorities leads to the most creative and effective ideas.
A critical component of developing a content strategy is getting a lay of the land.
Why?
We never create content in a vacuum. It exists among millions of other pieces of content fighting for attention.
So at this stage, we’re trying to uncover two major themes:
To gain this type of insight, we need to investigate the channels our audience is likely to use.
Like search, social, email, and online communities.
If you’re not sure where your audience is likely to be, consider:
Again, check out this audience research guide if you’re still figuring out where your target market hangs out.
Once you have 2-3 channels you think are decent bets, you can begin your research.
The goal with social media is to look for patterns in what gets real engagement, not just views.
There will be thousands of posts about most topics, but you want to see what formats, tones, designs, and subtopics are standing out. Here’s how to do this:
Using our doorbell example, let’s say we identified Instagram as a common channel for our audience, and so we take a look at competitor profiles.
Unsurprisingly, they rely heavily on video content, so there aren’t many formatting surprises. But I want to see which profile is outperforming the others and what type of content they’re posting to get those results.
I like to use Keywords Everywhere for a quick engagement analysis across Instagram profiles. I had it scan 35 posts per brand to see which have the best engagement rate. It costs slightly more Keywords Everywhere credits every time you want to scan more posts, but 35 is a good minimum.
Right off the bat I’m impressed with Blink’s engagement rate (or the number of likes/comments divided by their number of followers), so now I’m going to scan their top posts.
The example below got more than 38K likes and 160+ comments.
This, and many posts that are also top-performing, are from Blink Partners (as noted by the hashtag in the description) and lean heavily into relatability and humor.
By contrast, Ring’s Instagram seems to rely more on heartwarming content. This brings up two important questions:
Going back to Blink, what I find most impressive is how the brand is able to speak to particular subsets of their audience with their posts — like parents, teachers, pet owners, and more — while still getting high levels of engagement.
This tells me that content featuring real people, real homes, and real life experiences can perform well for our brand.
In our case, perhaps that’s posting video of a porch pirate being deterred from stealing a package thanks to the camera being there. Or sharing stories of how the cameras have been helpful in reducing crime in communities.
AI tools are great research assistants for understanding what content already exists in your space and how it’s being framed.
Use these tips to surface patterns, common angles, and burning user questions:
Tip: Also pay attention to the type of websites that are cited. This shows you what other types of content and channels you should prioritize in your research.
Going back to our hypothetical doorbell company, here’s a prompt I plugged into ChatGPT for the topic of “porch pirates” (feel free to reuse it by simply editing the first part to suit your specific audience pain point):
When people search online for tips for dealing with “porch pirates,” what are the standard answers? AKA what do most articles say, what tips keep getting repeated, and what advice shows up everywhere? And what’s missing?
The answer sums up a bunch of articles, cutting out the need to read a bunch of blog posts that all say the same things:
It also provides a head start on identifying potential gaps and untapped angles:
Now we not only have a list of solutions for this primary pain point for our audience — packages getting stolen — but we also understand very quickly what advice has been doled out ad nauseum and where we can add real value.
This is where you figure out what your audience is actively searching for in Google and what the SERP is rewarding as “the best answer.” You’re looking for demand and gaps you can realistically win.
This is a great complement to AI SEO research, because LLMs tend to draw upon Google search result pages when crafting their answers.
Here’s the approach:
For example, when searching “best doorbell camera,” we get an AI Overview first:
Within the AI Overview is a video review. I checked it out briefly and saw three product review videos were embedded in it.
This is a clear signal we need to go down a video research path (more on that later).
Aside from the AIO, top results on the first search engine result page (SERP) are third-party review sites like SafeHome and Consumer Reports, along with Reddit threads and more videos.
All of these sources are rooted in trust. They’re either review-based sites by authoritative sources, featuring videos where people can see the products for themselves, or they’re communities where people ask about other people’s experience with various products.
Understandably, trust is a huge factor when making a pricing decision — something for us to keep in mind.
When I open these articles on the SERP, I’m provided with tons of pros and cons across all the products, and I spot a content idea handed right to us from SafeHome. A complaint for Ring is that there isn’t a clear installation video — something we should be sure to make.
Every piece of ranking content has tidbits that can lead to further ideas. Thankfully, AI can help us extract insights quickly.
Take the top 10 URLs from the SERP, feed them into an LLM, and ask the LLM to not only summarize the major points you want distilled but also identify what is missing from all of these pages.
I tried it out:
And the results were super helpful. Not only did it provide the main competitor brands’ pros and cons based on several comparison guides, but it also flagged some missed opportunities we can explore.
Before even doing video-specific research, we’ve seen video appear prominently in AI Overviews, SERP results, and in LLM sources, so it’s clearly important for our industry.
When doing video research, you’re looking for formats and topics that consistently perform so you can build a video plan that fits your audience’s attention span and expectations.
Here’s how to find them:
So let’s try out “best doorbell camera” on YouTube as our example.
