How To Develop an Enterprise Content Strategy

Content is king — even if you're already king (or queen!) of your industry.

Smaller businesses use content marketing to build a brand and make names for themselves. Larger enterprise organizations use the same tactic to power growth — but often take a different approach.

Here's what marketers need to know about creating an enterprise content strategy — and why that strategy is necessary for increasing conversions.

What Is an Enterprise Content Marketing Strategy?

An enterprise content strategy adapts the principles of content marketing for large businesses. It acknowledges that enterprise-level companies come from varying places and have different goals than smaller organizations.

They are also usually competing against other big names in the industry — and must make themselves stand out as the top choice to consumers.

Taking advantage of these large companies' market positions allows an enterprise content marketing strategy to grow the organization even more.

A Content Strategy for a Big Business

Enterprise companies don't have the same goals and objectives as small businesses, so their content strategies should be different. While a small business works to establish its audience by gaining its trust, an enterprise business already has a reputation.

Enterprise organizations also have a larger target audience than small- to medium-sized businesses. They might have substantial market share even if they make a niche product or specialized service. 

An enterprise business has larger marketing goals. Content efforts are driven by a marketing team that includes content strategists who invest in the online space. According to Gartner's 2024 CMO Spend Survey, marketing executives allocate more than 57% of their budget to paid digital media.

Big marketing goals don’t always match an enterprise’s place in an industry. When it comes to enterprise content management strategy, bigger doesn’t always mean better or easier.

In fact, with so many decision-makers involved across departments, the process can be more complex than it is in a smaller business.

According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), the top situational challenges of enterprise-level content marketers are:

• Lack of resources (58%)
• Aligning content with the buyer’s journey (48%)
• Aligning content efforts across sales and marketing (45%)
• Workflow issues/content approvals process (41%)
• Accessing subject matter experts (39%)
• Keeping up with new technologies (e.g., AI) (34%)
• Lack of strategy (25%)

So, how do large enterprises meet these challenges? Big business can avail itself of outside experts in content creation, content planning, and even find the latest content promotion tools. 

This can help to focus and streamline marketing efforts so each piece of content has a purpose, aligns with search intent, and offers enterprise companies the return on investment they seek. 

If you’re having hiccups with your digital promotional efforts, it might be time to assess the flexibility and scalability of your marketing team. You might consider outsourcing aspects of your enterprise content strategy in order to integrate outside expertise.

Most Common Content Strategy Challenges and Goals for Enterprises

Successful enterprise content marketing strategies are purpose-driven and goal-oriented. It's crucial to identify your challenges and business objectives before you start the planning process so you know how you can successfully meet goals.

Here are a few ways enterprise-level companies benefit from strategic content marketing to get you started.

• Raising brand awareness: Brand awareness refers to how well customers know your brand and how easily they can recognize it. Effective enterprise content creates conversations surrounding your brand and helps to define its identity. 

The challenge: Large brands might want to shift or expand existing brand awareness. Take Unilever. This massive company includes iconic brands like Ben & Jerry’s, Hellman’s, and Dove. But few consumers know the brand Unilever. Focusing on educational content can help the public see the brand in a new light.  

• Creating sustained engagement: Sustained engagement happens when you encourage consumers to follow you across all channels between purchases and get them to personally connect with your company. 

The challenge: Brands face unprecedented competition for consumer attention. Digital strategies have to draw in consumers who might be tempted by newer, smaller, and niche brands. Big businesses can try newer strategies like interactive content for enterprises. Simply put, that’s encouraging input from an audience and another way to welcome engagement. Check out these B2B interactive content examples for inspiration. 

• Improving brand health: Brand health measures the effectiveness of your brand identity and reputation. Content helps by reinforcing your brand consistency and broadening the conversation. 

The challenge: Established brands might want to shift their image in the public imagination. It’s harder for an enterprise to change course as it sets off alarm bells about potential decline. Content helps here, too, as a way to support brand changes. Take Mozilla’s 2017 logo change. The company invited public comment on its new look, creating conversation and hinting at innovation instead of panic.  

