Content Strategy That Drives ROI: Lessons from Zoe Hawkins

#13: As marketing leaders, one of our biggest challenges is understanding how all marketing functions—content strategy, SEO, paid media, events and more—contribute to the bigger picture of B2B marketing success. Too often, we evaluate these functions in isolation, missing their interconnected impact on growth and marketing ROI.

Today, we’re diving into content strategy with Zoe Hawkins, Director of Content Marketing and Integrated Campaigns at Sumo Logic. Zoe is a pro at uniting content, product marketing, demand generation, and branding to drive real results.

We cover:
 ✅ The evolving role of content strategy in high-growth B2B marketing.
 ✅ Where content fits within your org chart—and why it matters.
 ✅ Outsourcing vs. keeping content in-house.
 ✅ Building a cohesive content strategy from top-of-funnel to post-sale.
 ✅ Using tools like HockeyStack & Market Muse for smarter attribution and marketing ROI measurement.

Zoe shares proven strategies for boosting marketing ROI, building alignment, and scaling content efforts effectively. Packed with insights for B2B marketing leaders looking to unlock their team’s full potential.

🎧 Hit play and elevate your content strategy!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Growth Activated & B2B Marketing Leadership
• 0:28 Aligning B2B Content Strategy with Business Goals
• 0:56 The Role of Content Marketing in High-Growth B2B Companies
• 1:21 B2B Content Strategy Framework: Creativity vs. Data-Driven Decisions
• 7:04 In-House vs. Outsourced Content: Finding the Right Balance
• 9:25 B2B Content Marketing Structure: Where Content Fits in Your Organization
• 11:22 How Marketing Leadership Can Drive Marketing ROI Through Content Strategy
• 18:51 Common CMO Gaps in Content Marketing Strategy & Execution
• 27:12 Measuring Content Marketing ROI: Attribution Models & Tools
• 29:06 Gamifying Content Marketing ROI: Improving Pipeline Performance
• 32:22 Editorial Debt & Content Refresh Strategies for B2B Marketing
• 38:56 Proving Content Marketing ROI Without Tools: Practical Tips
• 41:48 Maximizing Content Repurposing for B2B Marketing Success
• 45:37 AI Tools & Techniques to Enhance B2B Content Strategy

Transcript

00:00 - Introduction to Growth Activated & B2B Marketing Leadership

Welcome to Growth Activated.  I'm Mandy Walker, your host with 15 years of experience leading marketing teams ranging from small startups to large service organizations.  I've built high performing teams of all sizes and have seen firsthand how fast the landscape is evolving,  making marketing leadership more complex than ever.  Today, I help marketing leaders elevate their strategies, lead with confidence and build careers they love.

00:28 - Aligning B2B Content Strategy with Business Goals

If you're ready to drive impact and unlock growth for yourself and your company, you're in the right place.  Let's get started.  One of the most complex yet essential parts of a marketing leader's job is understanding how all marketing functions, whether it's content, SEO, paid advertising, or demand gen, fit into the broader strategy. Too often, we look at these functions in silos, evaluating them independently by performance, execution, or strategy.

00:56 - The Role of Content Marketing in High-Growth B2B Companies

rather than as an interconnected driver of growth. But today we're diving specifically into content with Zoe Hawkins, a master of marketing strategy, content strategy, and content execution. Zoe is the director of content marketing and integrated campaigns at Sumo Logic,  where she expertly navigates the intersection of content, product marketing, demand generation, and branding.

01:21 - B2B Content Strategy Framework: Creativity vs. Data-Driven Decisions

In this episode, we dive into the evolving role of content marketing within high growth B2B companies, where content should live in your org chart and why it matters,  to balance creativity and data-driven decision-making in your content strategy, and the pros and cons of outsourcing content versus keeping it in-house. If you're a marketing leader trying to unlock the full potential of your content team, understand where it fits in your organization  or drive better alignment across marketing functions.

This episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss. Let's dive in. Hey, Zoe. Welcome to the Growth Activated Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today. Oh, thank you for having me. This is super fun. Absolutely. Well, Zoe, I know we had the pleasure of meeting at an event a few weeks ago and you gave a really amazing content talk and I learned so much from you. And at some point, maybe we can even dive into what that topic was. I think it was super interesting and I've got my own take on it.

But let's start off with a little bit about your background. Cool. So, um,  I, I think I've been a writer or a word centric person for my whole life.  Um, but kind of from a career arc, you know, I was a video game and tech journalist for many years, and then kind of transitioned into being in-house content marketing  and really focused on being in the tech space, B2B space,  um, and just kind of have, have gotten more and more kind of honed in on that.

developer persona on that, you know, really speaking,  making techie things sound easy to digest and  easy to understand.  And that's kind of my secret,  my secret sauce, my superpower. That's awesome. Um, and, and quite the skill too. I worked at a, a B2B professional services for 10 years and our target audience were IT leaders.  Um, and it's, it's a tough one to, uh, they're a tough persona to crack.  Yeah.

