Enterprise content marketing involves creating, distributing, and scaling content across multiple channels for large, global businesses. It requires cross-functional collaboration and documented approval processes for success.

From disconnected teams to inconsistent messaging and complex approval processes, enterprise businesses face unique content marketing challenges.

Without a unified strategy, content efforts can quickly become fragmented and inefficient.

Below, we’ll dive into the strategies we use to help large organizations create tailored, targeted content for their audiences.

What is enterprise content marketing?

Enterprise content marketing is the strategic approach to creating, publishing, and promoting content across channels at scale for large organizations.

It often involves cross-department collaboration, advanced tech, and data-driven insights for a more measurable impact across multiple markets or customer segments.

What makes enterprise content marketing different

Enterprise content marketing differs from traditional marketing due to its scale of operation.

Typically, enterprise businesses have a high volume of content, a large number of employees, a wide audience, and multiple channels where content is published.

This level of production requires more clearly defined rules and processes to guide how content is created and published.

Additionally, enterprise content marketing needs to support longer, more complex buying cycles and should aim to build authority and drive traffic.

How to build an enterprise content marketing strategy

To get the most out of your enterprise content marketing efforts, create an intentional, data-driven content strategy. Let’s walk through the process step by step.

1. Build a cross-functional content team

Enterprise brands require the right team to create content at scale and maintain quality assurance throughout the process.

“Working with an experienced team that’s been there and done that is key to a successful content marketing plan for enterprise companies,” says HawkSEM co-founder and CEO Sam Yadegar.

“The content marketing specialists working with you need to have an in-depth knowledge of your products and services and be able to communicate this to your audience clearly. This is how you make your company stand out and increase ROI.”

At the enterprise level, content marketing is typically shared across teams instead of in silo. Marketing, sales, customer success, and legal need to collaborate closely to ensure content is accurate and aligned.

Core skill sets for an enterprise content team

Titles may vary by organization; however, enterprise content teams typically require the following skill sets:

  • Content strategy: Content strategists and content marketing managers define the content vision and align it with overarching business goals.
  • Content writing: Writers create high-quality content across formats with an in-depth understanding of the subject matter.
  • Editing: Editors ensure content is accurate, clear, and follows brand guidelines.
  • Optimization: SEO specialists and content managers optimize published content for search engines, search intent, and user experience.
  • Content design: Web designers, videographers, graphic designers, and UX specialists all support the visual components of content marketing.
  • Content distribution: Content managers and channel specialists oversee workflows, publishing, promotion, and repurposing across platforms.
  • Measurement and analysis: Analysts track performance to connect content to pipeline and revenue. These insights guide ongoing optimizations.

Leadership and ownership roles

Enterprise organizations often need to hire for senior-level management roles like Director of Content Marketing and/or Creative Director as well.

These positions drive the vision for content marketing and design across the organization. Establishing clear ownership, decision-makers, and approval workflows will prevent bottlenecks and maintain consistency at scale.

Hiring in-house vs. agency

Enterprise companies often perform best with a hybrid model: a core in-house marketing team to enforce the overall vision and execution, paired with an agency or freelance team to scale production and performance.

Outsourcing to an agency can fill in skillset gaps in your team; rather than hiring a specialist for every area of your content marketing, you can hire an agency with a whole team of specialists.

This allows you to get the support you need without the time and money that goes into finding, hiring, training, and managing more employees.

2. Audit existing content and operations

Before building a cohesive strategy, review your existing content processes and library.

A content audit is the process of assessing every piece of content across teams, domains, and formats to identify and evaluate:

  • Performance
  • Gaps in your content marketing strategy
  • Pieces of content that can be reused and repurposed
  • Content that needs to be updated
  • Content that needs to be optimized
  • Relevance by funnel stage
  • Consolidation opportunities

While auditing existing content, create a database or hub where your team can document all existing content assets.

This will be useful when looking for content on specific topics to share with the sales or customer support teams. It also makes content repurposing faster and easier.

Further reading: How to Conduct an Enterprise SEO Audit: 11 Easy Steps.

3. Analyze competitor content strategies

Seeing what works and doesn’t work for your competitors can inform your content strategy.

Using search engines along with specific SEO tools, analyze competitor content for unique insights into the strategies and tactics used to reach, engage, and convert a similar target audience.

A competitor content audit is less about copying what your competitors are doing and more about seeing what your target audience responds to best.

Not everything your competitors do with their content will work for your business, but you may get interesting ideas.

4. Identify SEO and topic opportunities

For enterprise businesses, building a list of keywords is less important than building sustainable topical authority.

This means, in addition to traditional keyword research, identifying core SEO topics — or topic clusters. These topics should support business priorities and be scalable over time.