• Increasing search visibility: Search visibility is your share of web traffic for a particular keyword based on your ranking. The higher you rank, the more visible you are to your target audience. 

The challenge: For enterprise content marketing, search visibility goes hand in hand with maintaining a consistent and reliable brand voice. Big businesses can use content to rank high on search results but can falter in consumer trust if the content on a company’s pages isn’t what the reader was looking for. Consider your enterprise blogging strategy to generate more conversions from your high search rankings.

• Promoting thought leadership: Thought leadership establishes your organization as an industry authority and resource. Thought leadership content often focuses on the expertise of a key individual, such as a CEO or founder. 

The challenge: Big businesses are not always seen as innovative, meaning their leadership may not immediately resonate across an industry audience. Content can help highlight the background, experience, and unique insights of key leaders in an organization to counter this perception. 

• Gaining valuable backlinks: Backlinks are links to your site from authoritative websites. In a recent survey of more than 800 SEO professionals, 85% said backlinks significantly impact brand authority. 

The challenge: For most brands, getting quality backlinks can require a lot of legwork, like reaching out to media sources and other content creators. By consistently creating high-quality content, enterprise brands can expect more organic backlinking.

• Outranking the competition: High-ranking results get significantly more clicks, with the top position currently getting 27.6% of all clicks and the 10th getting just 2.4%. Successful content boosts your ranking by helping Google see your website as authoritative and trustworthy. 

The challenge: Google keeps changing its ranking factors (aka ranking signals). Content marketing campaigns have to stay agile in order to consistently create current, relevant content that Google validates with a high-ranking position. 

• Keeping a freshly updated website: Content freshness is an important SEO ranking factor, especially for time-sensitive keywords. A robust enterprise content marketing strategy targets trending keywords in your industry so you stand out. 

The challenge: Big brands have to keep a consistent message across sales and marketing teams that all produce content. To help keep things fresh, big businesses can look at enterprise social media content and other digital properties to promote new happenings and ideas while keeping brand consistency.

• Generating more leads: Content attracts top-of-the-funnel consumers by providing answers to their questions. It builds their trust in your brand and turns them into warm leads. 

The challenge: As the CMI study noted, 48% of marketers find it challenging to align content with the buyer’s journey. But it’s not just about content — it's about the right content. B2B companies might want to consider enterprise white papers to attract customers or work with an outside expert to strategize about content. Taking lessons from an enterprise case study on content marketing can also provide direction.

• Driving a higher conversion rate: Conversions happen when you convince people you're the best possible choice. Content helps nudge readers toward that knowledge by building trust and establishing authority. 

The challenge: Conversion happens at several points along the customer’s journey to find your content. It’s not enough to make your case in a piece of content. Technical search engine optimization that includes meta descriptions and headers tells readers what your content is about. Technical SEO is fundamental to gaining clicks on your link in search results.  

• Creating organizational efficiency: Organizational efficiency means increasing productivity with fewer resources. A content management strategy helps you produce more valuable articles, videos, and other material by taking the guesswork out of content development. 

The challenge: The CMI study noted that 45% of marketers find it hard to align efforts across sales and marketing, and 41% find content workflows challenging. Using an enterprise content marketing platform or working with an outside agency can help overcome these challenges, supporting efficiency in digital marketing.

• Raising visibility in all channels: An enterprise content strategy can target multiple channels, from social media to email. Increasing visibility across channels gets your brand in front of more people. 

The challenge: Different channels appeal to different segments of the market. Each one requires a specific strategy, producing unique content for both email marketing and social media. Big businesses can go in-depth on their strategy for content distribution channels to decide how to attract and retain an audience.

• Developing better sales collateral: According to DemandGen's 2022 Content Preferences Survey, 55% of B2B buyers have increasingly relied on content to make purchase decisions. An expert content strategy gives your sales team the material they need to close more deals. 

The challenge: B2B sales are typically also driven by B2B sales representatives, who not only pitch products, but also manage accounts once a sale is made. Some enterprises struggle to find a “meeting of the minds” between sales and marketing at the content development stage. It's essential that all team members are on the same page for brand messaging to support long-term client satisfaction. 