03:18 - Navigating B2B Content Marketing for Technical Audiences

Super fun.  And what are you doing today? What's your role? So I work at Sumo Logic. So I am the director of content marketing and integrated campaigns at Sumo Logic, is a  log analytics and security software provider. And so we're a SaaS company, you know, really focused in on the logs and on, like I say, that developer and cybersecurity analyst kind of practitioner, but all the way up to the C suite as well. So always fun when your persona kind of

is all the way from a practitioner, hands-on keyboard person to that executive buyer as well. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of different, a lot of different content, I imagine, that is being created in your sure.  And Zoe, I'd love to just start with like a softball question because I think, you know, I'd love to hear what content means to you  in terms of how it fits within the broader B2B marketing organizations that you serve.

I'm so curious to understand what's content, what is content owned by you, what content is not owned by you, sort of how do you see that that works the best?  Yeah.  Something I love this question. I love a softball question. Thanks.  You know, I think it's one of those things that has evolved from company to company that I've been at. It depends how mature the company is  and also kind of has depended on me and how I've grown in my career. You know, I've been  in roles where

You know, we had really strong, uh, marketing executives or, you know, demand gen leaders or salespeople who would really inform and be like, okay, well, we have a gap in this part of the funnel, like, go make me this thing.  And so content was very much almost like an agency inside an organization that was just generating assets or generating materials that other people needed.  Um, but as I've grown in my career and as I've kind of taken on more and more strategic roles, that's where, you know,

content, I joke sometimes I'm like, you know, it can be like that analogy about like a fish swimming in water and like they don't even know it's just there. It's everything, you know,  like, like, did you use words, it's content, you know,  which gets a little too big. And obviously, like, you can't control everything, you can't be involved in everything.  So I really try and stay pretty focused on our external content that would be consumed by potential

you prospects as well as our customers, analysts, thought leaders, that kind of thing. So that still is really broad. So that could be everything from our website content and blogs, videos, case studies,  webinars, even, you know, like it kind of can expand really rapidly,  but I try not to take on too much of a role in kind of like internal sales enablement or,  um, you know, some of those other.

things that people, know, even email content, I'll be like, I'll be a reviewer, but like, maybe my team doesn't need to draft all the emails. Um, so there's kind of like a balancing act there as well, almost like an 80 20 rule where I'm kind of like, if you're following an approved messaging doc and brand guidelines, I want to let people make their own stuff. And I'm just kind of there as a, you know, a gut check opportunity. Yeah, no, absolutely. Cause it's, mean, everything is content.

to your point, it feels like or has and as someone who  is often  charged with building org charts for  large  scale B2B organizations and setting up their marketing function, it's always interesting for me to think through like where should content fit, what fits within it because it, to your point, it's, I mean, so wide. And I imagine too,  I love that you said that it's really...

07:04 - In-House vs. Outsourced Content: Finding the Right Balance

external facing for you in your world, because I also would imagine a lot of internal communications could easily get slotted to you guys easily. mean, I've been involved in like our company kickoff presentations and sales kickoff presentations, you know, when, when it really, really matters, I feel like I get pulled in, which I appreciate, you know, like when when maximum number of eyeballs will consume something,  thankfully, they generally do pull me in. But yeah, I try and focus on that external.

And I love that you brought up the org chart thing, because this is something I've thought about a lot as well, because, you know, I obviously like want to grow in my career. want to kind of imagine what like a career ladder would look like, what kind of organization would I lead and  what functions and roles. And it was really funny in my current role at Sumo Logic, because we've kind of gone through some changes and all of that, but content lives under product marketing, which is

pretty unique. Like a lot of organizations I've seen, you know, when I kind of do my research or talk to peers,  content typically lives either with like brand and corporate marketing, like corporate comms kind of vibe, or with like website and kind of more on that side of the world. And so  it's just really interesting having content live within the product marketing org, because we're a tech company. And so what we market is the technology is the product. And so

Um,  my leader, my boss always talks about like, I'm the execution arm. I'm the outward projection of everything that product marketing is doing. So they'll do the messaging and positioning and the persona work. And obviously I'm along for the ride with all of that and competitive Intel, competitive research, but ultimately that has to go into the world. It's, know, it's not just going to be this  thing in someone's head. has to be updated content on the website.

or a blog or ghostwriting for the CEO or whatever that is, like it has to kind of all stem from the same thing of like, well, this is who we are, this is what we make and why it should matter. Yeah. Well, and it's even interesting  that you didn't even mention that sometimes it falls under demand gen and as someone who spent a lot of time doing demand gen, like thinking about the entire buyer's journey, content is a major part of it as well.

