Here’s the harsh truth: “Let’s post on TikTok” is not a content marketing plan. And it’s not a content marketing strategy either.
A content marketing plan is a documented roadmap that turns your big-picture content goals into real action. It defines what you’ll create, who you’ll create it for, where you’ll publish it, and how you’ll measure its success. Those goals, however, come from your content strategy; as do the definition of your audience and your brand voice.
In other words, content strategy sets the direction, while your content marketing plan turns that direction into execution.
Last year, 61% of B2B marketers with a content strategy and plan reported improved effectiveness over the prior year, yet 16% still say developing them is among their biggest challenges.
This guide makes that a thing of the past. We’ll outline how to build a content marketing plan, why you need one, and what a great one looks like.
Table of Contents
- Why You Need a Content Marketing Plan
- How to Create a Content Marketing Plan in 7 Steps
- Content Marketing Plan Examples
- Frequently Asked Questions About Content Marketing Plans
- Put your content marketing plan into action.
Why You Need a Content Marketing Plan
Seventy-four percent of B2B marketers say content marketing helped generate demand and leads, while 52% say it grew loyalty with existing customers. But those results don’t happen by accident; they result from a content marketing plan.
A content marketing strategy is the “why” and “what,” but the content marketing plan is the “how” and “when.” That’s why content marketing without a plan is a risky game, inviting inconsistency in quality and frequency.
A documented content marketing plan gives your team a shared framework, so every piece of content feels on brand, delivers the same level of value, and serves a purpose, not just a deadline.
A content plan is one of the most important best practices for content marketing, but also one of the most commonly skipped. In my experience, this is often due to time. Many teams say, “Why waste time writing down what we’re going to do, when we can just start doing it?” while others think the information is so foundational that it doesn’t need to be documented. But I’ve seen firsthand how misguided these thoughts are.
Content marketing is a long-term investment. 82% of marketers actively invest in content, according to HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report, and the brands getting the best returns do so systematically, not reactively. A plan is what makes that consistency possible.
Content Marketing Planning Templates
Plan your content strategically with these handy templates.
- Editorial Calendar Template
- Buyer Persona Templates
- SWOT Analysis Templates
- SMART Goal Template
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Benefits of a Content Marketing Plan
A solid content marketing plan outlines specific formats, channels, owners, timelines, and KPIs, and also helps you:
- Align your team. When writers, designers, and social managers all follow the same plan, your brand content strategy looks, sounds, and feels consistent and on-brand across every channel.
- Use resources wisely. You stop producing content just to fill a calendar and start producing content that drives real results.
- Improve visibility. Planned, consistent publishing is what search engines and AI answer engines reward. It also gives your audiences something to look forward to or come back for.
- Drive business growth. Content marketing only works when content is tied to measurable goals. A content marketing plan takes your goals into account and outlines that connection.
- Reduce “firefighting”. A documented plan helps reduce last-minute requests, scrambled approvals, and time spent on stylistic questions.
So, how do you build one?
How to Create a Content Marketing Plan in 7 Steps
Before building your plan, there are several strategic elements you need. Skipping any of these inputs will create planning gaps later. Consider this list the foundational content strategy checklist that every effective content marketing plan builds on.
What You Need Before You Start
- Business goals: What is content supposed to help the business achieve? Brand awareness, lead generation, customer retention?
- Audience data: Who are your buyers? What do they care about? What are their interests, questions, and concerns? Use HubSpot CRM data or buyer persona research to ground this.
Pro tip: If you don’t have documented buyer personas yet, use HubSpot’s free Make My Persona tool to build them before you start planning. A plan without a defined audience is just guesswork. - Brand guidelines: Tone, voice, visual standards, and messaging pillars. Your content plan only works if all content follows the same rules.
- Existing content inventory: What have you already published? What’s working? What’s outdated?
- Available resources: How many writers, designers, and strategists do you have? What’s your budget and timeline?
- Funnel stages: Do you need top-of-funnel awareness content, mid-funnel nurture content, or bottom-of-funnel conversion content — or all three?
- Competitive landscape: What content are your competitors publishing? Where are the gaps you can own?
- Ownership model: Who creates, approves, and publishes content? Establish this before the plan launches.
Our seven-step process will help you gather these elements and unite them in a smart content marketing plan.
Step 1: Define your goals.
Start with why. Your content marketing goals should connect directly to your business goals, not to vanity metrics like page views for their own sake.