• Improving client onboarding: Content turns your onboarding process into a two-way street. It gives new clients the information they need to succeed and helps them get to know your brand. 

The challenge: In the rush to produce content, marketers might neglect to create meaningful materials geared toward the latter stages of the buyer’s journey. While top-funnel and mid-funnel content is essential, so is bottom-funnel content for those in the final stages of decision making. 

• Boosting social sharing: A recent survey from ODM Group found that 74% of consumers rely on social sharing when making purchase decisions. When your content resonates with your audiences, they're more likely to share it. 

The challenge: What counts as sharable content depends on the distribution platform. It's essential to have content that not only resonates, but is also appropriate for each distribution channel. Fortunately, an enterprise content management strategy framework can use strategies to repurpose the same information. A C-suite panel discussion on the company’s YouTube channel can become a thought leadership piece on LinkedIn or a bottom-funnel webinar on your website.

So, it’s clear there are a lot of reasons to have a comprehensive content strategy. For enterprises, there are unique challenges. But your business can overcome these with changes to your current strategy.

Developing and Executing a Unified Content Strategy for Enterprises

Once you've identified why you need to develop a content marketing plan, your next step is to lay out the "how."

Develop a Strong Keyword Strategy

Enterprise keyword selection is all about volume and scalability. While smaller businesses thrive by becoming keyword "bargain shoppers," searching for the least competitive keyword to find niche audiences, enterprises need to think bigger.

Enterprises need to target all types of keywords simultaneously:

• High-volume transactional keywords: These attract and convert high-intent buyers. Transactional indicates the searcher is ready to convert. 
• Short-tail keywords. They are high-volume, general terms. They also tend to be highly competitive. 
• Long-tail keywords: These draw consumers with specific interests and needs. These are phrases that are more specific than short-tail keywords. They more closely match what a person might type into Google or choose among Google’s suggested search terms. 

Short-tail keywords have high search volume, but more competition. Long-tail keywords have less search volume, but also less competition. “SaaS software” is a short-tail keyword, while “SaaS software for real estate client management” is a long-tail keyword.  

Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for and will grow your audience quickly. These keywords can draw niche buyers and build up specific areas of your business. 

Transactional keywords, which include terms such as "free trial" or "on sale," indicate high buyer intent. After all, not many people who have no buying intent would bother searching for anything that’s on sale or offering a free trial.

Many long-tail keywords are transactional. For example, consider the search term "young men's dress shoes near me." The "near me" indicates a pressing need for this long-tail phrase.

Evaluate Your Competitors

Checking out what’s working for your competition is another important part of keyword strategy. Consider a competitor keyword analysis. When you know what long-tail key phrases your competition is ranking for, you can attempt to make content that outranks them.

It’s not just about copying keywords, of course. You can outrank by focusing on quality content that better responds to the needs of your target audience. 

Choose Targeted Pages

Each keyword should draw readers into the sales funnel via a webpage. This step requires a high-level view since enterprises tend to have more pages than small businesses. You need to decide which keywords will:

• Lead readers to blog posts or multimedia content
• Receive unique landing pages
• Navigate to existing landing, product, or sales pages
• Become the foundation for pillar pages

Pillar pages offer an overview of a broader topic. Each pillar page uses internal links to branch out and cover sub-topics in more detail.

Pillar content strategies are ideal for enterprises. They attract diverse audiences that you can filter and disperse to target their specific needs.

Create High-Quality Content That Satisfies E-E-A-T

It’s not just about keywords. Your readers expect more from the content they consume, as does Google. In fact, Google has a term for what it’s looking for when ranking content: E-E-A-T. That stands for expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

To meet the high standards of E-E-A-T, your content should demonstrate more expertise and experience on your topics. Your brand identity, including other content, your personnel, and industry reputation, all help determine whether you’re an authority — and a trustworthy one at that.

