Creating traffic without generating any conversions is just throwing money at an empty shell of a campaign.

This disconnect occurs daily across most B2B SaaS & Complex Enterprise environments.

Go-to-market sales teams brag about high numbers of organic traffic, but the pipeline has no movement.

The reason for this disconnect is because many marketing teams treat content marketing as only a way to build their audience instead of the purpose behind using content to build a more qualified audience through an engineered system designed to move qualified buyers through a quantifiable sales cycle.

Many Strategy Models across the company focus on mainly Search Engine Visibility & Social Media with little consideration as to how High-Value Buyers actually make purchasing decisions.

Relying solely on marketing tactics based on what "works" or on what is currently trending could lead to failure.

To turn marketing collateral into a revenue-generating asset, the underlying architecture of these materials must align with what is currently occurring in Private Business, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) pressures, and Organizational Maturity.

Create alignment between strategy and reality of revenue generation

Bottlenecks in the organization will require different strategic engines to remove.

For example, if the go-to-market team has unclear messaging and buyers do not trust them, having a very large search engine optimization initiative will contribute to the confusion.

If the Demand Generation Team has a very strong message, but no visibility within a very fragmented marketplace, continuing to refine the brand message will not fix the pipeline problem.

The only way to select the right architecture of marketing assets is to be brutally honest about what is currently restricting your organization.

The success of any approach is ultimately dependent upon how properly each is executed.

Let's take a close look at the frameworks that impact the most relevant metrics to your company - opportunity creation, sales cycle velocity, and Closed Won revenue.

10 Content marketing frameworks that drive pipeline growth

The structure of your output will define metrics you can measure.

The following methodologies, when implemented properly, will shift your focus from creating noise at the top of the funnel through bringing velocity to the funnel through creating opportunities to close new revenue for your business.

1. The pillar and topic cluster model

The pillar and topic cluster model organizes content around central hubs of authority (the Pillar), which connect to hundreds of specific subtopics (the Clusters).

This has typically been viewed through a pure SEO lens.

However, the true value of this framework lies in its ability to help marketers build topical authority to attract highly-intent, mid-funnel searchers.

This model is ideally suited for businesses where there is a large gap in authority in SEO, and for businesses where the average duration of the buying cycle is long and involves an extensive amount of research.

When buyers are purchasing products in complex product categories, many times they will need extensive education before ever speaking to the sales team.

By outlining every question a buyer may ask and creating links based on the answers, you create a self-service learning experience for your buyer.

Some of the common challenges that arise with this type of model are slow ramp-up periods for content, and internal approval processes for content.

Creating a 30-piece content cluster will require significant time and assistance from SMEs to create.

Therefore, during the initial 30-60 days of using this model, your team will want to spend their time on a detailed keyword gap analysis and also securing the required SME interviews, instead of immediately writing content.

The most important piece of measuring the pipeline with this model is the tracking of Organic Assists.

Here, you will track the number of prospects that came to your cluster page before scheduling a demo, vs. expecting a direct, last-touch conversion from an informational blog post.

2. TOFU/MOFU/BOFU lifecycle blueprint

The traditional funnel model corresponds closely to the buyer journey through the three stages of the funnel that represent awareness (TOFU), consideration (MOFU), and decision (BOFU).

This structure provides a clean and logical way for marketers to align their marketing efforts and assets with CRM lead stages.

It compels them to categorize every asset based on the psychological impact intended from that asset.

For example, if a marketing team has a library of hundreds of blog articles but cannot determine which articles are most effective at driving pipeline, they will need to implement the funnel structure.

To implement this structure, both the sales and marketing organizations must agree upon how to define marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs).

A common failure point for many organizations occurs when CTAs for a particular funnel stage do not match.

Offering an enterprise pricing sheet to a TOFU visitor who is reading a definitional blog post is a prime example of friction.

During the first 60 days, marketing and sales should conduct an audit of their existing library of content, tagging each URL based on funnel stage.

Any funnel stage that does not have enough content to advance buyers to the next stage becomes the immediate priority for content creation.

Pipeline velocity (the speed in which a buyer moves through TOFU-MOFU-BOFU from MQL to SQL) should be the primary measure of performance for marketing and sales.

3. Jobs-to-be-done matrix

The JTBD methodology shifts the focus from demographic personas to what buyers are trying to accomplish functionally, emotionally, and socially.

B2B software buyers do not buy your product based on features; they buy your product because it takes away a specific pain from their workday.

When content is created and developed based on the JTBD of the buyer (specific jobs), the buyer naturally has a higher level of intent and there will be less traffic of low intent buyers to the website.

