The Cost of Content Marketing without Direction

Your marketing team is busy. Content is being created. Social posts are going out. Campaigns are running. But something's missing—actual business growth that can be directly tied to these activities. Sound familiar?

This disconnect is what happens when companies engage in "random acts of marketing"—activities without clear strategic alignment to how their customers actually buy. For most mid-market B2B companies, this approach means wasted resources, frustrated teams, and growth that remains stubbornly dependent on founder relationships rather than scalable marketing systems.

The truth is uncomfortable but necessary to acknowledge: most companies are leaving significant growth opportunities untapped because they've failed to map their marketing efforts to their ideal customers' actual buying journey. They're creating content without purpose, measuring metrics without meaning, and wondering why their marketing investments aren't delivering the expected returns.

The cost isn't just in wasted marketing dollars. It's in the missed revenue opportunities, the extended sales cycles, and the competitive disadvantage that compounds over time.

The Marketing Activity Trap

Marketing teams often fall into what we call the "activity trap"—the false belief that being busy with marketing activities means being effective at driving business results. This manifests in several ways:

First, there's the metrics mirage. Your dashboard shows increasing likes, shares, and pageviews. Reports highlight growing email open rates and expanding follower counts. But these vanity metrics rarely translate to pipeline or revenue growth. Teams celebrate the activity metrics while the outcome metrics—qualified leads, sales opportunities, and revenue—remain stagnant.

Then there's the content treadmill. Content creation becomes an end unto itself, with teams constantly producing blogs, videos, and social posts without understanding their purpose in moving buyers through their journey. The focus shifts to production volume rather than strategic impact, creating a resource-intensive cycle that yields diminishing returns.

Perhaps most damaging is the false correlation between marketing activity volume and marketing effectiveness. Teams point to everything they're doing as evidence of progress, but when pressed on results, the connection becomes tenuous at best. This creates a dangerous illusion of progress while the business remains stuck.

The result is a significant resource drain—time, talent, and budget poured into unfocused efforts with unclear returns. The opportunity cost is substantial, as these same resources could be driving meaningful growth if aligned with a clear understanding of the buyer journey.

Three Myths About B2B Marketing Effectiveness

Myth 01: More content equals more leads

The "content volume" strategy persists despite overwhelming evidence that quality and strategic alignment trump quantity every time. Companies producing fewer but highly targeted content pieces that address specific journey stage needs consistently outperform those flooding the market with unfocused content.

This myth leads to diminishing returns as content teams expand production without expanding impact. Resources get stretched thin, quality suffers, and the signal-to-noise ratio for your audience decreases. They become less likely to engage with any of your content as the perceived value of each piece declines.

Strategic content aligned to specific journey stages creates a multiplier effect that volume alone never will. One deeply researched, journey-specific piece can outperform dozens of generic posts by actually moving buyers to the next stage.

Myth 02: The buyer journey is linear and predictable

The traditional funnel model suggests a neat progression from awareness to consideration to decision. The reality is far messier. Buyers regularly move back and forth between stages as new information emerges, new stakeholders join the process, or competing priorities shift.

This complexity is amplified in B2B environments where different stakeholders within the same target account may simultaneously occupy different journey stages. The technical evaluator might be in consideration while the financial approver hasn't moved beyond initial awareness.

Rigid funnel models fail to capture this complexity and lead to misaligned content strategies that assume a straightforward progression that rarely exists in reality. Effective journey mapping acknowledges this fluidity and plans for non-linear movement.

Myth 03: Marketing's job ends at the sale

Perhaps the most costly myth is that the buyer journey concludes when the contract is signed. This overlooks the critical post-purchase phases where the real growth potential often lies.

Most marketing teams focus exclusively on pre-purchase stages, missing the enormous opportunity to develop existing customers into advocates who drive new business. A satisfied customer who actively promotes your solution is frequently more valuable than dozens of new leads.

Companies that extend their journey mapping into post-purchase phases unlock compounding growth as customer advocacy becomes a powerful demand generation engine. The most effective growth systems aren't just about acquiring new customers, but systematically developing existing ones into growth catalysts.

