Platform strategy inspired by Condé Nast

Create a succesful platform strategy by defining roles, responsibilities and active platforms.

At Condé Nast, audience strategy revolves around the expertise, support, and knowledge-sharing of Sarah Marshall’s Audience Strategy team. The insights below are drawn from my interview with her and the materials she shared. I’ve distilled their approach into a framework that publishers of any size can selectively adopt.

Our channel strategy lays out how we handle SEO, video, social storytelling, audio growth and newsletters, and it gives central support and guidance so each brand can choose the channels that best fit its audience while we coordinate the relationships with the platforms. Each brand decides if it launches on BlueSky or another channel.—Sarah Marshall, Condé Nast

Roles and responsibilities

It’s vital that people know exactly what they’re accountable for—then they can go off and run their own role as they see fit, whether that’s in audio growth, video strategy, or any other area.—Sarah Marshall, Condé Nast

Clearly listing every recurring task and assigning a single owner to each transforms a channel strategy from theory into practice. This clarity accelerates decision-making and keeps projects moving, because everyone knows who decides and who delivers. It also exposes skill gaps or overlaps, links each metric to the person responsible, aligns budgets and tools with the right teams, and enables specialists to create repeatable tactics that any brand can reuse.

Open the Google Sheet Roles and Responsibilities to define who is accountable of what.

The table that organizes and lists channel-strategy workload into six subject areas.

  • Audience Analytics

  • SEO & Tech SEO

  • Content Optimisation

  • External Platform Growth

  • Newsletter Growth & Operations

  • Website & App Experience

For each subject, the table lists the essential recurring tasks, such as tracking KPIs in Audience Analytics, maintaining crawlability in SEO, and safeguarding page speed in Web & App, and assigns a clear owner (Audience-Analytics Lead, SEO Manager, Content-Optimisation Lead, or Product Manager). Feel free to adjust the roles and tasks to suit your own organisation; the list is meant as a quick starting point and as a reminder that effective channel work goes far beyond simply posting content.

Platforms

Defining the role of each platform in the audience journey, and revisiting that definition regularly, brings clarity and stability to a publisher’s channel strategy. Working with platforms can be volatile and stressful. Some changes make headlines, others happen gradually, and perhaps the most important shifts come from evolving user behavior. By clearly outlining goals, lifecycle stages and tactics, you keep channel management focused and efficient. This helps align resources to value: investing in growing platforms, maintaining core channels, and scaling back those in the maintain or sunset phase. Labeling new platforms as emerging also gives teams space to experiment with limited risk and clear KPIs.

To achieve your goals and succeed on any channel, it's essential to understand the audience each platform serves. For instance, if you're aiming to reach Gen Z, platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are more effective. Conversely, Facebook has seen a decline in popularity among Gen Z, making it less effective for targeting this group. Additionally, if your goal is to drive page views, TikTok does not deliver that directly, as it's more optimized for engagement rather than traffic generation. Aligning your objectives with the platform's audience and behavior is crucial for an effective channel strategy.

A platform strategy should also reflect the fact that value should not only be created at the top or bottom of the funnel: You need to monetise them also in the middle… whether that’s ad impressions or commerce. That middle layer, loyal, habitual users who are not yet subscribers, can be a major source of revenue growth if nurtured strategically.—Sarah Marshall, Condé Nast

A solid platform strategy should answer at least these five questions:

  • Why are we (or are we not) on this platform?

  • What stage of its lifecycle is the platform in?

  • What does success look like on this platform?

  • What are our key tactics for this channel?

  • Who is the target audience we aim to reach here?

Open the Google Sheet Platform Strategy to define the roles of channels and platforms in your platform strategy.