09:25 - B2B Content Marketing Structure: Where Content Fits in Your Organization

And so I guess in your ideal world, from what you've learned, where do you feel like it should sit within an org chart? Just knowing that it's like the fabric of all of these different.  Yeah. I mean, I think it really depends. And this is one of those things like, I think it really depends on the personalities. This is what makes marketing so interesting and so fun is like,  I've seen demand gen leaders who really valued their whole, their whole funnel, who really could say.

pretty clearly like, I've got exactly what I need at this funnel stage for this persona on and on and kind of had that mapped out. And I've also worked with people who kind of were like, give me what I need. Like,  give me what you got and I'll use it, you know. And so  I think it, you know, it's, kind of a cop out answer. I'm sorry. don't, I don't think there's a right answer because I've worked with phenomenal product marketing leaders and kind of average product marketing leaders, you know, someone who maybe wouldn't have

that same grand view of, of content marketing and, know, content marketing has evolved so much now that I'm  also leading our integrated campaigns, which is very much tied to demand gen and even in product telemetry and sales ops and all of that kind of thing of saying, you know, what is the, the overall campaign? What are the product elements that we're going to release this year that might feed that and, really pulling it all together.  And in my head, obviously I see it through a lens of content.

But depending on  the person in the room, they're gonna see it through their own lens. And so I think it can fit in a lot of places,  but this is what's working for me right now. Interesting, interesting, yeah. It's totally fascinating. And I think off of that, while we're sort of talking about org charts and where it fits, I'd love to hear your perspective on in-house versus outsourced content. with everything, I mean, with content, feel like,

11:22 - How Marketing Leadership Can Drive Marketing ROI Through Content Strategy

content production is one of the biggest lifts on most teams these days because it does fuel all of these different activities. And I imagine very hard to execute across all of those different functions. So where have you seen maybe outsourcing content work really well and where have you seen it fail? Yeah, that's a great question. think I see and this is going to be super controversial, but I'll

Put it out there. feel like outsourcing and AI kind of feel very similar to me. It's kind of trusting  someone with a very generic ability to create with your specific inputs. And if you can be really clear on your expectation for output and what you're gonna input, you can have a great.

agency or external relationship. So if you go to that agency and you're like, I want you to publish on third party sites, I want you to make me a white paper or I want you to do a research project or whatever that might be. And  you're really clear in terms of like, this is what I'm trying to get from you. This is where it will be used. You already have a sense of like distribution and channels and all the things that you want to do with that thing you're going to get. And you can give as much  input as possible, not.

Micromanaging, but really saying like, this is who you're going to be talking to. This is your audience. This is, you know, the topic area. Here's some subject matter experts available who can really explain this well. You know, if you're able to give  all of that input, often you'll get great results, whether from an agency or an AI tool. Like the better you can feed it, the better you'll get something back.

My challenge though, often is that to get all of that pulled together, to really know your stuff with all those inputs and everything you're going to need and all of that. Half the time it's easier for me to just do it myself or like internally with my team. Like if I'm going to have to answer all these questions and pull together such a solid brief, by the time I've done that, it's almost like, well, why am I giving this to an agency? Like I've already done 70 % of the work now. Yeah. Well, I...

I'm laughing because I just had an agency owner on a couple episodes ago and I said the exact same thing. I said, think working with an agency is like basically how you prompt AI. If you prompt it really well, it directly ties to the output you get.  I love that. I love that we're on the same page. I feel like  I'm even smarter now that I validated. you go. Validation. I guess Zoe, to that point, would you if

For people that know, because I guess I  also  have seen organizations where they might employ  a great copywriter, but they're totally missing a cohesive content strategy,  or they've got a content strategist, but that person can't then also execute. So if an organization was struggling and they knew that they needed to invest in content, which one would you keep in house versus which one would you outsource?  Oh, great question.

I think I would keep the strategy in house.  I feel like you need someone who's tied to  the bigger picture  and who can really say like,  oh, in six months time, we're planning on launching this cool thing.  Or,  you know, in the next 12 months, this is going to be what's going to drive the most revenue for the business  and really have that ability to tap into, you know, getting executive buy in.

and knowing really what  the ins and outs of the company culture is as well and the ideals and what people are going to value.  Once you have that, then the execution, I think, you know, could be done by someone outside  and that would be fine. Whereas I don't, think by the time you've brought in an agency and given them enough access to really wrap their head around that and build a strategy, it's,  you're kind of like, why, you know,

You've kind of shared everything. It just takes too long for them to really get it. And you might pivot. I mean, they're also maybe not as adaptable. Whereas in-house you can see something coming and be like,  Oh, like our executives are in the boardroom for a really long time. Something's coming.  Um,  and be ready for that. Whereas by the time you've gotten the agency looped in, you might've already changed your mind.  It just can be harder to kind of stay on top of those things.  Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally could see that. Okay.

Good to know. I'll keep that in mind as I'm building a future org chart. Yes, for sure.  And I just had a curiosity because you had mentioned you were thinking a lot about your own career path. Where have you decided that you really want to lean into as you go up the Yeah, I it's been really interesting because taking on the integrated campaigns has meant that I get exposed to a lot of the demand gen side of things, which is great.

Um, but I also work really closely with our web leadership because everything has to be there on the website and, know, making sure it's optimized and all of that and our brand side of the house.  Um,  so that's been really fun to kind of see the, the look and feel of something across a campaign  and what's working and what's resonating and building that kind of brand awareness. So I'm lucky enough that like, I feel like I still have that.

broad awareness factor, even while I'm super specialized in the content space.  And then also because of the team I'm on,  I get a lot of visibility into that product marketing space as well. So I feel like there's still a lot of  maneuverability for me to kind of take more on and still grow in place, still be in my same seat, essentially. Awesome. Awesome. Well, that's great. Yeah.