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A Framework for Understanding your B2B Buyer's Journey

One of the most important yet overlooked realities of B2B marketing is the uneven distribution of your audience across journey stages. The majority of your potential buyers—often 70% or more—are in the Awareness stage at any given time. A smaller percentage, perhaps 20%, are actively in Consideration. Only a small fraction, typically less than 10%, are ready to make a Decision.

This distribution has profound implications for your content strategy and resource allocation. Most companies make the mistake of overinvesting in Decision stage content (detailed product comparisons, pricing pages, technical specifications) while underinvesting in the Awareness content that addresses the much larger portion of their audience.

Resource allocation should generally mirror this distribution, with the majority of your content efforts focused on education and awareness, a moderate amount on consideration, and a proportionally smaller (but highly optimized) effort on decision content.

Customer Acquisition: Educate and Validate

Each journey stage requires not just different content topics but different content approaches:

Awareness stage content educates your audience about their challenges and opportunities. It builds credibility without selling. The goal isn't to promote your solution but to demonstrate your understanding of the problems your audience faces. This might include industry research, trend analysis, or educational content that helps prospects better understand their own challenges.

Consideration stage content provides encouragement that your approach is valid and builds confidence in your differentiated perspective. Here, you transition from general education to sharing your specific methodology or approach. Case studies, methodology explanations, and comparison frameworks perform well at this stage.

Decision stage content offers validation that removes final obstacles and reinforces that choosing your solution is the right decision. This includes proof points, implementation details, ROI analyses, and specific outcome commitments. The goal is to remove final barriers to purchase by addressing remaining objections.

Retention & Expansion: Deliver and Reinforce

The journey continues after purchase, evolving through three critical phases that most companies completely ignore:

Sponsor is your initial internal champion who brought your solution into their organization. They've put their professional reputation on the line and need ongoing support to demonstrate the value of their decision. Content at this stage should help them communicate early wins and implementation progress to their internal stakeholders.

Champion represents the expansion of internal advocacy beyond the initial sponsor. Your content should help existing customers educate their colleagues about your solution's value, empowering them to become internal advocates. Training materials, internal presentation templates, and success metrics frameworks are valuable here.

Advocate is the ultimate goal—a customer who actively promotes your company to external prospects, effectively becoming part of your marketing team. Content for advocates includes shareable success stories, speaking opportunity support, and peer networking resources that enhance their professional standing while promoting your solution.

By mapping content to all six stages—not just the pre-purchase three—companies create a complete growth system rather than just a lead generation machine.

Systemizing Your B2B Buyer Journey: A 4-Phase Approach

Everything is a system. From inputs to outputs, you can build a content engine and growth system that meets your ideal customers where they are, and positions your brand as a trusted authority. Here are the phases we walk through with our clients, and with our own go-to-market efforts as we engineer the growth systems that build audiences and establish industry trust.

Phase 01

Defining your ICP with precision

The foundation of effective journey mapping starts with precise definition of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This goes well beyond basic demographics like company size and industry to include behavioral characteristics, common challenges, success metrics, and buying processes.

Understanding the actual challenges and goals of your ideal customers provides the thematic foundation for your content. Their buying process defines the structure of your journey map. Without this precision, your content will lack both relevance and strategic alignment.

The connection between ICP definition and content strategy effectiveness is direct and measurable. We've seen companies increase content engagement rates by over 200% simply by refining their ICP definition and aligning existing content more precisely to the specific challenges of that audience.

Begin by interviewing your best existing customers, focusing not just on why they bought your solution but on their entire buying process. What triggered their search? What alternatives did they consider? Who was involved in the decision? What concerns almost prevented the purchase? These insights form the basis of your journey map.

Phase 02

Mapping content needs to journey stages

With your ICP clearly defined, the next step is auditing your existing content and categorizing each piece by journey stage. This typically reveals significant imbalances—most companies discover they're overweighted toward either early awareness content (thought leadership without clear next steps) or late-stage decision content (product features without contextual education).

