How to Build a Content Marketing Map
And put it into action to see the marketing impact your content is making
Every time I go to a new company I always assess the talent, processes, tech stack, their data, as well as their positioning and messaging. When I look at their positioning and messaging, I always create a content asset map to figure out where the gaps are and lay the ground rules for how we’re going to track the marketing activities around the content— from downloads to promotions.
For clarity, I call in Content Asset Map and not Content Marketing Map but I’ve learned over the years that not everyone understands what an ‘asset’ is. So name it whatever will make the most sense at your company. In this context, an asset is a piece of content.
Today I am going to give you that content asset map for free.
The purpose of the Content Asset Map is to help you identify gaps, give the entire company a central place to go and find gated and ungated links, and most importantly — help people understand what the heck your content is about.
Maybe it was my days of doing digital and social at CA Technologies where I’d get $500,000 to do a campaign at Mobile World Congress and 5 assets to promote (white papers, videos, ebooks, infographics, etc). I wasn’t going to read them all or watch any long *ss video about whatever tech they were promoting. Who has time for that?? This is where the Content Asset Map comes in handy.
What goes in the content asset map?
For one, title, topic, synopsis, publish date, modified date, who last modified — these are the bare basics.
But you also need: Is it evergreen? or does it have a shelf life? Is it for a specific industry, persona, or country? Make sure you have a column for those too. Plus, don’t forget the buying stage or funnel stage.
I also include links for both the gated asset and the ungated asset, plus a notes field.
It looks like this:
You can download it/make a copy for yourself below ⬇️.
Tracking
Aside from the gated and non-gated links, I also usually include another tab for tracking. The tab goes over the rules for how to track specific assets and what the naming convention should be for each type of asset and where it is being promoted.
Consistency in tracking is key in Google Analytics.
ALWAYS use lowercase letters and pick how you will abbreviate each type and source and if you have two words like social media, then use a hyphen in between (e.g. social-media).
EXAMPLE
Imagine that piece of content is a guide or ebook. Will you abbreviate it with “gd”, “eb”, or spell it out with “guide” or “ebook”?
Your campaign sources also have abbreviations.
Imagine you have a piece of content you are promoting on Facebook. Will you say “facebook”, “Facebook”, “fb”, “Meta”, or “meta” as the source where you are promoting? This is the campaign source in your UTM parameter and it needs to be consistent or you won’t be able to measure it properly.
Here’s a sample list of how I’ve done it in the past.
The only exception, and it really depends on how detailed you need to get for your reporting, is content syndication.
There are many ways to skin a cat, but this is how I like to do this. MOPs would then create a tab within this sheet with every campaign. That sheet consists of columns including: asset type, name, base url, utm-source, utm-medium, utm-content, new URL with utm parameters, channel, salesforce/hubspot campaign link, campaign name (in SFDC or HubSpot).
Here’s an example of an eBook promoted on LinkedIn.
If this ebook was also promoted on Twitter/X and email, you’d see two more rows beneath it where the utm-source would be tw or em, utm-medium would be social or email.
It seems like tedious work but it brings a lot of sanity to the chaos of tracking your content’s impact, especially if you do not have external tools for it. Even if you do, it’s a good check and balance system to make sure campaigns are working.
Want a copy of this sheet? Comment “sheet” in the comments — just kidding! 😂 Download or make a copy for yourself here. For those of you who love Notion you can view and make a copy here.