This model is especially effective for product-led growth (PLG) companies and for SaaS products that require deep technical expertise.

In order to execute on the "Jobs to be Done" (JTBD) model, businesses must move beyond using keyword research tools and rely on direct sales calls.

The process begins with interviewing customers.

From the interviews, businesses will extract the exact language buyers are using to describe their pain points.

The result of this process will often be a set of tactical guides, templates, and integration manuals.

Business performance will be measured with a different set of metrics.

The primary measurement of business performance will not be the number of visitors to the website, but rather the number of high-intent demo requests and free trial activations generated through marketing collateral.

Because the collateral generated through JTBD will be highly concentrated in the buyers' pain points, it will have lower volume than traditional marketing collateral.

However, those high-intent demo requests and free trial activations will convert to deals and contracts at a much higher rate.

4. PESO model for digital marketing

The PESO model refers to the four types of media that can be used for digital marketing: Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned.

The PESO model provides a framework for orchestrating your media distribution rather than just a structure for creating media.

A large number of digital marketers will create good owned assets, such as blogs and whitepapers.

However, many will not have the skills to adequately distribute their owned assets, and therefore, will not reap the maximum benefits from their investments.

Using the PESO model, marketers must plan for how each owned asset will be distributed across each of the four media types prior to writing the first sentence of the owned asset.

This is particularly important for digital marketing strategies where the target audience is not concentrating their buying behavior on one medium and therefore requires an omnichannel approach.

Operationalization of the PESO model is achieved by creating editorial calendars and repurposing checklists.

In addition to slicing an Owned research report into several LinkedIn carousels and creating Paid advertisements through Native ads, marketers will need to actively seek out and pitch their own research report to relevant industry podcasts.

The greatest challenge in implementing the PESO model is governing the process and managing limited internal human resources.

Over the course of the first 30 days, each team will create baseline metrics across all four of their channels as a way to determine where they can get the most leverage from each channel.

The pipeline metric that all teams should be focusing on is the blended cost of acquisition; it is necessary to understand the connection between the reduced cost of acquiring a qualified opportunity due to the cross-channel exposure.

5. The StoryBrand narrative conversion path

Donald Miller created a framework called the StoryBrand Narrative Conversion Path (or StoryBrand).

This model positions a brand as a coach or guide for customers as they take on the journey of being a hero, creating clarity around the plan a customer should follow to avoid failure and achieve success.

When the messaging from a company is fragmented or confusing due to technical terms, the pipeline stalls.

Customers are not able to understand the true value and function of the products and services.

The StoryBrand framework provides a forcing function for simplifying the messaging around a product and aligning all departments of a company around a single, clear, easily understood narrative.

To implement this framework, it is critical to eliminate all the marketing sugars and organize the messaging in a way that will be understandable to the end users of the products and services.

The first 30 days should be focused on developing the BrandScript and getting executive leadership to commit to aligning the entire organization behind this message, all the way down to the SDR team.

By altering how sales representatives sell, and how websites are built to convert visitors to paying customers, the most direct metric associated with the change in the StoryBrand messaging will be the time taken to complete the sales cycle.

Since the framework provides clarity in the message and eliminates the need to spend large amounts of time explaining the value proposition during the discovery calls, this will allow deals to be closed faster.

6. The Hero, Hub, Help Content Ecosystem

YouTube introduced the three-tier architecture known as the Hero, Hub, and Help Ecosystem in 2017.

This architecture is designed to create a distribution mechanism for video content that optimizes both production volume and production quality.

The Hero tier is defined by the production of large-scale (annual data reports) and less frequent campaigns, where the goal is to engage a broad audience.

The term "Hub" refers to the episodic or recurring series (such as podcasts or newsletters) that form long-time relationships with subscribers.

The word "Help" refers to the ongoing and evergreen, search-driven answers to questions that potential buyers have.

This approach alleviates the problems caused by inconsistent publishing rates.

It allows organizations to coordinate major events that generate high volumes of opportunities with more frequent and systematic approaches to generating SEO traffic.

To effectively manage these challenges requires a significant level of maturity in the content operations space.

The resource burdens of creating Hero campaigns can often create friction that can disrupt the process of creating Help articles daily if not managed tightly.

For the first time a new model is being adopted, teams need to define their resource allocation.

In this example, resource allocation will typically look like the following: 70% to Help, 20% to Hub, 10% to Hero. 

Tracking new opportunity generation (i.e., the number of branded searches) against the number of Hero and Hub efforts will ultimately provide insight into whether those efforts ultimately elevate overall market awareness.