Ask yourself: What do we need content to do for the business this quarter? Next year? Common goals include:
- Increase organic traffic by X%
- Generate X qualified leads per month
- Improve brand awareness among a target audience
- Reduce churn by educating existing customers
- Support the sales team with bottom-of-funnel enablement content
Make sure these goals are SMART or specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
“Increase blog traffic” is not a SMART goal. “Increase organic blog traffic by 20% in Q3 by publishing two SEO-optimized posts per week” is. SMART goals eliminate ambiguity about what needs to be achieved and make expectations clear to your team.
Pro tip: Use HubSpot’s free SMART Goal Template to set goals that are actually trackable. It’s included in our free Content Marketing Planning Kit.
Next, rank your goals from most to least important. This helps you allocate resources and make tradeoffs when capacity gets tight.
Not sure where to start? HubSpot’s AI tools can help you draft initial goal statements, generate content briefs, and map content ideas to funnel stages. They are useful when you’re building your plan from scratch or refreshing an existing one.
Step 2: Research your audience.
Great content delivers answers, education, or entertainment that audiences find useful. The more you know about your audience, the more relevant and effective your content. HubSpot’s buyer persona research guide is a good starting point.
For each persona, document:
- Job title and role
- Key goals and responsibilities
- Top pain points and challenges
- Preferred content formats (long-form articles, short videos, podcasts, etc.)
- Channels they use most
- What objections do they have to buying your product
Gather this data from multiple sources. For example:
- CRM data: Look at your existing customer base. What industries, job titles, and company sizes are most common? HubSpot CRM surfaces this data automatically.
- Sales team interviews: Your sales reps talk to prospects every day. Ask them what questions keep coming up.
- Customer surveys and interviews: Go direct. Ask customers what content they found useful and what they wish existed.
- Social media and community listening: See what questions your audience asks in LinkedIn groups, Reddit threads, and industry forums.
- Competitor analysis: What content are your competitors creating? Which of their posts gets the most engagement?
If you already have personas, this is a good time to revisit them. Audience research should be refreshed annually, especially if your product or market has shifted.
Step 3: Audit your existing content.
As the saying goes, work smarter, not harder. Before you create anything new, take stock of your existing content and how it can be used to align with your goals today. A content audit prevents you from duplicating effort, identifies content that needs updating, and reveals topics where you have a head start.
What to document in your audit:
- URL and title: Track every page you want to include.
- Content type: Blog post, landing page, video, podcast episode, ebook, etc.
- Funnel stage: TOFU (top-of-funnel), MOFU (middle-of-the-funnel), or BOFU (bottom-of-the-funnel).
- Performance data: Organic traffic, backlinks, conversions, engagement rate.
- Status: Keep as-is, update, consolidate, or delete.
Once you have this picture, look for:
- Content gaps: Topics your audience cares about that you haven’t covered, or haven’t covered well.
- Repurposing opportunities: High-traffic blog posts that could become videos, email series, or social content.
- Quick wins: Pages ranking on page 2 that need a refresh to break into the top 10.
Identifying these things will help you determine what kind of content you need to create going forward and what to include in your calendar.
Pro tip: Use Google Search Console to find pages with high impressions but low click-through rates. These are prime candidates for title rewrites and meta description updates — fast improvements that don’t require new content.
Content Marketing Planning Templates
Plan your content strategically with these handy templates.
- Editorial Calendar Template
- Buyer Persona Templates
- SWOT Analysis Templates
- SMART Goal Template
Download Free
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Step 4: Decide on content types, channels, and tactics.
Not every content format works for every audience or every goal.
This step is where you match your audience’s preferences with your team’s capabilities and the funnel stages you need to serve. Your website content strategies (blog, landing pages, resource hubs) are usually the anchor, with social, email, and video serving as distribution and amplification.
Content Types & Channels
Here’s a quick reference table:
A few questions to guide your choices:
- Where does your audience spend time online?
- What content formats does your team have the skills and budget to produce consistently?
- What formats do your top competitors use — and what are they missing?
- What does your content audit tell you about what has worked before?
Content Marketing Tactics to Include in Your Plan
Once you’ve chosen your formats and channels, the next question is how you’ll execute them strategically. Formats are what you publish. Tactics are how you make them work.
Target low-competition keywords first.
Ranking for high-volume keywords takes time and domain authority you may not have yet. Start with topics where your audience is actively searching and where established competitors haven’t dominated the results. Build from there as your authority grows.
Build topic clusters around your core themes.
A topic cluster groups related articles around a central pillar page, with each cluster piece linking back to it. This signals topical authority to search engines, distributes link equity across pages, and keeps readers on your site longer.