And great that you're getting the campaigns experience because I mean, more and more we're seeing this pull to marketing really well, in a,  would say sort of in a negative way, getting marginalized down to demand generation and even lead generation. And we're losing  some of the value of our brand and product marketing activities and functions. But good that you're obviously  leading the charge on some of those, I think, as you just make sure you're.

you have obviously a very well rounded skill set. So thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. I mean, I think it's also like I said, it's really interesting to see the way that different personalities play into this because I've been in other companies, you know, same  person that I am, you know, I've been in other companies where the role was kind of maybe treated differently or not given that same,  you know, functional  or cross functional capability. And so it's just kind of nice to be  in this current

team and current dynamics where that's really possible.  Yeah. Well, that's a perfect segue because I was curious to hear  your perspective on what you think CMOs often miss as it relates to content marketing or what is their gap in terms of how they're approaching content marketing,  either operationally with the team and how you're embedded or maybe even with content strategy in general and where it plugs into the overarching strategy.  I would love to hear what gaps do you think we have?

18:51 - Common CMO Gaps in Content Marketing Strategy & Execution

I mean, I think what I've seen  and not with my current CMO, she's amazing. I love her.  What I have seen in the past with, with marketing leadership is I think often there is this assumption that the content machine  is  very tactical and very near sighted. And so it'll be like, well, as long as you're, you know, editorial calendar is turning, as long as you're like keeping everything fresh.

You're fine.  And my stance is always like, I  need as much insight and information as possible about what's happening at a higher level, at a strategic level as possible, because yes, the tactics are kind of a consistent hamster wheel, so to speak. You know, it is that, that kind of constant output, but I'm doing it with the idea of like,  Oh, in six months,  we want to be showing up as the top result.

in search and on AI tools and all of that, we want to be the name for  XYZ. And we might not be that yet. And I might say, okay, it's going to be, you whatever. For example, at Simulogic, we do log analytics and security. I might say like, okay, obviously it's going to be log analytics. Like that's who we are. That's our bread and butter. That's what we want to be known for. But if I don't know what's happening at the leadership level, maybe I'm like,  oh, we got to make sure we're tying that back to security more.

You know, we got to make sure we're really making that connection clearer for the market and for everybody to understand. Um, and so it's just those kinds of things where a decision that's made at a higher level about, know, maybe a corporate shift or, know, a perspective change or something like that, you know, or even the opposite, someone in leadership might say, you know what, we don't want to talk about that anymore. If I don't know that I'm still thinking, you know, that's a target.

market and a target keyword list and all of that.  you know, Google, it takes a while to rank. It takes a while to show up. Same with the AI results and AI chat bots and things. so I think they're, you know, I'm always trying to read the future a little bit.  And so I think sometimes CMOs miss that or think that content can kind of be the last  ones to know about things when it's like, really, you've got to start seeding that.

Even in hints, even in whatever you can share, you know, as far in advance as possible so that when we get there, you've already got months of content to say like, look, we've been telling the story tangentially for ages and we have what we need. Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. And frankly, a great reminder, I think for any function that sits within marketing that really everyone needs the latest

information and to be brought in on business strategy,  I think in order to do their job really well, but such a great, such a great perspective. mean, I think that's also why I see.  I feel like marketing tends to have their finger on the pulse in a way in a business that maybe other functions don't have, you know, like I think in a product organization, they might build something and they'll see adoption or not. They'll care about those things, but they might not.

necessarily have that bigger picture of like,  sales is struggling to sell this or like sales doesn't understand it or the market doesn't understand it or, you know, sales might be crushing their numbers, but selling something that maybe the business is like, you know what, we're actually thinking of pivoting away from that. like, feel like marketing often ends up having their finger on the pulse a little bit more about like, where things are going. You hope,  um, would hope, but they, they definitely do tend to

see those things and also feel that more,  it impacts their day-to-day work more if there isn't alignment or if it isn't clear what the goals and objectives are, I think marketing kind of gets hit with that first.  yep, totally.  And I think even  with the sales side, like making sure, I think marketing cares a lot about authenticity or at least we should and being true, like.

Being able to actually sell what we have available and not overselling and making sure, you know, that we're in alignment with product and all of that. which sometimes,  um, those two can obviously be competing in their own way. One's overselling, one's underselling.  sure. For sure. I mean, I think it's, that's what, that's where marketing does come in to be like, okay, how far over can we, can we push things? Yep. Absolutely.