7. Growth funnel - AARRR (Pirate metrics)

The name AARRR means Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue.

While AARRR is a traditional model used for product managers in a company, when applied to marketing collateral it creates an intense focus on the entire lifecycle of the customer and not just the initial point of lead capture.

Most marketers and marketing strategies stop after acquiring a lead.

The AARRR model forces marketers to create materials and systems that facilitate users activating their free trials, educate customers on their products or services to limit churn, and equip their brand advocates with referral materials.

The AARRR model provides marketers with a framework to create and optimize the products and services that subscription-based companies rely on to achieve both net new pipeline generation and retaining existing customers.

To create a successful AARRR workflow the Content Team needs to work closely with the Customer Success Team.

They must create a seamless experience for customers from the time they become a lead to the time they purchase your product or service and beyond.

It is necessary to identify areas of product interface that cause users difficulty and to develop contextual assistance materials (e.g., use case webinars) to facilitate user advancement through to the next stage.

Do not measure success by MQLs.

User Activation Rate, Free-to-Paid Conversion Ratio, and Net Revenue Retention (NRR) are your true KPIs.

If the marketing collateral is effective in promoting product usage, the pipeline metric should be indicative of a greater lifetime value (LTV) for each account.

8. Ungated demand generation vault

If all whitepapers require filling out a form before access is granted, then you will receive a large number of low-quality MQLs that your salespeople will spend hours pursuing.

The ungated demand generation model turns this upside down.

Instead of withholding information until an email address is provided to you, the ungated demand generation model allows for unrestricted access to all educational materials.

These are distributed freely and typically natively via social media or ungated video.

The goal of a successful ungated demand generation program is to create a significant degree of Buying Consensus within the target account, even prior to filling out the Contact Sales form.

This model necessitates a paradigm shift in how we attribute sales and activity.

Without any form of tracking—due to the lack of an email address being provided at the time of initial contact—companies must require their sales team to use their Self-Reported Attribution system. Specifically, companies must include a "How Did You Hear About Us?" text box on the final demo request form.

During the first 60 days after implementation, businesses will likely experience an alarming drop in their traditional lead volume, which may cause a sense of panic among executives.

However, they will quickly see a significant increase in the win rates for leads generated during this same period.

The key pipeline metric is the generation of high-intent inbound sales opportunities that cite specific podcasts, videos, or ungated guides as the reason they submitted their final request for a demo.

9. Content silos for account-based marketing

When you think of traditional advertising, most companies try to reach as many potential customers through their marketing materials as they can.

ABM flips this process upside down.

ABM takes a different approach and focuses on building out marketing materials tailored specifically to high-value customers or a select few targeted companies.

If your clients’ buying process includes navigating an eight-person buying committee to close a six-figure deal, using generic blog posts will not generate leads.

When using ABM you’ll need to create personalized landing pages, highly specialized industry research reports, and custom pitch decks for each client.

In order for Marketing to implement an ABM program, the company needs sales data to inform them of the correct accounts to target.

This is where problems often arise because sales does not always provide Marketing with the necessary account insight to create personalized materials.

For your initial pilot program, choose three to five tier-one accounts and build out custom buying portals for those companies.

Measure account engagement and opportunity influence.

Did specific members of the buying committee consume the personalized content, and did that content generate an open opportunity?

10. STP (Segmentation, targeting, positioning) framework

Before any production begins for ABM, the marketing team should use the STP framework.

This ensures every piece of marketing collateral is created for a specific market segment that has been strategically selected based on market size and growth potential.

Most companies do not realize they are marketing to two completely different audiences with different needs.

For instance, you cannot effectively market to both entry-level developers and enterprise CTOs with a single blog.

The STP process helps to ensure a content calendar is developed with separate content silos created for each audience segment, and the technical depth and positioning for each segment are modified as needed.

To fully operationalize the STP process for ABM, you need to conduct extensive market research.

The first step for a team will be to devise their Total Addressable Market (TAM), and then identify the segments within that market that have the greatest potential for their sales team.

Once that is complete, teams will need to determine which segment each brief addresses as well as how to position their messaging specifically to it.

After that, the only measure of success when measuring your campaign's success will be the percentage increase in market share by segment.

For example, a campaign dedicated to the healthcare sector only, would expect to see an increase in the number of healthcare-specific opportunities over the next quarter.

Operational considerations: Selecting your best approach

When selecting between these frameworks, your decision is not based on preference, but on the situation you find yourself in.

To start, evaluate your average sales cycle length.

If it's between 6-12 months, you will require a framework that is designed for long-term engagement such as the Pillar-Cluster or Hub/Hero/Help models.

