Does anyone have insights on how to coach a Marketing strategy team to develop a content strategy for the business they support? I'm trying to think through the right deliverable for a content strategy, that we can show to our business partners.   The goal would be so they understand how our Marketing strategy team thoughtfully delivers content across all of our channels, aligned to their business goals.

Fundamentally - marketing content serves the business pipeline and sales funnel stages.  The first thing I'd do is understand the marketing and sales funnels as they stand today, or as they should be based on the company's overall sales goals:  Are you prioritizing growth in new markets, growth in current markets, net new logo acquisition, retention of customers, etc.  Understanding the relative priorities of these sales goals, by product line (if multiple) is key to a solid content strategy.

With the sales goals and funnel defined - align content to the stages of the funnel.  What content is ideal for demand generation?  What content moves prospects down the funnel?  What content keeps customers renewing?  The amount and focus on each content asset at each stage should be weighed appropriately against the sales relative priorities.  This gives real business alignment.

In terms of asset types - media, channel, etc. - that should align with where your customers and prospects are, and what they like to consume.  You can use measurements of existing assets and their performance as a guide - and align that to the personas you want to reach.  Give the audience what they want - whatever performs well - keep giving them that. Remember - you will have buyers, users, influencers, etc. acting in the sales funnel at different stages, so that should also be tagged against your content plan - who is each piece for, why does it fit that persona and stage, and what the outcome should be.  

For example:  an article on tips and tricks for getting the most out of your product would be an ideal asset for late stage in the funnel for a champion or influencer, or for existing users to continue to encourage them to use the product in new and interesting ways.  This increases retention for subscription based products or loyalty for repeat buyers on consumable or upgradeable products.

Finally - I would present the content strategy as a matrix of personas by funnel stages, and show where each planned content artifact fits.  This will help business partners see the usefulness of each asset, and why some are higher priority than others.  Align that with the measurements sales and the business uses to track progress and you should have a content strategy that is easy to share with any business partner.

1. What does the business want to achieve
2. What about not having a content strategy is impacting their goals (differentiation, traction, PR, etc)
3. Elaborate on 2 with specific examples that set the stage for what you want to provide
4. Provide it. Oftentimes folks are struggling when the message is disjointed, so while they may push about specifics, I doubt they'll be hostile to the concept of being consistent and unified
5. Provide something substantive and trackable.

That's about as good of advice as I can give to such a generic question. Good luck!

Our Marcom Strategy team collaborates across owned channel owners, the paid media team, and our segment/biz owner team to develop a messaging priority/hierarchy document for the year. It is organized by customer objective (e.g. loyalty vs. awareness) and channel. So, for example, promotions could be the #1 message priority in TV and display for conversion. We also block out by quarter - so something that might be #1 messaging priority in Q1 could be #3 in Q3. Teams have flexibility to execute this strategy, but this hierarchy guides their own decisions and execution.