Start with one pillar topic per quarter rather than trying to build several at once. HubSpot developed and documented this model — you can read the original research behind it here.
Publish original research.
Original data and studies attract backlinks because other writers need sources. They also build thought leadership and aid in both SEO and AEO. Survey your customers, analyze your own product data, or study a trend in your industry. Even a modest study with a clear methodology can generate significant inbound links.
Repurpose content across channels.
One well-researched piece of content can travel far. Repurposing turns a blog post into a video, a video transcript into an article, a data study into an infographic, and a long-form guide into an email series.
Proactively build repurposing into your production workflow so each piece has a planned distribution life beyond its original channel. HubSpot Content Hub’s Content Remix feature lets teams do this at scale, transforming a single asset into channel-specific formats without having to start from scratch.
Optimize existing content before creating new content.
New content isn’t always the answer. Updating outdated information, adding missing subtopics, and improving structure can produce faster results with less effort.
In fact, HubSpot’s own blogging team doubled monthly leads and increased organic search views by an average of 106% by repurposing and optimizing existing content rather than only creating new posts.
Use Google Search Console to find pages with deep impressions but declining clicks; those are your fastest wins. Schedule content optimization alongside new content production, not as a separate project you’ll get to someday.
Offer free tools or premium resources.
Free tools and templates attract high-intent visitors already looking for a solution. For content teams, this could mean a free editorial calendar, a content brief template, a brand audit checklist, or an industry-specific calculator. Free resources generate organic backlinks and can anchor a lead capture strategy without a hard sell.
Build a newsletter as an owned distribution channel.
A newsletter that curates and contextualizes, rather than just linking to your latest posts, builds a direct audience that no algorithm can take away. People have already opted in and you can send them emails with exclusive content and messages they can’t get elsewhere.
Plan your newsletter content strategy as a deliberate format in its own right, not a byproduct of whatever you published that week. Your owned audience is your most resilient distribution channel.
Pro tip: Don’t try to do everything at once. Start with one anchor format (usually a blog or video series) and distribute it across channels. One well-researched long-form post can become a social thread, an email section, a short video script, and a slide deck.
This “create once, distribute everywhere” model stretches limited resources. AI like HubSpot’s Content Remix tool can help you repurpose this content with the click of a button.
Step 5: Choose a content management system (CMS).
A content management system is where your content lives. It’s where you handle creation, publication, and often analytics, so choosing the right one is a foundational decision for your content plan. Check out HubSpot’s list of best content management systems to compare options.
When evaluating CMS options, look for:
- Ease of use: Your writers and editors should be able to work without constant developer support.
- SEO tools: Built-in metadata editing, canonical tags, and structured data support.
- Workflow management: The ability to assign tasks, manage drafts, and track approvals.
- Analytics integration: Native dashboards or easy connection to tools like Google Analytics.
- Brand consistency controls: Templates, style guides, and permissions that prevent off-brand publishing.
HubSpot Content Hub is our CMS designed specifically for content marketing teams. It gives you a CMS, a content calendar, AI writing tools, brand voice controls, and analytics — all in one place.
When your plan is live, Content Hub is where you execute it: writing, scheduling, publishing, and measuring in a single workflow without switching tools. You can also host your website on HubSpot.
What we like: Content Hub connects directly to HubSpot CRM, so you can segment content performance by audience, track leads generated by specific posts, and see how content contributes to the pipeline, not just traffic.
Step 6: Build your content calendar and workflow.
A content calendar turns your plan into an actionable schedule. It connects goals, formats, channels, owners, and publish dates into a single view. It’s the difference between planning to publish and actually publishing.
Include the following in your content calendar:
- Publish date: When the content goes live.
- Content title or working title: Even a rough title helps your team plan.
- Format and channel: Blog post, LinkedIn video, email, etc.
- Funnel stage: TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU.
- Owner: Who’s responsible for producing it?
- Status: In brief, in draft, in review, scheduled, published.
- Goal / CTA: What action do you want the reader to take?
- Focus keyword: For SEO-driven content.
- URL or link: Where the content lives.
A few calendar-building tips:
- Plan at least four to six weeks so your team has time to produce quality work.
- Build in a mix of evergreen content (always relevant) and timely content (tied to events, seasons, or trends).
- Leave buffer slots for reactive or urgent content — things come up.
- Balance content across funnel stages. Many teams over-index on TOFU and neglect the middle and bottom of the funnel.
Free template: Download HubSpot’s free Editorial Calendar Template to get started quickly. It’s included in the Content Marketing Planning Kit.
