I want a content strategy template to help someone make a decision while there is still a decision to make. Should we fund this series? Who needs it? What would we stop doing to make room? If the template cannot answer those questions, a completed document offers very little protection against wasted work.
The version below is a short investment brief for one content initiative. It is deliberately smaller than a company-wide strategy. Use it before committing to a webinar series, customer education program, newsletter, or other repeatable body of work. Keep the answers short enough to revisit at a budget review.
1. The decision and the audience
Complete this: “We are deciding whether to invest [amount and staff capacity] in [initiative] for [specific audience] during [period].”
Then identify the audience’s actual task. “Operations leaders” describes people. “Operations leaders comparing the disruption of replacing their scheduling system” describes a situation content can help with. The GOV.UK Design System’s guidance for starting a service emphasizes giving users enough information to judge whether it meets their need. I would apply that discipline to the brief before choosing formats.
2. The obstacle and proposed change
Complete this: “These people currently struggle to [task], because [specific obstacle]. We believe [content] will help them [observable action].”
Add the evidence behind the obstacle. Repeated sales questions, customer interviews, support records, or observed behavior can support the case. A topic that sounds interesting internally is a hypothesis, not evidence of demand.
Be clear about the mechanism. A comparison guide might help buyers qualify themselves. An onboarding series might help customers reach a useful result sooner. Neither should inherit a generic promise to increase awareness, leads, retention, and revenue all at once.
3. The full investment
Complete this: “The initial cost is [amount]. Distribution, expert review, measurement, and maintenance add [amount]. The owner is [role], with [hours] available.”
Include production, approvals, tools, accessibility work, and the time needed to use or distribute the finished content. A low production estimate is not a low program cost if getting anyone to see the work requires a large paid campaign.
Name the displaced priority. Staff capacity committed here cannot also deliver another project. Describe that tradeoff separately from the cost calculation so you do not accidentally count the same labor twice.
4. The contribution case
Complete this: “For this investment to pay back during [window], we need approximately [incremental outcome], worth [contribution or realizable savings] after relevant delivery costs.”
Hypothetical example: an onboarding content pilot costs $5,000. Each genuinely retained customer would contribute $250 over the agreed evaluation period after variable servicing costs. The pilot needs 20 additional retained customers to cover its cost. Keeping 20 customers who would have stayed anyway does not meet that threshold.
Use a range if the contribution estimate or likely behavior change is uncertain. If the plausible audience is too small to reach break-even, fix the investment case before commissioning the content. If the benefit is saved staff time, explain whether that time reduces spending or creates useful capacity. Capacity has value, but it is not automatically cash saved.
5. The evidence and its limits
Complete this: “We will measure [primary outcome], compare it with [credible baseline or control], and watch [possible downside]. We cannot yet separate [known confounding factor].”
Record a leading signal, such as completion of an onboarding step, alongside the financial outcome. Define the source and owner for each number. Google’s attribution guidance explains how credit can be assigned to recorded interactions. Treat that credit as one view of the journey. It does not settle whether the content caused the outcome.
For the onboarding pilot, a comparable holdout may help estimate incremental retention. If the audience is too small, use qualitative evidence and observed behavior to improve the hypothesis, while labeling the financial conclusion as provisional.
6. The decision date
Complete this: “On [date], [owner] will recommend continue, change, or stop, based on [threshold and minimum observation period].”
Allow enough time for the expected outcome to occur. Agree what warrants extending a test and cap that extension. Otherwise, “we need more data” can become a permanent budget request.
Put the brief where work gets approved, then update it with what happened. Its value is in the decisions it changes: a smaller pilot, a clearer audience, a distribution plan someone owns, or a project the team decides not to fund.
For the numbers behind the decision, see how to calculate marketing ROI. Put the approach to work with the free marketing resources, or work with me on your marketing strategy and implementation.