These are lofty goals, but you can meet them by consistently producing high-quality content. Thankfully, you don’t have to rely on your internal team to achieve these E-E-A-T goals. If you outsource your content creation, you can publish more quality content. 

You can even start to write about niche areas of your industry as you gain access to subject matter experts you might not have within your organization. 

Plan a Content Promotion and Distribution Strategy

Remember one benefit (and challenge) of an enterprise content marketing strategy is raising visibility across channels. While potential exposure on all challenges comes with opportunity, there’s an accompanying risk if not optimally executed. 

An ill-placed piece of content — think of a thought leadership piece pasted into the comments section of an Instagram post — can reflect poorly on the brand. The good news is that you can use various channels effectively by planning content distribution.

Your distribution should mainly focus on owned media. Those are your own digital properties. These include your website, social media pages, blogs, white papers, and webinars. Identify your goals for each type of content and distribute it via the most appropriate channel. 

Measure the Results

Performance tracking is crucial to making the most of your enterprise content budget — and maintaining the buy-in of executive decision-makers.

It's not enough to notice "improvement" or "growth." You need measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) to keep an enterprise content management strategy going.

The most important KPIs for enterprise content creators include:

• Number of blog or page visits: How many people view your content
• Organic traffic growth: The amount of your traffic coming from organic searches
• Search engine ranking positions (SERPs): Where you appear in searches for a particular keyword
• Social shares per post: The number or percentage of views that result in sharing
• Inbound links per post: The number of links to your post from authoritative websites

Set a target metric for each KPI. For example, if you're aiming for SERP improvements, target a certain rank for each keyword.

Adjust and Optimize Your Strategy

KPI tracking lets you identify what's working and what isn't. Watch for data going in the wrong direction, like declining SERP rankings or decreasing social shares.

Determine what changed immediately before the shift. Sometimes the cause is apparent, such as when a new blog post doesn't resonate. In other cases — a common one being a steady decline in returning visitors — you'll need more in-depth analysis.

Track your enterprise marketing analytics so you can tweak your strategy as necessary. This involves looking deeply at the data to find out what’s changing in audience behavior. Sometimes, it isn’t your audience at all. You might have a new industry competitor, or Google might have tweaked the algorithm. 

Finding the issue is the first step to changing your strategy. That might mean making simple changes like altering what you post or when you post it. New competitor analysis or a shift in preferred content types — maybe your audience is starting to prefer video over text — might mean changing investment into different media types.

What Are Some Examples of a Content Strategy for Enterprises? 

Sometimes the nuts and bolts of enterprise content marketing can make you lose sight of the bigger picture. Big businesses should have an overarching goal for every campaign. Standing back and focusing first on the big picture can help you devise the goal of a content strategy.

Let’s think of some examples of general approaches to content:

• Storytelling: Lifestyle brands like sports drinks or outdoor supply companies often rely on stories. This gives the audience something to aspire to, whether it’s a great camping trip like the one in the online video or an adventurous outing fueled by a beverage. This content strategy relies on stories to make the brand appealing.
• Informational: B2B products often produce detailed content that reflects the buyer’s complicated decision-making process. Informational content is intended for those who reason through details before calling a sales agent and working out a payment plan.
• Validation: Think of social proof content that gives a brand credibility. This is when an influencer promotes a company or a customer leaves a review. Instead of the brand speaking for itself, the strategy is to gain a positive reputation by referral.  

While these “big picture” focuses might seem a world away from content strategy, in reality they are the basis for your entire content strategy. A B2B company that sells SaaS software won’t get much traction from a video series that shows team-building in the woods. They might, however, get substantial sales from content that addresses the needs of their target purchaser.

The remainder of your content strategy is therefore about choosing channels — and producing the content to populate them.  

The Top Enterprise Content Channels

So, what channels and formats are we talking about? Whether you’re a mountaineering equipment company or an office chair manufacturer, you’ll likely rely on different types of content. But in general, enterprises need to use multiple types of content to reach target audiences. These are the most important.

Blog Posts

Ninety-four percent of enterprise content marketers publish blog posts and short-form articles, making these the most popular form of content for enterprises. 