Next, pair your content calendar with a clear content workflow. This is the step-by-step process each piece goes through, from brief to publish. Without a defined workflow, content stalls in review and deadlines slip.
HubSpot Content Hub includes a built-in marketing calendar and workflow management tools. They are what I used to plan and manage the publication of 3 articles per day, alongside our marketing emails and other initiatives, in my last role.
You can assign drafts, track statuses, and schedule posts across your website, blog, email, and social accounts, all from one beautifully color-coordinated dashboard.
Step 7: Set KPIs, distribute, and measure.
Creating great content is only half the work. The other half is getting it in front of the right people and measuring whether it worked.
Distribution
Publishing a blog post is not distribution. Content distribution means actively promoting your content across owned, earned, and paid channels:
- Owned channels: Email newsletters, social media accounts, your website, push notifications.
- Earned channels: Media mentions, backlinks, social shares, podcast appearances, community posts.
- Paid channels: Sponsored content, paid social amplification, PPC ads pointing to content.
A social media strategy is an important piece of this. Know which platforms your audience uses and tailor content to each one. I mean, think about it. What works on TikTok may not work on LinkedIn.
Measurement
Set KPIs before you publish. For each content goal, identify at least one metric that tells you whether you’re on track.
Pro tip: Don’t just track traffic. Track what traffic does. A blog post with 10,000 visits and zero conversions is less valuable than one with 1,000 visits and 50 email sign-ups. Always connect content metrics to business outcomes.
Once you have picked your KPIs, review their performance at least monthly.
HubSpot Content Hub connects publishing, analytics, and CRM data in one place, so you can track traffic, conversions, and content-attributed pipeline without bouncing between tools. Connect performance data back to your goals and adjust your plan quarterly.
Content Marketing Planning Templates
Plan your content strategically with these handy templates.
- Editorial Calendar Template
- Buyer Persona Templates
- SWOT Analysis Templates
- SMART Goal Template
Download Free
All fields are required.
Form not available
Content Marketing Plan Examples
The best content marketing plans are built on a clear goal, a defined audience, and a consistent approach. Here are three real-world examples from brands with successful content marketing plans.
1. Ahrefs: Product-Led Content Marketing
Objective: Grow a B2B SaaS product without a sales team, paid advertising, or outside funding — using content alone.
Audience: SEO professionals, digital marketers, and website owners looking to improve their search rankings and organic traffic.
Approach: Ahrefs built its entire growth engine around what CMO Tim Soulo calls product-led content. Every blog post and YouTube video teaches readers how to solve a real SEO problem and shows them exactly how Ahrefs helps them do it.
Product-led content is a foundational approach to content marketing, but many brands have deviated from it in recent years. Rather than writing generic marketing content, the team researches topics that their target customers are actively searching for and then embeds the product natively into the tutorial.
For instance, a beginner’s guide to keyword research doesn’t just explain the concept; it walks readers through the exact steps using Ahrefs’ interface, so they get value from the content and a live demo of the product at the same time. The full strategy is documented in Ahrefs’ own free Blogging for Business course, taught by Soulo himself.
Outcome: Ahrefs scaled to $100M+ ARR with roughly 125 employees and zero salespeople, generating approximately $1M ARR per employee. The blog now ranks for over 109,000 organic search keywords, with a Domain Rating of 91 on par with Wikipedia’s, and 384,000 backlinks from high-authority domains, including Shopify, GitHub, and WordPress.
The company has never taken outside investment and does not run paid acquisition campaigns. Content is its only acquisition channel.
Why it works: The content plan is inseparable from the product. Readers don’t just learn about SEO, they learn about SEO using Ahrefs. The educational and product value converge, making every piece of content both a marketing asset and a conversion tool.
2. Patagonia: Brand Value Content
Objective: Build lasting brand loyalty among environmentally conscious consumers by making radical transparency the content strategy.
Audience: Outdoor enthusiasts and consumers who factor a brand’s environmental and ethical record into their purchasing decisions.
Approach: Patagonia’s content plan is built around a single principle: authenticity. They lean into highlighting their brand values and being transparent about their practices and products, both the good and bad.
Their flagship initiative, The Footprint Chronicles, launched in 2007 and publishes factory-level detail about their supply chain, including factory addresses, ownership, materials sourcing, environmental impact assessments, and what Patagonia is still working to fix. Most apparel brands treat supply chain details as a legal liability. However, Patagonia turned it into its content strategy.
Alongside the Chronicles, their Patagonia Stories section publishes long-form essays, documentary films, and narratives of activism, while the Worn Wear program showcases repair tutorials, secondhand gear guides, and stories about the lifetime of a jacket, encouraging sustainability.
