Content Marketing Checklist

Monthly content marketing workflow for a DTC e-commerce brand — covers planning, production, distribution across owned and paid channels, and performance review against ROAS and organic traffic KPIs. Run by the marketing manager with inp...

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1

Strategy and Planning

  1. Pull last month's GA4 and Klaviyo performance

    • Export sessions, conversion rate, and assisted-conversion data from GA4 (Acquisition > Traffic acquisition, segmented by organic / email / social). Pull Klaviyo flow and campaign revenue for the same window. Note which content pieces drove sessions that converted, not just sessions.

  2. Identify keyword targets in Ahrefs or Semrush

    • Filter for KD < 30, search volume > 200, and commercial / informational intent that maps to PDPs or collection pages. Avoid pure transactional terms already saturated by Amazon — focus on top-of-funnel buyer questions.

  3. Set MER and ROAS targets for the month
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  4. Lock the editorial calendar in Notion or Asana

    • Map each piece to a launch date, channel mix (blog, email, IG, TikTok, Pinterest), and product / collection it supports. Include UGC and influencer drops alongside owned content so paid teams can plan whitelisting windows.

  5. Confirm campaign type drives the playbook
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2

Content Production

  1. Brief writers with target keyword and SERP intent

    • Each brief includes primary keyword, secondary keywords, target word count, internal links to PDP / collection, and the 3 top-ranking SERP competitors. Include schema requirements (Product, FAQ, HowTo) for the dev handoff.

  2. Shoot product photography and UGC video

    • Use Soona or in-house studio for hero shots; brief Insense / Billo / GRIN creators for UGC in 9:16 for Reels, TikTok, and Meta placement. Capture lifestyle, unboxing, and demo angles per piece — paid teams burn through creative fast.

  3. Draft long-form blog post
  4. Edit copy against brand voice guide

    • Run copy through the voice guide and a Grammarly / Hemingway pass. Flag any unsubstantiated health, performance, or comparative claims for legal review — FTC has stepped up enforcement on cosmetics and supplement claims.

  5. Add internal links and Product schema

    • Link to the relevant PDP and collection at least twice in the body. Apply Product, FAQ, or Article schema via the theme or a Shopify app (Schema App, JSON-LD for SEO). Validate in Google's Rich Results Test before publish.

  6. Approve final asset bundle for launch
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3

Distribution and Launch

  1. Publish blog post and submit to Search Console

    • Publish on the live theme, confirm canonical and Open Graph tags, then submit the URL via Google Search Console > URL Inspection > Request Indexing. Re-submit the sitemap if new collection pages were added.

  2. Send Klaviyo campaign to engaged segment

    • Send to the 90-day engaged segment first to protect deliverability — full list sends after open rate confirms inbox placement. Suppress unengaged 180+ day non-openers to keep sender reputation clean.

  3. Schedule organic social across IG, TikTok, Pinterest
  4. Launch Meta and TikTok paid creative

    • Promotional and product launches get paid amplification — evergreen SEO does not. Use Spark Ads / Partnership Ads with creator handles whitelisted; new creative goes into existing winning ad sets to inherit learning, not fresh CBOs.

  5. Brief affiliates with FTC disclosure language

    • Send Refersion / Impact / GRIN partners the asset pack and required #ad / "paid partnership" disclosure language per FTC Endorsement Guides. Contract-required disclosure protects the brand from FTC enforcement on the partner's posts.

4

Performance Review

  1. Pull Triple Whale or Northbeam attribution at 7 days

    • Compare blended MER and channel ROAS against the targets locked at month start. iOS attribution gaps mean Meta-reported ROAS will overstate; Triple Whale / Northbeam post-iOS modeling is closer to truth for blended decisions.

  2. Review keyword rankings in Ahrefs
  3. Score campaign against MER target
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  4. Diagnose creative or audience underperformance

    • Run when MER misses target. Check creative-level CTR and thumb-stop rate in Meta Ads Manager — sub-1% CTR usually means hook problem, not audience problem. Compare to last month's winners and pause anything below 0.6x account average.

5

Maintenance and Optimization

  1. Refresh top organic posts older than 12 months

    • Pull Search Console pages with declining impressions but still ranking on page 1-2. Update statistics, refresh internal links to current PDPs, and re-shoot any broken or outdated product imagery. Republish with updated date metadata.

  2. Audit broken links and 404s

    • Run Screaming Frog or Ahrefs Site Audit. Set 301 redirects in Shopify for any retired SKU URLs that still have inbound links — losing equity to 404s after a SKU sunset is the most common SEO leak on Shopify stores.

  3. Review Core Web Vitals in PageSpeed Insights
  4. Document learnings in monthly retro doc
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