A blog is typically a mix of informational and promotional posts. They house the articles that you write demonstrating expertise and authority — remember E-E-A-T? 

It’s common for brands to stick to a regular posting schedule, such as weekly or biweekly, and categorize posts by type using hashtags. That way, when a potential customer finds that brand’s blog through online search, it’s just a few clicks to find out more about a topic.

Blogs are especially beneficial because they are easy to distribute across multiple channels. You can post a link to a blog post on your social media feeds, giving something for followers to anticipate. 

Let’s give an example: Say a SaaS company has the intent to help its current users get more out of the product, spurring paid upgrades and extended subscriptions. They might have a weekly blog post that highlights a “hidden feature” of the product. They can post the link on social media with a hashtag like #tiptuesday.

Social Media

Social media is a must-have for enterprises because of its sharing potential. With the right content, you can multiply your reach exponentially.

But as enterprise marketers are well aware, the return on investment for social media depends on choosing the right platform for the message.

It’s important to start with who you want to hear that message. It’s commonly known that different social media platforms appeal to different demographics. Gen Z adores TikTok while millennials are heavy users of Instagram. Your choice of platform should in part be driven by your buyer persona.

If you’re a B2B enterprise brand, on the other hand, you might focus on business-focused social media like LinkedIn, which welcomes thought leadership pieces. 

Regardless of the channels you choose, bear in mind social media is an excellent place to cross-post blog content to maximize your return on investment. 

Video Content

Video connects with consumers personally and helps them engage with your brand. In a recent survey, 91% of businesses were using video as a marketing tool. 

Video content can take many forms. It includes scripted content, like short YouTube ads, streaming of live events like product launches, or instructional content on how to use products. 

A B2C brand selling an innovative hair product can have a regular stream of Instagram reels showing various customers using the product with positive results. A B2B brand might post video case studies on their website or LinkedIn profiles with customers describing how a service helped them meet their business goals.

Video is an incorporated feature of most social media platforms, so it’s quick and easy to pepper your socials with interesting content for followers to enjoy.

Case Studies

Speaking of case studies, they’re another powerful content type for enterprise marketers. 

Case studies are next-level social proof. They detail how a particular customer benefited from working with you, allowing prospects to imagine similar results.

A case study can appear as long-form content on your website, outlining the pain point experienced by the subject of the study and demonstrating how your product solved the problem. It’s common for case studies to include specific metrics and a first-person interview with the client detailing the difference made by your product.

Case studies are typically bottom-funnel, informational content that lives on your site, although you might want to share it as part of a social media strategy. 

White Papers

White papers are in-depth, data-driven pieces that establish your company's authority on a topic. They're foundational in thought leadership strategies.

You might think of white papers as companion pieces to case studies, although a white paper generally doesn't tout the success of a brand’s specific product. A white paper shows off the “expertise” in E-E-A-T. 

As an example, think of a customer management software product that's tailored to the specific needs of real estate agents. A white paper for this company might be “The State of Residential Real Estate in Metro Los Angeles in 2024.” 

A white paper gives the audience information it’s interested in without directly selling the product or service on offer. In the process of distributing quality information, it increases authority and trust among members of its target market. 

Interactive Content

Interactive content engages your audience with activities such as needs assessments and clickable graphics. It encourages two-way communication early in the sales funnel and can allow you to gather valuable customer data.

Interactivity is particularly critical to increase engagement. As brands populate their channels with content, they want their audience to not only find, but also use, that content. Interactivity increases brand awareness by leading people to spend more time with a brand’s content.

That customer data is also valuable. Aggregate information about users who interact with your content can help you develop a profile of who’s responding to your marketing efforts. 

Create an Enterprise Content Strategy with Compose.ly

If you're ready to create standout enterprise content for your brand, Compose.ly has you covered.

Compose.ly's managed service plans connect you with the content you need. Whether you need a ground-up strategy or an adjustment to what you already have, our team makes it happen.

We understand the unique content needs of large enterprises, and we'll develop a plan that targets your unique goals. Contact us today to get started.