Immediately I notice that “subscription” is mentioned across multiple titles.
Titles also often use authoritative language like “tested” and “expert”:
But it’s not just the video content itself that we can pull insights from. The comments cover subtopics and features missing from the videos:
Interestingly, one video with a lot of really positive comments tears down the shady practices of other doorbell camera brands and how they take away key features if you don’t pay for a subscription. You can feel the validation and relief in people’s responses.
This kind of research reveals both content and trust gaps.
For our doorbell brand, I’m realizing we need to:
All of these elements can feed consideration- and purchase-stage content. They also give us video assets to embed in product pages, support docs, and even media pitches.
Communities are great at revealing more authentic conversations and edge cases that rarely show up in polished content. When doing this research, you’re looking for the stuff that keeps coming up and still doesn’t have a clean, trusted answer.
Here’s how to start:
Let’s use Reddit for our doorbell example.
When we search for a key term (like “best doorbell camera”), we quickly see a slew of relevant subreddits worth exploring more in depth. (Note how the subscription issue comes up yet again.)
Let’s check out the most obvious and relevant subreddit: /r/homesecurity.
Just from that one thread that showed up in the initial results, there is a gold mine of conversations.
One reveals the concern about video quality at night:
Another reveals confusion around whether older houses can support wired doorbells:
Backing out of this thread, searching “best doorbell camera” in /r/homesecurity reveals more topics just in the thread titles alone:
And we got all of that from just one subreddit. Reddit can be many hours worth of research, but it’s well worth it.
Why?
Community research keeps your content grounded in reality instead of assumptions. Meaning you create content that actually caters to your real users’ needs.
Email research is about seeing what content brands think will move the needle further down the customer journey. It helps you understand what topics are relevant and worthy of more “real estate” within your communications strategy.
I have SimpliSafe in my house, so I’ve been getting their emails for a while now. What I’ve noticed is that they focus almost exclusively on discounts and deals, with some messages about new features sprinkled in.
This makes sense, because they’re using email to convince interested parties to make a purchase. Providing high discounts (and making those very obvious in the subject lines) is effective at snagging attention.
What I find interesting, though, is how many of their CTAs are around referring a friend.
They’ve clearly clocked referrals as a useful marketing engine, which is something we’d need to explore.
This is the point where we move from “interesting” to “intentional.”
After doing so much industry research, you will have a long list of potential ideas.
On my list so far, I have:
So how do we decide which ideas to focus on first?
Let’s use this checklist.
Content marketing can help with a wide variety of goals.
Anything from generating overall brand awareness to assisting sales and closing deals.
For our hypothetical doorbell camera brand, let’s say our goal is to increase on-site purchase conversion rates.
So, you take your list of content ideas and map them to hit your most important marketing goal.
Since we’re focusing on increasing purchases, let’s only mark off the ideas that help people make a final decision.
When you do this exercise, some ideas fall to the bottom of the list. They might be interesting but do not clearly support what matters most in the next 1-3 months.
Hold on to them, because they might be worth prioritizing later. Or you might be able to create them if your budget or resources increase.
Next, look for ideas that do double or triple duty — the ones that help you hit multiple goals at once.
For our doorbell example, our primary goal is to increase on-site purchases. But we have other goals of helping contribute collateral to the paid marketing team and also generally building brand awareness.
Now we can see which ideas are able to contribute in those less (but still) important ways.
Pieces of content that can serve multiple goals are especially valuable when your team is small since they’re easier to get buy-in for and you can leverage them for many purposes.
When you spot an idea that supports several goals, these are often the best candidates to prioritize in your first content cycle.
Finally, ask the hardest question: where can we actually add something new?
Compare your rough ideas to what you found in search, LLMs, video, social, and communities, and ask:
Differentiation can come from a few different places. Your specific audience might be unique enough to merit more specialization. For example, “doorbell cameras for multi-unit buildings” is different from a generic “best doorbell camera” list.
But the format itself is a way to differentiate, too. Maybe everyone has blog posts, but few have interactive tools or scenario-based guides.
When it comes to our doorbell example, a lot of these ideas will have been done to some degree by competitors. So it comes down to what hasn’t been covered over and over again.
Take a look at how I labeled each idea and re-sorted the table to prioritize it based on this checklist (based on ability to hit goals first and then opportunity to be original second).
Now we have a shortlist that aligns with real marketing goals, pulls more than one lever at a time, and feels distinct in a crowded landscape.
That list becomes your first content roadmap, and you save the other ideas for when other priorities emerge.
Take your top three to five ideas from the table — the ones that hit your primary goal, serve multiple objectives, and give you room to add something original. For each one, write down the format, who’s creating it, and a rough timeline.
You don’t need to plan six months of content right now. You need to plan the next batch, execute it, measure what worked, and adjust. Strategy gets sharper through iteration, not through planning more.
For a deeper look at moving from this plan to execution and measuring results, check out our full guide on building a content strategy.
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