And I couldn't agree more that  we've got our finger on the pulse in that organization. It actually has always sort of blown my mind that we as marketing,  even within just product and sales, like those are the two key relationships we talk about, but  I've always had really strong partnerships with even my CHRO when we talk about employer branding and the employee experience and  CTOs and our data strategy and  like making sure that we've got

the right tech stack and things. mean, there's the things that we should be partnering and could be partnering on our endless.  for sure. I mean, even with like CS, like we have really close ties with our,  you know, customer success or just making sure that, you know, marketing doesn't stop at an MQL marketing doesn't stop at an opportunity stage, but it's really like, okay, cool. How do we make sure that customers continually are like proud of what they've signed up for?

proud of who they're using, want to be evangelists, want to do case studies with us, but more than that, you know, want to be word of mouth and  all of that. And I feel like marketing  can play such a role there with that kind of not just acquiring customers, but really retaining them, expanding them and building that community. You know,  it often can end up tying back to marketing.  yes, absolutely. And unfortunately, I

feel as though, at least what I've seen with my clients is that a lot of marketers are really just focusing on acquisition.  And we're almost like, we're not even thinking about expansion and retention. And  that's not to be a blanket statement about everyone. Certainly there are amazing marketing organizations that are truly thinking about the full picture. But in your case where, I guess where you have seen customer  expansion and customer success,

in lockstep with marketing, who on the marketing side is owning that? Who's driving  the coordination with it? I mean, I think it's really a mixed bag. You know, we I'm lucky to work with fantastic leaders in our customer marketing  organization. So we do have a team that is dedicated to customer advocacy and customer cross sell. And so like, there are people on the team who kind of own  some of that dynamic and really do a great job.

I think it kind of falls to a lot of us though, depending on the role, like I have now started from a content perspective, working with CS even on their like onboarding emails to be like, let marketing take a, you know, a brush at it once, you know, you'll know the right things to say at the right point in their journey as customers,  but let us make sure that, you know, the language is really clear  and easy to understand or welcoming and those kinds of things and consistent as well. You know, we might.

distribute a brand guideline, but not everybody reads the brand guideline. Like let us just come and jush it up and clean it up as well. And so I think everything from that to customer case stories to like social media, all of that can kind of tie together to build a more meaningful experience for customers.  Absolutely. Okay. Well, I want to pivot a little bit into, so we talked about the CMO, maybe what the CMO's gaps are in terms of how they're viewing content.

What about from the content perspective? From the content persona, what are you often seeing your peers missing or  their gaps in terms of making sure content fits into the overarching marketing strategy and goals? I think one of the  most challenging things  that I've seen in  organizations is attribution is a nightmare, right? Like, I think this has always been a thing.

27:12 - Measuring Content Marketing ROI: Attribution Models & Tools

It's like, how do you do attribution on dark social? How do you do attribution on, you know, this, that, and the next thing? And what I'm starting to see now, well, what I used to see is like from the demand gen side, for example, they would say like, I know your blogs bring a ton of organic traffic or I know the glossary is an important part of our website, but it doesn't lead to conversion. So we're not actually going to invest anything in that. Like go have fun, but like, we're not interested.  And it's been really nice.

very recently being able to actually, you know, through different attribution models, see how much pipeline the blog, for example, is generating or how much pipeline the glossary is generating because  there isn't a sign up button there. Like no one is reading the definition of a term that's important to you and saying, sign me up. Like that's not the buyer journey,  but they might read a couple glossary pages and end up in a blog and end up on a case study.

And end up in your clickable demo and then convert. Now, do you say the demo is what made them convert? Maybe, but like, I think it's really helpful to have that full buyer's journey in mind. And so I think that's again, where like, depending where content sits, it can also be a real challenge of  some content people are only interested in the top of the funnel or only interested in the bottom of the funnel. And so I think there can be some, some blind spots about, you know, the fact that

By the time someone clicks your form or download something or signs up for a demo or to talk to sales, they've already done so much research. They've already done so much reading and information gathering on your website and other websites. Like,  you know, you can't kind of measure that necessarily. Um, and you just,  but you still need it, even if it's not measurable. Yep. Yep. Well, and I.

different pieces of content are meant to serve different purposes as well. And so how, you know, if something's an educational piece and it's meant to educate your audience, certainly that's not a conversion piece.  And they've got different goals. So I'm so curious, you said that you've recently figured out an attribution model or is it, are you doing multi-touch or you?  We've multi-touch model. We've got a new tool that's actually like consuming a lot more of our data.

and able to kind of feed that up and then tie it back. So I can say like blogs contributed, you know, X number of dollars to the pipeline as a whole, and then drill into like which pieces of content were the most valuable. So it's  kind of feels like a magic wand. I'm very excited, but you know, it's been a long time in the making. I've kind of been asking for this and inferring this a lot of kind of saying like, okay, you know, previously on

on Google analytics or whatever, I would just be like, okay, well blog drove this amount of traffic, you know, organically organic traffic contributed to this amount of pipeline or deals. So I'm going to assume  rough correlation between this. And now I have much more visibility, which is great. That's awesome. What is the tool? I'm using hockey stack.  Um, so they're a startup. They're really scrappy, really fun.