Identify gaps in your content coverage across the journey, particularly at transition points between stages. What content do prospects need to move from awareness to consideration? What validation content is missing that would accelerate decisions?

Prioritize content creation based on the journey stage distribution we discussed earlier, with appropriate weighting toward awareness and consideration stages where most of your audience resides.

Develop detailed content briefs that explicitly connect to journey stages and ICP pain points. Each brief should identify which stage the content targets, what questions it answers for that stage, and what specific action it intends to motivate.

Phase 03

Creating content with purpose, not volume

With your journey map established, content creation becomes more focused and purposeful. Each piece is designed with specific journey stage transitions in mind—not just to engage, but to move the reader to the next stage in their buying process.

This approach naturally builds content that leads prospects through their journey. An awareness piece doesn't just educate; it creates interest in your specific approach that leads to consideration content. Consideration content doesn't just differentiate; it reduces purchase anxiety and leads naturally to decision content.

The focus shifts from production volume to quality engagement and journey progression. Teams measure success not by how much content they create but by how effectively that content moves prospects forward.

Implement content workflows that connect directly to your journey mapping. Content briefs, editorial calendars, and performance metrics should all reference the journey stage and intended progression each piece supports.

Phase 04

Measuring what matters

The final step is establishing KPIs tied to journey progression, not just engagement. Traditional metrics like page views and time on page still matter but must be interpreted in the context of journey movement.

Track content performance by journey stage, comparing engagement across similar content types within each stage. This reveals which approaches are most effective at each stage of the buying process.

Measure velocity of movement between journey stages. How quickly do prospects move from first awareness touch to consideration content engagement? How many consideration touches typically occur before decision stage engagement? These metrics help optimize both content and nurture flows.

Most importantly, connect content engagement patterns to actual sales outcomes. Which content pieces most often appear in the engagement history of closed deals? Which combinations of content correlate with higher close rates or larger deal sizes? These insights allow you to double down on the most impactful content for actual revenue, not just engagement.

Signs You're Getting It Right, Beyond Vanity Metrics

How do you know when your journey mapping efforts are working? Look for these indicators that go beyond basic engagement metrics:

Qualified leads submitting contact forms with visible trails of content engagement. When leads come in with a history of engagement across multiple journey stages, they're typically more qualified and sales-ready than those who arrive directly at decision content.

The ability to map specific content interactions to different stages of the buyer journey. Your analytics should show clear patterns of how prospects move through your content, revealing which pieces effectively transition them to next stages and which create dead ends.

Shortened sales cycles as prospects move through stages more efficiently. A well-mapped content journey pre-educates prospects, answers common objections, and builds confidence before sales conversations even begin, reducing the time required to close.

Increased referral business from existing customers. This indicates successful execution of the post-purchase journey stages, transforming customers into advocates who actively bring new prospects into your pipeline.

A growing sense of intuition about what works, backed by meaningful data. Perhaps the most satisfying indicator is when your team develops a feel for effective content—an intuition that's consistently validated by performance data.

When these indicators appear, you'll know you've successfully transformed from random marketing activities to a strategic, journey-aligned growth system.

Give Content Marketing the Intention it Needs

The cost of continuing with unfocused marketing activities isn't just wasted budget—it's the opportunity cost of growth not achieved and market position not secured. In today's competitive landscape, the gap between companies with journey-mapped strategies and those engaging in random marketing activities widens every quarter.

Companies that align their content to the complete buyer journey—including the critical post-purchase phases—create a sustainable competitive advantage. They don't just acquire customers more efficiently; they transform those customers into growth engines through systematic advocacy development.

The shift from random activity to strategic journey alignment is what separates growing companies from stagnant ones. It's the difference between marketing that constantly needs to justify its existence and marketing that demonstrably drives business growth.