If your sales cycles are primarily transactional in nature, you would benefit from a JTBD or TOFU/MOFU/BOFU model as these will assist you in quickly identifying buyer intent.

Next, evaluate your current cost pressures regarding customer acquisition.

If you are struggling with costs associated with paid channels, it is time to adopt an ungated demand generation strategy that emphasizes organic distribution (PESO) in order to reduce blended CAC.

Finally, be realistic about your internal content operations maturity.

Implementing highly sophisticated ABM strategies or creating a 50-page topical cluster is unlikely to be successful if you do not have adequate project management software, editorial workflows, and dedicated SME time for efficient execution.

Before trying to expand your reach or distribution, first implement a simple model (such as StoryBrand) to align your messaging.

One important key to successful implementation of any kind of revenue generation model is proper attribution setup.

A successful attribution setup includes setting up a robust CRM system with lead scoring, as well as defining your pipeline stages. 

Without these components, an otherwise perfectly executed revenue generation strategy will appear as if it were unsuccessful on paper.

Conclusion about revenue-driven content

Frameworks are not "magic wands"; they serve as organizational "guardrails".

A documented strategy helps keep marketing departments from circling into the controlled chaos of publishing whatever randomly comes to mind.

However, it's the ability to execute rigorously on organized strategies that produces pipeline.

B2B buyers today are extremely skeptical, extremely busy, and inundated with general marketing "noise".

Therefore the only method to gain buyers' attention and move them into a sales cycle is by providing significant value in a manner that acknowledges and respects the way they buy.

You will then move your marketing department from a cost center to a measurable pipeline driver when you align your tactical output with realistic business constraints, establish clear attribution logic, and focus relentlessly on revenue metrics as opposed to vanity traffic.

FAQs

What KPI is the best measure for a B2B content strategy?

The most effective metrics to track when developing a B2B content strategy track movement and conversions, not only the amount of interest in a B2B content piece.

Although organic traffic (from search engines) and time (on-page) do provide insight into how interested a consumer was at a particular point, pipeline-focused teams will prioritize metrics such as MQL-to-SQL conversion rates, Pipeline Velocity, and organic Assisted Conversions versus traditional traffic.

Revenues from marketing-sourced deals must also be considered.

A company’s revenues from selling products, contributing to a company’s revenue, may still fall short of their expectations. 

When companies use content to drive responses from prospects, this may still be a valid source of marketing.

How long does it take for new strategies to impact the pipeline?

There are many strategies that can help you to create an increase in your marketing pipeline, depending upon how long your current sales cycle is and the various marketing-related frameworks you utilize.

For example, using targeted acquisition programs, such as paid content distribution and account-based marketing, you may generate measurable opportunities within 30-60 days.

However, with organic-based content architectures, such as the pillar-cluster model and complex SEO techniques, you likely will need at least 3 to 6 months to gain sufficient authority, properly index your content, and begin generating inbound inquiries from mid-funnel conversions consistently.

Why is my current content generating web traffic but not generating qualified leads?

When a company has generated traffic to their website or blog with the intention of producing quality leads, but the traffic generated is not producing quality leads, it is a clear indication that the marketing strategy you have in place is not aligned with your business strategy.

These types of traffic typically occur when companies utilize keyword strategies to obtain traffic.

The high-volume, top-of-funnel keywords do not usually have a high percentage of those visitors with commercial intent.

Instead, they are looking for simple definitions and not for enterprise-level software.

Another reason why a company’s content may be generating traffic but not generating leads is that the conversion path is misaligned with the type of content you provide.

For example, if your entry-level educational blog article has a high-friction conversation path, such as a "Book a Demo" click through, a visitor who sees that will not take a subsequent action related to your company’s solution or service or will only submit their email address, if at all.

To identify the source of the issues you are experiencing as a result of a misalignment between your strategy and objectives, it is essential to review and update the lifecycle stages of your employees’ relationship with the digital landscape.

Should marketing teams gate their highest value assets?

Whether or not to gate some of your highest value assets will ultimately depend upon your goals.

For example, if your sales team is starving for raw lead volume, and you have an adequate supply of qualified sales development representatives (SDRs) to not only qualify all the leads that are generated, but also to convert all the leads to an opportunity, gating would be the correct strategy.

If your desire is to shorten your sales cycles and to produce higher-level buyers who are educated on your methodology, ungating and providing unrestricted access to your most valuable assets will create a higher return on investment.

By doing so, you create stronger trust with prospective buyers and increase your likelihood of getting an opportunity with prospects who contact you.