Patagonia publishes content on its website and distributes it primarily through organic social media and email channels.
Outcome: Patagonia consistently ranks among the most trusted outdoor brands. The Footprint Chronicles compounded over 15 years into a structural brand moat: by the time competitors began publishing factory-level disclosures in the 2020s, Patagonia had a 15-year head start. Their content drives community engagement and brand advocacy — particularly among younger consumers who research a brand’s values before buying.
Why it works: The content plan is built around a brand position, not a product catalog. Transparency is the product. Every piece of content reinforces the same idea that Patagonia shares its customers’ values and that consistency compounds into trust that advertising cannot buy.
3. Shopify: Merchant Education Content
Objective: Acquire and retain merchants by becoming the most useful educational resource for anyone starting or growing an e-commerce business.
Audience: First-time and early-stage store owners selling physical products, primarily in fashion and apparel, home decor, and health and beauty. Their documented primary struggles are generating traffic, converting visitors, and retaining customers, all of which the blog addresses directly.
Approach: Shopify’s blog is explicitly positioned as a merchant education platform, not a product marketing channel, with their contributor guidelines stating the mission plainly: “provide the world’s best coverage on the topics that matter most to independent businesses.”
That said, content spans the full funnel. They have TOFU how-to guides covering business fundamentals, MOFU deep dives into marketing, operations, and finance, and BOFU conversion and retention guides.
Shopify also pairs editorial content with free tools, courses via Shopify Academy, and a podcast, creating a content ecosystem that serves merchants at every stage of their journey. Every piece is written to be actionable and referenceable, meaning readers can return to it as their business grows.
Outcome: There are over 4.2 million active Shopify stores as of 2025. The blog serves as both an acquisition channel, attracting prospective merchants seeking e-commerce advice, and an onboarding and retention tool, helping existing merchants get more from the platform. Shopify’s newsletter reaches what they call “millions of self-starters.”
Why it works: The content plan directly addresses the real problems Shopify’s customers face before, during, and after they sign up. It doesn’t sell the platform; it teaches people how to build a business, and the platform is the natural next step. Education is the conversion path.
Frequently Asked Questions About Content Marketing Plans
What is a content marketing plan?
A content marketing plan is a documented framework that outlines what content you will create, for which audience, on which channels, on what schedule, and with what goals and KPIs. It turns your content strategy into a practical roadmap for execution.
How is a content marketing plan different from a content strategy?
A content strategy defines the “why” and “what” of your content marketing — your goals, audience, brand voice, and overall positioning. A content marketing plan defines the “how” and “when” — the specific formats, channels, owners, timelines, distribution approach, and measurement framework. Strategy sets the direction; the plan puts it into action.
What should a content marketing plan include?
At a minimum, a content marketing plan should cover:
- Business goals and how content supports them
- Audience personas and their content preferences
- A content audit of existing assets
- Chosen content formats, tactics, and channels
- A content calendar with publish dates, owners, and statuses
- A distribution plan for owned, earned, and paid channels
- KPIs and a measurement framework
How do you create a content marketing plan step by step?
The seven-step framework in this article covers the full process:
- Define your goals (use the SMART framework)
- Research your audience (build or refresh buyer personas)
- Audit your existing content
- Decide on content types, tactics, and channels
- Choose a content management system
- Build your content calendar and workflow
- Set KPIs, distribute, and measure
How often should you update your content marketing plan?
Review your content marketing plan quarterly and do a full refresh annually. Content performance, audience needs, and platform algorithms all change. A plan that was right six months ago may need significant adjustments today, especially as AI search continues to shift how audiences discover content.
Put your content marketing plan into action.
Building a content marketing plan takes time up front, but it saves far more time in the long run. Teams with a documented plan publish more consistently, waste less budget on underperforming content, and demonstrate ROI to stakeholders.
The fastest way to get started? Download HubSpot’s free Content Marketing Planning Kit. It includes an editorial calendar template, buyer persona templates, a SWOT analysis template, and a SMART goal worksheet, everything you need to structure your plan before your first piece of content goes live.
If your team is ready to move from planning to execution and you need a system to manage workflows, maintain brand consistency, and track performance across channels, HubSpot Content Hub is built for exactly that.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Content Marketing Planning Templates
Plan your content strategically with these handy templates.
- Editorial Calendar Template
- Buyer Persona Templates
- SWOT Analysis Templates
- SMART Goal Template
Download Free
All fields are required.
Form not available
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