Marketers with written plan strategy are more effective than those who lack it. Yet, only about 40% of marketers write down their plans.

If you don't use a written strategy, a one-page plan is perfect to begin. Even if you have detailed strategy plan maybe is time to consider simplifying it and making a one-page plan.

One-page plan strategy can help you to crystallize your content marketing strategy. It can keep content producers to get aligned and gain stronger buy-in more quickly from clients or executives.

Where to start?

First of all, you must focus on what organization needs to complete in the next year.

Finding this information can be done in different ways. Some companies engage C-level executives, or use another research opportunity to recognize:

- What is company’s growth strategy;
- What is revenue growth target (% or $ figure over last year);
- How growth will be reached;
- What criteria and factors are important for growth?

When you think how important these inputs are to marketing, it is very surprising that marketers are often not aware of the precise business objectives.

These elements of the business level will come out in your plan as:

1. Objectives: What qualitative results your company must complete over the next year?

2. Goals: How will this progress toward objectives be measured quantitatively?

You can work with mid-level product, sales, and marketing leaders to make the sketch of a new content marketing plan. Content marketing will help the company reach its goals, and you must find out how. It can support some ideas, and your job is to find which ones, and some ideas it can’t. Ideas that content marketing can support will show in your one-page plan as:

3. Strategies: What will the content marketing function deliver qualitatively during the next year? (e.g., introduce a new product, increase awareness, dramatize your solution’s differentiation, create a better customer experience, and offer social proof)

4. Metrics: How will marketing measure the achievement of content marketing strategies? (e.g., increase awareness by a certain percent, deliver specified number of marketing-qualified leads to sales, contribute a certain dollar amount to the sales pipeline from qualified leads, and produce a certain amount of revenue)

Don’t run away from profit goals. It is great to have quantified goals to meet, but quotas bring value and clear finish line to all content marketing activities. Most important is that customers won and revenue is generated.

I hope this article will help you improve your business in every aspect. Bring your ideas to the next level. Make your own one-page plan strategy. 

Follow me on Twitter – @SrdjanKali.