Methodically building a content roadmap

Content teams are too reactive. Too often, they are just responding to needs from across the organization instead of having a deliberate method to prioritize.

Content is a lot like Product Management in this way. Product Management constantly faces requests from every part of the organization. Sales wants features that will help it overcome objections and close deals. Customer Success wants features that will help them onboard, expand, and retain accounts. Support wants bug fixes.

The list of what Product Management needs to sift through is endless. The only difference is that Product Management has an established process to sift through the noise in order to focus on its core objective of building a better solution for end customers.

Content, similarly, needs a process to sift through the noise. The challenge with Content is that it is extremely difficult to be intentional about what it wants to achieve. It is so easy to get distracted and pulled away from strategic initiatives because of the next fire that needs to be put out.

The most important inputs into the Content Roadmap should be:

1) Funnel Inefficiency: Which stage has the biggest leaks?

2) Buyer Journey Gaps: Where do we not have content to serve buyers and help them make a better purchasing decision.

3) Sales Needs: What assets does Sales need to convert deals into Closed Won

4) Demand Generation: Which programs are we launching and what content is required to ensure their success?

5) Customer Marketing: How can content be leveraged to capture value from existing customers to expand or retain those accounts?

The Content team's role is to take all these inputs and prioritize them against each other so that there is a mechanism to figure out what to work on first.