Every great content marketing plan starts with a content audit

How do you make sure your content marketing plan is truly effective? Start with a comprehensive content audit.

Before you start putting together your content marketing plan, the first step is to look at what you already have. This process, called a content audit, lets you analyse your existing content, identify any gaps, and align it with the customer journey.

The benefits of a content audit

A content audit can help you:

1. Identify strengths and weaknesses in your current content
2. Align content with your overall marketing goals
3. Ensure content meets the needs of your target audience at each stage of the customer journey
4. Allocate the right resources for content creation and promotion
5. Improve SEO performance by identifying opportunities for optimisation

Now we know why, here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Define your objectives

Start by clearly outlining what you want to achieve with your content audit. Are you looking to:

• Improve SEO performance?
• Align content with the customer journey?
• Identify content gaps in your content marketing plan?
• Increase engagement and conversions?

Clear objectives help you focus on the most relevant metrics and tailor your content audit to your goals.

Step 2: Inventory your content

Create a comprehensive list of all your existing content. This includes:

• Blog posts
• Whitepapers
• Ebooks
• Case studies
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Social media posts
• Landing pages

Tools like SEOptimer and Octopus will crawl your website and export a list of URLs for free. For off-site content, you can put together a list manually or use social media management tools.

Step 3: Categorise your content

Organise your content inventory based on categories like:

• Content type
• Topic/theme
• Target audience
• Customer journey stage
• Publication date
• Author

This will help you identify patterns and gaps in your content marketing plan.

Step 4: Collect and analyse data

Gather relevant metrics for each peice of content. Key metrics to consider include:

• Traffic (page views, unique visitors)
• Engagement (time on page, bounce rate)
• Social shares
• Backlinks
• Conversions
• SEO performance (rankings, organic traffic)

Tools like Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and SEMrush can help you collect this data efficiently.

Step 5: Assess content quality and relevance

Evaluate each piece of content based on:

• Alignment with your current content marketing plan
• Relevance to your target audience
• Accuracy and timeliness of information
• Clarity and readability
• Visual appeal
• Call-to-action effectiveness

Consider using a scoring system (e.g., 1-5) to rate each piece of content on these factors.

Step 6: Map content to the customer journey

Align your content with different stages of the customer journey:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Decision
4. Retention
5. Advocacy

This mapping will help you identify gaps in your content marketing plan and ensure you’re addressing customer needs at each stage.

Step 7: Identify content gaps

Based on your analysis, pinpoint areas where your content marketing strategy falls short:

• Topics not covered
• Customer journey stages with insufficient content
• Content types you’re not making the most of
• Outdated or low-performing content

This will guide your future content creation.

Step 8: Develop an action plan

Create a prioritised list of actions based on your findings:

1. Update and optimise high-potential content
2. Create new content to fill identified gap
3. Repurpose successful content into different formats
4. Remove or adapt underperforming content
5. Improve your internal linking structure.

Step 9: Implement changes and monitor results

Execute your action plan and track the impact of your changes. Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor improvements in traffic, engagement, and conversions.

Step 10: Rinse and repeat

Content audits should be an ongoing process. Schedule regular audits (e.g., quarterly or bi-annually) to ensure your content marketing strategy remains effective and aligned with your business goals.

A well-executed content audit is a powerful tool to help you harness the potential of your content marketing strategy. By following these steps you can gain valuable insights into your content’s performance, align your efforts with the customer journey, and create a data-driven content marketing plan that works.

Make content audits a cornerstone of your content marketing strategy to make sure it remains relevant, engaging, and effective in driving your business goals forward.

So, roll up your sleeves, dive into your content, and unlock the full potential of your content marketing plan. Your audience – and your bottom line – will thank you for it.

Next up: Explore how you can put people at the centre of your content marketing strategy by creating in-depth customer personas.

Don’t have time for a full content audit? Our simple website tune-up template can get you started, identify areas for improvement and make a few simple tweaks to start getting better results.