Um, and they have like all of this great data visualization and opportunities where I can see like, Oh, how many times do people touch content before they convert to a sales opportunity? You know, how, what pieces are those? And, know, even working with our data scientists, you know, in-house, have a  guy who does all this. You know, I just go like, Cody, help me. I don't know what to do. And  he builds me dashboards, which is great. Um, but you know, being able to work with him to say like,

Can we even change the waiting? Because like, for example, of course the request demo and the signup page are getting a ton of waiting saying like, oh my gosh, they contribute so much to pipeline. And I'm like, well, obviously where else are they going to become a lead? Like,  maybe we should kind of pull those out of this report or whatever that might look like. But it's just really interesting being able to see, you know, what types of content, the topics of those, those things, like we can really get a.

a lot of helpful information. And I can just play with my team and be like, you win the award for most valuable blog, you know,  or whatever it is. It's fun. I love that. I love that. And I'm, I'm so curious, because I'm such a, like attribution and ROI and data nerd, but how are you thinking about the weighting  of like your various content? how are you, how are you approaching that as you're assigning different weights?

So this is something I could just geek out about all day long. love it.  So, I mean, this also ties into something else, which is actually what I spoke at that event. We both spoke at, by the way, you were also fantastic there. So just want to shout out to you as well.  Um, what I think about a lot is, okay, fine. This is our call it most valuable blog. Let's say, obviously I want to celebrate that. I want to tell the writer you did great. Like your blog contributed to.

X amount of pipeline and that's exciting, you know?  But then I look at my blog library and I might have a thousand blogs. And I think, well, what if all of them could contribute that amount to the pipeline? Like how much more could we be generating? And so that's where I start thinking about things like editorial debt,  which is like a topic very dear to my heart. Basically this idea of the kinds of work that needs to go into refreshing, maintaining,

modernizing your older pieces  and how that contributes to overall domain authority content success, all of that. And so  that's one of the things I think about is, you know, obviously this topic or this area is interesting and contributing to pipeline, but what other pieces do we maybe have on a similar or related topic that isn't generating that much pipeline and how old is it and what kind of links does it have and where does it.

fit kind of in this story or this pipeline or this funnel and maybe flagging those as needing an update as well. That's so interesting because  the word that keeps coming to my mind when you're talking about this is like gamification. Like you're almost gamifying the updating of outdated content, which when you were talking about editorial debt as real as it is, like as someone who publishes content for her own, like

I don't want to go update all of my old content. That sounds horrendous. Needed for sure.  then if you add in this attribution part to it and you're like sort of gamifying, how can I get it to perform better? How can I get it to match this other content?  It becomes a game for people who are not content. It does. It does. And  I have a tool to recommend for that as well.  I use Market Muse.  So Market Muse, they were recently acquired by Site Improve.

Uh, but they have kind of actually a gamified software that gives you like a score or points about how  likely your content is to show up in search. And so it's just really interesting to start playing with that of like, Oh, if I tweak this sentence and get like this phrase in, or if I, you know, mentioned this keyword, not in a keyword stuffing way, but kind of like if I mentioned this another time, or if I.

Mention this related keyword.  can boost your score and also remind you, like if you're  the content expert, if you're the one who wrote this or if you're the one updating this, you might realize like, Oh, there's like four or five keywords that I can't weave in because it doesn't make sense in this refresh. But actually that would show that we have a deeper understanding of this topic. That might be a new whole separate blog. That might be a whole new section in your piece where as part of that update, it's not just.

zhuzhing it up, updating references, improving your link structure, all of that, but really saying, the market has evolved since I wrote this, the industry has evolved since I wrote this, let me add these things that maybe I didn't consider adding originally. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well,  so just to go back to the content ROI, guess,

because I do think that that's obviously we're all getting pushed to measure ROI and do attribution. What advice would you give to content marketers who  want to make sure that they're able to  be able to prove ROI,  either through a tool using a tool like this, or maybe just where would they start if they didn't have the tool today? How could they better communicate to their marketing exec that they're making it? Yeah, I think it's a great question. think, you know, if I look back on the ways that I've

communicated this over the years and kind of things I wish I knew  back then,  you know, I think part of it is a best practices approach, right? Like we all know that you need to have something  on your website, you need to have that content, you need to have enough  protein there, know, flesh it out to really attract someone and help them understand who you are and what you do. And  that there were kind of best practices for many years about

how often to publish or to make sure if you have  a founder who wants to be prolific that they write on a consistent basis, all of these kinds of best practices and a lot of them are true. And also a lot of them have become outdated and kind of  telling your executives what you're gonna invest in and the results you're trying to drive. So it might be that you say, we're gonna publish executive thought leadership

monthly or quarterly. And we want you to go promote this on your LinkedIn profile. We want you to build yourself up as a thought leader on social media. And it's a way to combine the content that we're going to publish on the website with more of a social selling emotion at the same time and to give you that credibility. And I think when you can tie a few ideas or strategies together, it gives a lot more trust and

and confidence in your executives. And also show them how it could save them time to say, here's the blog we're gonna write for you. And maybe you're a ghostwriter, maybe they like to write themselves, whatever it is to say, this is gonna be an 800 word, 1000 word, whatever length piece that really has your main thoughts of the moment, of the month or of the quarter.