Build out a repeatable framework for identifying topics and keyword research going forward to maintain consistency.

5. Map content for all stages of the funnel

Next, evaluate search intent across the buyer journey, mapping your keywords and topics to appropriate stages of the sales funnel.

To do this:

  • Define buyer personas and buying committee roles (the group of people within a target organization who make purchase decisions).
  • Align content topics to stages of the buyer journey: awareness, consideration, and decision.
  • Identify content formats that work best during each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Map out content

6. Create a content calendar

After mapping the content formats and topics across the buyer’s journey, create a long-term content calendar tied to key initiatives.

Enterprise companies have to plan for and keep track of a high volume of content. Content calendar software like CoSchedule helps the marketing team organize content by marketing campaign and channel.

This type of software is also collaborative, allowing multiple team members to work within the same calendar. It even offers features like posting directly to social media channels and WordPress and a system for content approvals from stakeholders.

7. Build content marketing processes and workflows

Building and documenting enterprise content management processes and workflows keeps everyone on the same page regarding content marketing.

Start with a brand guide to establish a consistent voice, style, and quality standard.

Then, define approval workflows — this might include a subject matter expert to verify accuracy, a legal team member to ensure compliance, and an editor to review messaging and brand voice.

An established approval process ensures every piece of content is reviewed by the appropriate stakeholders before publication.

With so many different assets in different stages of content creation, enterprise businesses rely on defined processes and workflows to maintain efficiency and promote clear communication. Automation can further streamline these processes and help teams scale content more effectively.

8. Produce high-quality content

From LinkedIn posts to landing pages, each piece of content should be written in the company’s brand voice to ensure consistency, build trust, and strengthen brand awareness.

In addition to aligning with the company’s messaging, effective content is:

  • Well-researched with reputable sources
  • In-depth
  • Engaging to the target audience
  • Formatted for easy consumption
  • Optimized for search engines
  • Demonstrating expertise

Don’t be afraid to use different media types within one piece of content. For example, you can embed videos or relevant podcast episodes in your blog posts to make them more engaging.

9. Publish and promote content across channels

Use your content management system (CMS) or scheduling tool to publish your content after ensuring proper formatting and functionality. Then, promote your content across channels.

Content promotional strategies can include sharing a blog post on social media or using PPC ads to get more ebook downloads. The best promotional strategy will depend on the goals and audience for the content marketing campaign.

10. Measure and analyze results

Enterprise marketing teams need to track, measure, and analyze content performance regularly to evaluate the effectiveness of content marketing campaigns.

The metrics you measure will depend on the key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ve identified for each piece of content.

For example, if you’ve written SEO-focused blog posts to increase your visibility on search engines, you may use SEO keyword rankings as a metric.

On the other hand, if you’ve created a social media campaign to attract new customers, you’d likely measure conversion rates.

Be sure to use attribution models suited for long buying cycles and continuously optimize based on performance insights.

Types of enterprise content

Enterprise brands typically use a variety of tactics and channels to deliver tailored content to their audiences across the globe.

Here are the most common types of content large businesses use to reach their target audiences:

Brand and thought leadership content

  • Blog posts
  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • Social media content
  • Press releases

Lead nurturing content

  • Landing pages
  • Gated content: white papers, guides, ebooks
  • Email marketing campaigns
  • Webinars

Sales content

  • Case studies
  • One-pagers and solution briefs
  • Comparison sheets

What is the cost of enterprise content marketing?

Enterprise content marketing typically costs between $5,000 to over $30,000 per month, or $50,000 to over $500,000 for a fixed one-time project.

Pricing varies based on the scope, scale, and complexity of a company’s unique needs.

For example, developing and maintaining content for a 5,000-page website requires more resources than producing just 10 blog posts per month.

The takeaway

Creating and publishing content at scale presents many unique challenges. However, with a solid content marketing strategy, any enterprise business can build a content engine that fuels its organic marketing efforts.

Whether you want support with a special project or need to fill a skillset gap in your content team, partnering with an experienced content marketing agency can ensure your company implements every aspect of its content strategy.

Looking for an agency partner? HawkSEM is a top digital marketing agency with a dedicated content marketing team. Reach out to learn how we can support you.

This article has been updated and was originally published in May 2024.

Sarah Jane Burt

Sarah Jane Burt

Sarah Jane is a copywriter and content strategist with more than 12 years of experience working with everyone from multi-billion dollar tech brands like IBM to local real estate agents. She specializes in creating personality-packed sales content and thought leadership. When she’s not writing words on the Internet, she’s throwing axes competitively or romping around with her two weenie dogs.