Content strategy vs. content marketing: What’s the difference?

Ever feel like people use “content strategy” and “content marketing” interchangeably? While connected, they serve different purposes. Understanding the distinction can help you build a stronger, more effective content plan that aligns with your goals and audience needs.

Let’s break it down.

What is content strategy?

As the word “strategy” implies, content strategy is the foundation of your content efforts. It’s all about the planning and managing of content. It’s the big-picture thinking that ensures everything you create serves a purpose. If it were a road trip, the content strategy would be the plan to get you from where you are starting to where you want to end up. It connects the dots from here to there. It’s the same with your organization — it connects the dots between your business goals and your audience’s needs.

Content strategy involves:

• Defining clear content goals
• Researching your audience
• Auditing existing content
• Identifying content gaps
• Selecting key themes, topics, formats and keywords
• Developing editorial calendars
• Choosing distribution channels
• Establishing content governance
• Measuring performance

Content strategy answers the questions:

• Why are we creating content?
• Who are we creating content for?
• Who will create the content?
• Who will ensure the content is on-brand?
• Who will manage the created content?

Let’s look at the definition of content strategy from one of the original proponents of the term, Kristina Halverson, CEO of Brain Traffic.

“Content strategy is the creation, publication and governance of useful, usable content.” — Kristina Halverson

She does not say that useful, usable content is “…on the web” or “…on your social media channels.”
That’s because a well-executed content strategy applies to all platforms — websites, blogs, social media, recruitment, retention and beyond.
“A well-rounded content strategy is the big picture plan for all of your content efforts — from your website organization to the print materials you hand out to patients to your digital and physical ads,” says Abbie Krajewski, content strategist at WG Content. “Content strategy helps you connect these efforts to your big-picture goals and objectives. It ensures all your efforts work in concert with each other.”

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is where the strategy comes to life. It’s the execution: creating, distributing and optimizing content to engage and convert your audience. If content strategy is a roadmap, content marketing is all the stops along the way that connect, educate and inspire.

Content marketing involves:

• Creating high-quality content
• Distributing content across multiple channels
• Repurposing, or atomizing, content for different platforms
• Promoting content
• Tracking performance and iterating

Content marketing answers the questions:

• How do we present this content to our audience?
• What channels will be most effective for this content?
• What formats will resonate best?

Let’s look at the definition of content marketing from Content Marketing Institute, one of the first companies to champion the term.

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

“When I think about content marketing, it all goes back to getting the right message to the right user at the right time,” says Abbie. “It’s about answering your prospect’s questions before they ask them to build trust and show your expertise.”

What about content marketing strategy?

Content marketing strategy is where content strategy and content marketing meet. It applies high-level strategic thinking to content marketing execution, ensuring targeted, effective efforts.

It includes:

• Blog and article content planning
• Video content planning
• Podcasting and webinar strategies
• Infographic and visual content integration
• Case studies, patient stories and testimonials
• Email and newsletter strategy

Here’s a helpful way to look at it:

How content strategy and content marketing work together

The best results come from combining both. A well-defined content strategy ensures your marketing efforts are intentional and effective, while content marketing activates those strategies.

Without strategy, content marketing lacks direction. Without content marketing, strategy remains a plan on paper.

“Content strategy and content marketing go together like peanut butter and jelly — yes, you can work with just one, but the combination is a classic for a reason,” says Abbie. “By prioritizing both strategy and content marketing, you can ensure your efforts tie back to the big picture and prioritize work that will help you meet your goals. Also, your content marketing will perform better when written with a strategic purpose and vision.”

How content strategy and content marketing are different

It’s helpful to think about this through the lens of goals, focus, tools and results.

3. Accessibility of content across the site

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6 tips to elevate your content strategy and content marketing

Want to do more with the content strategy and content marketing efforts you have in place? Abbie advises you to avoid this common mistake:

“Don’t get so caught up on action, action, action without thinking through why you’re doing it. Keep your goals in mind, even when you’re caught up in the creation stage of your content process.”

Instead, here are five tips to elevate your efforts.

1. Focus on your audience. Who are they? What are their pain points? What channels and content formats do they prefer?
2. Review, review, review. Regularly review your existing content to find areas for improvement and opportunities to repurpose.
3. Create valuable content that stands out. It has to be high-quality. But today, that isn’t enough. Does your brand shine through? Does it have authority? Are there better ways to share your organization’s unique, first-hand perspectives?
4. Optimize for SEO, AEO and AI Overviews. Integrate keyword research, competitor analysis and trending topics to inform your content creation.
5. Don’t forget distribution. You have to promote the content so people will see it.
6. Continuous improvement. Always look to learn and improve. Track performance and don’t be afraid to refine your strategy.

And remember, the value of content strategy and content marketing will only grow.

“Once your content marketing and content strategy are working in tandem, your data gets supercharged,” says Abbie. “At first, your content strategy will test theories, but over time, you’ll test new theories while refining the tactics that your data tells you work. Ideally, the content process is a cycle. When you have more data, you can become more effective with how you spend your time creating content.”

Need help with content strategy or content marketing?

Whether you need help crafting a winning strategy or executing high-impact content, WG Content has a team of content strategists and writers ready to help you make magic. Let’s get started.

More tips on content marketing and content strategy:

Heather Stanley

A born storyteller, Heather has 20 years of experience managing…

Abbie Krajewski

Abbie is an experienced marketer who uses her strategic mind…

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