Identifying content gaps is a crucial step in developing a comprehensive content strategy. By identifying and addressing these gaps, you can ensure that your content aligns with the needs, thoughts, and emotions of your target audience throughout their buyer journey. In this exercise, we will utilise the "Content Plan & Budget Template" and focus on the third tab, "3. Gaps," to identify and prioritise content gaps based on the provided framework and the content audit conducted earlier.
Goal
The goal of this exercise is to identify and prioritise content gaps within your existing content inventory. By the end of this exercise, you will have a clear understanding of the areas where you need to create new content to address the needs of your target audience at different stages of their buyer journey.
Instructions & Resources
Copy the Content Plan & Budget Template
- Open the "Content Plan & Budget Template" Google Sheet and navigate to the "3. Gaps" tab.
- Review the provided prioritisation framework, which categorises content gaps based on the buying stage and level of intent of your target audience.
- Refer to the "Spread of your content" table, which presents the distribution of your existing content across the buying stages and levels of intent. It shows the current count of content pieces in each category from the “2. Audit” tab.
- Based on the spread of your content, identify the gaps in your content coverage by considering the missing combinations of buying stages and levels of intent.
- In the empty table provided, list the identified gaps in the corresponding cells based on the buying stage and level of intent.
- Prioritize the identified gaps by starting from the top-right cell (Hot decision) and moving towards the bottom-left cell (Cold awareness). Consider the significance and impact of addressing each gap on your marketing objectives and target audience needs.
- Optionally, use the "Notes" column to provide any additional comments or insights regarding each identified content gap.
Note: You can customize the prioritization framework or add additional columns to the table if it aligns better with your specific content gap identification needs.
By completing this exercise, you will have a clear understanding of the content gaps within your existing content inventory. This insight will help you prioritize your content creation efforts, ensuring that you develop high-impact content that addresses the specific needs and intents of your target audience at different stages of their buyer journey.