Content Strategy vs Content Marketing: A Pie Analogy

Do you like pie? I love pie.

But, have you ever tried to transport a full pie without it being in a pie pan?

I’m hoping the answer is no, because that’s pretty much impossible and wouldn’t go well.

Content strategy is to content marketing what your pie pan is to your pie.

• The strategy holds the whole thing together so you can transport some delicious content marketing.
• You don’t start (or shouldn’t) by trying to make a pie and then placing it into a pan (in the same way that you shouldn’t start producing content without a strategy).
• You build the pie within the parameters of the pan, but first you need to understand how big of pie it is you’re making and who is going to eat it.
• The pie is what you distribute – your content.
• Here at Avalanche Creative, we love the work of building pie pans (sounds weird but go with me on this one…)

A good content strategy (pie pan) can create all kinds of opportunities for your business to generate website traffic and leads.

Here’s a little slice from our own website:

This content is part of an overall strategy to get in front of landscapers to help them with their websites.

We identified that in any given month, there are hundreds of people searching the web for “landscaping memes.”

And what types of people are likely to search for landscaping memes?

• Landscapers that are looking for memes to share on social media.
• Landscapers that are looking for a good professional giggle.

You get the idea.

Now once we’ve positioned this page to rank for the topic of landscaping memes, we’ll likely have a few hundred landscapers hitting our website every month (for free) and when they do they’ll notice that we provide resources and services for landscapers, which creates a great opportunity for us.

This is content strategy and content marketing at work – creating something valuable (educational, funny, useful, etc.) for your target audience, even when they aren’t in-market to buy.

Are you making a pie with/without a pan? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.