But when you share this on social media, look at how many posts we can pull out for you of ways that you can share the same idea from a few different angles in a few different ways. And now we're saving you time in the future because we've invested in creating this piece of content that now you can  use in a myriad ways. And so I think really being clear with your executives, what you're making and why, and how you're going to save them time.

or make them more money in the future, really kind of  making a bet and being really clear of what that bet  is.  And communicating that clearly, I think helps so much because I've been there. I've told CEOs before at startups been like, we've got to have you blog again. And they're like,  Like,  I didn't explain it fully. And so I think that can that can go a long way. Yeah.  And

I mean, I just actually was, I had a client earlier this week and I was on the phone with their marketing team and they have a lot of people focusing on content right now, which is great. But when I asked them what their goals were, the goals were very activity based. And to your point, was like, oh, I have to publish four blogs this month. And when I asked them, which audiences are you targeting? Which segments are we going after? Like, how does this tie to the..

growth strategy with the business and the areas and service lines they're going after, there was no connection.  I would just even encourage people to just start there.  In this instance, if you know you're going after  a mobile, you're really going to build for mobile developers, then at least tell your execs, okay, we're going to publish four blogs this month that are targeting mobile developers. At least if you can make that connection.  That's the easiest connection, but

Honestly, something that I still see people not doing. Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. I really do. And then it  also, think my,  my, another piece of advice I would give content marketers,  whether they're starting out or maybe starting out in a new role or whatever that would be, is really saying we will know we've been successful if XYZ. And I think that  helps like, yes,

Part of it is output. Part of it is saying, we will know we've been successful. Sure, if we've published three new case studies this quarter or 10 new blogs this quarter, fine. That's fine as a first starting point, but that can't be your only success metric. You have to be able to say, and this will increase traffic by this amount or this will improve our, not even just leads, which obviously we all want. We want those opportunities to come in, but even just saying,

The warmth of those leads when they commit the brand affinity that they have, the understanding of who we are, that maybe the discovery calls start going better  for the sales leaders, whatever that is, whatever  metric you want to say, you want to have them saying our name or mentioning the blog in your Gong recordings, whatever it is that you flag as your thing is fine. But when you actually start by saying, I'll know I'm doing well when I see this.

I think it makes you kind of pause and say, oh, how will I know if I'm doing this? Like, how will I be able to measure that?  And you might not have the tools, you might not know how you're gonna do it, but like, it at least gets that conversation started. Yeah, no, I love that. I love that.  And selfishly, while I have you,  you were talking, you were talking earlier about like communicating with executives and telling them, hey, you'll do this one post, but then we're gonna get a lot of different posts out of that.

And I think that that's another thing I see all the time where we are almost like content production machines and we're not actually promoting it or getting the most out of it. And I feel that even just with starting growth activated, I feel like I have this promotional debt to use your terms, to publish a podcast and then there's like a million things you could do with it, know, and sparse it out into a bunch of different content.

What is your sort of rule of thumb to make sure you are getting the most out of the content you're created and you're not just in this hamster wheel? Like, is it like an 80-20 rule where 80 % should be promoting the content and 20 % is writing it? You know, I just would love to hear your thoughts on how you stay out of that sort of hamster wheel. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think what I try and do the first step is really building it or even while I'm working on it, imagining

Okay, how are the ways that I'm going to distribute this? What's going to resonate where? So for example, I'll work on a case study. feel like case studies are so big and take so much work, probably much like a podcast, right? Like there's a lot of production value that goes into it. And so  as I'm  working on it, editing it or working through it, I'll be like, Ooh, this would be a great social car.

this could be a great audiogram. This could be a great, you know, and I start thinking in terms of different form factors that the content could take, even as I'm working on it to say like, Oh, would I want to retool this quote a little bit to make it a better quote card or audiogram or whatever that might be. And so even in the production stage, I am thinking about distribution and I'm thinking about, Oh, this would be a good  ad or this would be great on social.

Or this might fit really well in an email. And I'm trying to always think about  the different form factors that the same  piece of content that I'm working on could take. So that by the time I get to  final product, I don't feel like I'm just throwing it over the fence at like the demand gen team and being like, here you go. Like good luck. But  I'm saying, you know, to our brand team, like, Hey, can you make me these and these and these derivative assets?

And then I'm really delivering to my partners, to my teammates, a full package that I can say like, here you go. Here's everything you're going to need. And then making sure that my team, the content team knows about this as well. And when they're writing the next blog, when they're updating the next glossary page, when they're doing a website update, that they're like, oh, there was a great quote that relates to this in that recent case study. Let me go find that thing that I.

you know, that it's in my head and bring that in and weave it back into other content types and other form factors.  Um, so yeah, I mean, it's not a perfect system. It's not a perfect ratio, but  I think really, you know, the problem that I see too often is that things are created in a vacuum or in a silo or  whatever weird analogy you want to use, but they're created without that kind of vision for who else is going to want this or who else is going to be interested in need this.