Is your current marketing strategy aligned to your customers' actual buying journey? Are you creating content with clear purpose for each stage, or simply producing content for its own sake? Most importantly, have you extended your journey mapping beyond the sale to capture the full growth potential of your existing customers?

Take the first step toward strategic, journey-aligned marketing. Request a free GTM assessment to map your company's current content to the B2B buyer journey and identify the highest-impact opportunities to transform your marketing from random activities to strategic growth.

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For mid-market companies, especially those under $50M in revenue, every dollar invested into go-to-market (GTM) activities needs to show a return. Yet, countless teams continue spending thousands each year on traditional press release services like PR Newswire, clinging to the outdated belief that syndicating announcements equals building buyer trust. In reality, traditional press releases have drifted far from the channels where your actual buyers live.

It's time to rethink the model — not the message.

How Traditional Press Releases Fail Modern Mid-Market Teams

Press release wire services were designed for an era when reaching journalists was the primary method of gaining exposure. But today's B2B buyers are self-directed, networked, and community-driven. They don't read syndicated press releases; they build trust by following brands, partners, and peers in their professional networks.

Spending thousands of dollars to "announce" updates on platforms your buyers don't frequent only creates a false sense of progress. Traditional press releases aren't demand generation tools — they're artifacts of a different era, serving narrow PR needs like analyst relations or major corporate disclosures.

Where Your ICP Buyers Are — and Why PR Newswire Isn’t It

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) buyers spend their time on LinkedIn, in curated professional communities, and consuming trusted, peer-driven content — not scrolling through press release wires.

Yes, some teams try to "rescue" their PR spend by posting PR Newswire links on LinkedIn. But here's the problem: LinkedIn’s algorithm deprioritizes external links that pull users off-platform. Posting a link to a wire service announcement not only fails to recover your investment — it actively limits your reach.

You’re better off publishing natively on LinkedIn, keeping readers engaged in-platform, and maximizing your announcement's visibility with real buyers.

The Modern Playbook: How to Release a Press Announcement Today

You don't need to abandon the press release format — you need to abandon the old distribution model.

Here's how modern mid-market companies are releasing announcements:

• LinkedIn Article: Publish a full article natively, capturing attention without external links.
• Brand LinkedIn Post: Create a post that highlights the key news and links internally to your LinkedIn article.
• Native Blog Post: Host the full announcement on your website, optimized for SEO and audience engagement.
• Follow-On LinkedIn Posts: Amplify visibility with secondary posts highlighting different angles or partner shoutouts.

This approach keeps engagement inside buyer-centric channels, boosts algorithmic reach, and drives measurable actions. Here's what it looks like visually, which is how we help to educate clients and partners through the process of a joint release:

If you want the templates and steps we use to streamline your own process, just drop us a note here and as for the LinkedIn press release templates.

Partner Power: How to Amplify Your Brand Organically

One of the biggest advantages of publishing natively is the ability to leverage your partner ecosystem.

Tagging executives, partner companies, and strategic collaborators in your LinkedIn posts isn't just about courtesy — it's about triggering network amplification. Every tag expands your announcement's organic reach into adjacent networks where your next buyers already exist.

Encouraging partners to engage with or repost your announcement extends your reach exponentially — and crucially, it keeps your message in trusted buyer networks, not lost in syndicated noise.

Proof in Action: How One Systems Integrator Saved $20K and Reached Real Buyers

A mid-market systems integrator was spending around $20K per year publishing press releases for every new executive hire through traditional PR wire services. They had no measurable ROI — no engagement, no new conversations, no impact on pipeline.

Trelliswork helped them pivot their approach by focusing on joint partner announcements:

• Published a LinkedIn article announcing the executive hire.
• Created a brand LinkedIn post sharing the article.
• Posted a native blog article linking back to the LinkedIn post.
• Developed follow-on posts to reinforce the announcement and spark partner engagement.

The results:

• Immediate cost savings (~$20K/year).
• Higher visibility and engagement among their actual target buyers.
• Direct attribution to new partnership conversations and early pipeline activity.

This modern approach not only preserved budget but turned executive updates into real growth opportunities.

