I recently saw a post touting the importance of a “timeless content marketing strategy. As I read the article, my response was, “Yes… but.” It occurred to me that there are many exceptions to the “rules,” and maybe it’s time to disrupt the traditional notion of content marketing. Let’s see if you agree.
Today I will repeat the elements described in a post as the timeless content marketing strategy and challenge conventional wisdom.
1) Define clear buyer personas.
Buyer personas can be very helpful in large, far-flung company with complex agency relationships. Having a target customer in mind can keep everyone on the same page and focused on content that serves the market.
However …
Creating content meant to serve made-up people can be stifling. Chances are, your closest competitors have drawn up the same personas. So you are all creating the same content for the same made-up people. There might be a small SEO advantage to this, but if you’re trying to break through the noise and create something worthy of attention, being a slave to personas simply creates a pandemic of dull.
Personas can be self-limiting in another way. In our fast-changing world, customers are evolving. Even long-held values and norms are changing. Focusing on one personality type, or even ten of them, can ignore new needs and new customers coming into the fold. In my upcoming book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World (Feb 2025), there’s an interview with Kory Marchisotto, the CMO of e.l.f. cosmetics. She said:
“When I came into e.l.f., every marketing guru, every marketing advisor, everybody on my personal board of directors told me I had to create a customer persona. Every textbook said the same thing: ‘Go create a persona. Put e.l.f. in a box: Alpha is a person who carries this handbag, she does this thing, she shopped at this store.’
“And my gut instinct was to do a manual override. Creating personas just seemed so wrong for this brand. I was reading letters from 60-year-old women, 8-year-old kids, teenagers, and no one person is a ‘persona.’ We’ve taken a stand that e.l.f. is for every eye, lip and face. That is the lighthouse that guides us, and that is also an enormous responsibility.
“We don’t draw borders and boundaries around our customers.”
Think carefully about how personas can limit the creativity and reach of your content marketing. Don’t just follow the guru rules.
2) Develop a content calendar.
Again, this might be a good idea for the largest companies, especially if content requires lengthy legal approvals. But it also imposes two significant limits on content marketing effectiveness.
A few years ago, I was working with a healthcare company that followed a content calendar. But since they had their heads down in a prescribed content calendar, they were focused on National Pencil Day and missed a critical opportunity to comment on relevant legislation passed in their state. Don’t be so wedded to a content calendar that you never look up to see what’s happening in the world.
The second issue is the advantage of timeliness. Plenty of research shows how engagement on content topics degrades over time. For example, I wrote some of the first articles exploring how ChatGPT could be used in marketing. These posts attracted many shares, downloads, and comments. If I had published these ideas just two or three weeks later, they would be old news and far less effective.
Timeliness matters. Fresh ideas matter. To get the most traction for your posts, you need to jump on ideas early, which usually means abandoning whatever was prescribed on the content calendar.
3) Leverage SEO best practices.
In my digital marketing university classes, I explain that there are two high-level content marketing strategies: 1) win SEO or, 2) develop authority and earned subscribers.
What’s the chance I can own one of the top two search results for “digital marketing consultant?” This is a highly saturated field. Competitors have much deeper pockets than me. Just not going to happen.
But could I create content that serves people instead of algorithms and build a mailing list of people who are vitally interested in what I have to say? People who would hire me? I have an excellent chance of doing this.
Add to this issue zero-click Google results, the competition from AI search, and other complications, and it’s easy to conclude that for many companies, a focus on “authority” over “SEO best practices” makes more sense.
SEO gets you visitors. Authority gets you believers.
4) Use a mix of content formats.
This depends on the size of the company.
If you’re a large brand seeking an omnichannel presence and have the budget and agency relationships to do it, then yes.
But if you’re a small company, a startup, or a solopreneur, then absolutely no. To stand out today, you have to be great. And you don’t have the time and resources to be great in 10 places.
My recommendation to small businesses is to fish where the fish are and, at least at first, focus on one, or at the most two, content formats. If you decide on video, then double down on video and then triple down on it to earn your audience.
I’ve probably studied audience-building strategies more than anyone else earth. There are millions of tips and tricks, but there is only one strategy above them all. There is no close second. And that is, focus on quality. Everything else is just noise in fancy marketing pants.
You might trick somebody into clicking a link. But you can’t trick drive-by visitors into viewing your content or subscribing to it. You must earn that, and that only comes through quality. You can’t growth-hack your way to trust.
If you have any resources devoted to content marketing strategy, do NOT go wide by trying to be everywhere. Go deep and create unmissable, vital content that serves customers well in one way.
Stop trying to be everywhere and start being essential somewhere.
5) Regularly analyze and optimize.
I actually agree with this one, and this is historically a problem for many businesses. We are often so busy creating that we don’t dive into the numbers to learn, evolve, and grow.
History won’t help us predict the future. If you’re in marketing, you’re waking up to a new customer reality every day.
Data can help us learn about what connects to customers to help us serve them better, at least in the short-term.
Timeless content marketing strategy?
The biggest problem with being wedded to the “timeless marketing strategy” is that the more you’re obsessed with a persona, an SEO plan, or a calendar, the less you’re reacting to change.
Speed might be the biggest driver of marketing success today, but we don’t talk about it enough. A lot of the timeless marketing strategy ideas are handcuffs when you need to be responsive.
I’m also concerned that the word “quality” isn’t mentioned in this formula. Too many marketers are obsessed with the game. Stop chasing algorithms and start creating something worth following.
Sound about right?
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