And are they going to be able to use it in this form factor or do they need something else for what they do? Yeah, no, I think that's great. And I would just also encourage people to also think about sales activation and like the sales activation kit that you're going to give people to use all of this amazing work that marketing does. Cause nothing more painful when we create all of these campaigns and all of this content that's meant to be distributed to prospects and then they don't use it.

And then they don't use it. Oh, for sure. And I mean, I think that's also something that I would always say, like, get have as much patience as you can bear. Because like, I remember, you know, I've been on sales calls and someone is like, if only we had a case study that said blah, blah, blah. And I've worked with people who are like, we do, you know, read the thing we sent. And I'm like, no, this is a great opportunity. They're asking for it. And you're already prepared. You get to be like, of course.

Here you go. Let me know. Is this the thing you want? And just kind of always present it as like, I'm so glad you asked. Yes, we do.  Um, as compared to getting you to cause you know, there are plenty of things I miss. are plenty of things I'm not aware that we have. so, um, you know, just really trying to keep as much grace  for people in your mind that you can,  because not, you know, everyone has missed things. And so,  you know, just kind of offering those things again and again.

you know, even internally, let alone externally can make a world of difference.  Yeah. Well, I can tell you, Zoe, everyone's going to want to work with you after.  You are clearly a great partner. Just a pleasure to work with, I'm sure. I hope. That's my goal. I want to make heavy work light. That is always my goal.  Oh, that's a great, that's a great theme.

Are there any,  I can't get away without asking, are there any AI tools that help with some of this,  well, with content in general for sure, but even for some of these kits that you're talking about? So one of the things I really do like is Google LM. So it's more of like a study guide  product. But what I really like about it is you can feed it whatever you want.

So for example, you could give it a messaging doc from the product marketing org  and you could give it a video that's on YouTube and you could give it a few blogs or whatever it is. And then say, create a test about this, create FAQs, create a podcast.  Um, and actually the podcast is scary. Good. Let me just say that. Like the banter between these creep, these fake AI hosts is like top notch.

Um, but it's great, like recognizing to your point about like sales, for example,  people learn in different ways. Someone could take in a messaging doc and be like, I get it. I understand other people, not so much. And this way you can say, just listen to the podcast or just read the FAQs and you'll have enough to be dangerous, you know, enough information to cause trouble.

Um, you know, even when we go to events, we'll put the event messaging doc and all of the, um, assets we're creating to kind of show at the event. We'll put all of that into Google LM and give that to like people working the booth  and be like, here's the messaging doc. Like, obviously we prefer for you to read like the source material that people work really hard on. But if that's not your jam, you can listen to a 12 minute podcast and basically get enough.

of the information to be working the booth and answer some basic questions.  Wow. Interesting. Yeah, it's a fun one. Google LM. It's it's got to play around with that one. I had heard of is it notebook LM? I think  it is notebook. I think it's Google's notebook LM. Oh, okay. Okay. So I guess I have heard that that has incredible podcast. Yeah, like the banter between although they'll do it about  any topic. So I laughed because like,

being in the tech space, and we'll talk about observability and security. And we did one for one of our events. And I'll never forget this AI host going like, observability? Wow. And I was like,  no one has ever said that no human has ever said that but sure AI you can do that. know.  I it. I've been using it a lot for like marketing strategies that even I'll just dump in all of my

When I go in and I'll interview, let's say 15 business leaders about things that their company to build a marketing strategy. And I'll then dump all my notes and transcripts into chat GPT. And I'm still happy to say that it does not pull up the same context that I do. Yes. Yes. I mean, I've got to say that as well. have to say, like, I can't, I can't say nice things about AI without talking about my biggest pet peeve  is in a modern.

evolving digital landscape. Like I know that AI lives in a modern, ever evolving digital world. But please stop putting that sentence in every single piece of content you write AI like I know that's where you live, but we don't live there. That's my big AI pet peeve from a content perspective. well, even during when COVID happened, wasn't it the like during unprecedented times, we had our own like

I know we  were the AI I know  the new normal when everyone was on the new normal same thing. Oh, yes.  The normal during unprecedented times.  Oh, my goodness. Well, Zoe, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for joining us. I'd love to hear just a little bit if people want to learn more from you or get in contact, where can they find you?

I think LinkedIn is probably  the best place I am on blue sky, but I rarely post, but LinkedIn is the place to be. That's where I try and post semi consistently. I'm there as Zoe Hawkins and my sparkle emoji. You'll know it's me because I always have my sparkles. So yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me.  Awesome. And what's something you're really excited about this year that's going to happen personally or professionally?

Oh, well, I'm just looking forward to I've booked a trip to New York. I grew up there and I'm finally taking my nine year old daughter there.  And she's an aspiring actress. And so I get to take her to Broadway and see some shows. So that's that's what I'm looking forward to right now. Amazing. Amazing. We'll have the best time New York is one of my favorite places. I'm sure she's gonna love it. So sure she will. But thank you so much. And thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. This was a super fun conversation. Absolutely. Thanks, Zoe. Talk soon.