Shift Your Strategy — Get Our Free Templates

Traditional PR distribution is no longer how mid-market companies grow. By adopting a modern, buyer-centric announcement strategy, you can stop wasting budget and start generating real engagement where it matters.

Request our free playbook and templates to build announcements your buyers will actually see — and act on.

The Engineering Growth Paradox

For engineering-focused B2B companies with revenues between $10M-$60M, a common growth struggle eventually sets in. The business was built on technical excellence, founder relationships, and word-of-mouth referrals. The CEO or founder remains the primary driver of sales, despite attempts to hire marketing leaders or engage agencies. Sound familiar?

This approach works until it doesn't. Companies reach a growth plateau where founder bandwidth becomes the bottleneck. Meanwhile, marketing investments deliver inconsistent results, making leadership hesitant to allocate budget to channels they don't fully understand or trust.

The pattern is clear: engineering-led companies often prioritize product excellence while significantly undervaluing marketing until growth plateaus. Most invest just 2-5% of revenue in marketing when industry benchmarks suggest 8-12% is appropriate for sustainable growth. This creates a growth ceiling that even exceptional products can't break through.

Why Traditional Marketing Models Fail Engineering-Led Companies

Traditional marketing budget allocation models often fail for engineering-led B2B companies because they don't account for the unique challenges of technical B2B sales:

• Longer, more complex sales cycles requiring different content at each stage. For $500K+ deal sizes, it's not uncommon for sales cycles to take 6-12 months.
• Technical decision-makers who evaluate marketing differently, needing deeper content on integration capabilities and technical specifications, not just feature highlights or generic case studies.
• Solution complexity that demands sophisticated educational content. Technical buyers want to understand more than what your solution can do "on the box"—they need to know if it will integrate with existing systems and solve specific technical challenges.
• Industry-specific channels where your buyers actually spend their time. While events remain important for many industries, they're rarely sufficient to reach today's digitally savvy technical audience.
• The founder relationship factor that needs to be systematized, not replaced. CEOs and founders can open different doors faster, but scaling this approach creates both capacity constraints and risk when relationships are tied to individuals.

The Structural Inefficiency Problem

The traditional approach to scaling marketing—adding more internal headcount—creates a fundamental structural inefficiency. Here's what a $50M company investing the recommended 5% in marketing ($2.5M budget) typically looks like when building an in-house team:

• Marketing leadership: $350K (VP, Director levels)
• Content specialists: $340K (content manager, writers, designers)
• Digital marketing: $290K (managers for paid, social, email)
• Product marketing: $230K
• Operations and analytics: $210K
• Sales enablement: $200K
• Total team cost: $1.62M (64.8% of budget)

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This approach leaves just $880K (35.2%) for actual marketing activities—the campaigns, content, events, and tools that drive results. And that's before considering technology costs!

Beyond the budget inefficiency, internal marketing teams often lack specialized expertise needed for complex technical marketing, creating capability gaps that limit effectiveness. When resources are stretched thin, teams tend to focus on familiar activities rather than the highest-impact initiatives.

The Science of Marketing Budget Allocation

Effective marketing budget allocation isn't guesswork—it's a data-driven discipline based on:

• Your current Go-to-Market (GTM) maturity
• The gap between current and target growth rates
• Your sales cycle length and complexity
• Customer acquisition costs and lifetime value
• Available marketing channels for your industry

Our research with midsize B2B engineering companies reveals distinct allocation patterns based on GTM maturity:

• Early Maturity: Strong emphasis on Content/Inbound (40-45%) and Brand Development (25-30%) to build a foundation.
• Mid Maturity: A more balanced approach, with increased investment in Outbound (15-20%) and Sales Enablement (15-20%) while still maintaining significant Content/Inbound focus (30-35%).
• Advanced Maturity: Optimization phase, with further increases in Sales Enablement (20-25%) and Events (15-20%), while Content/Inbound and Brand Development allocations decrease relatively, indicating established presence and a shift towards conversion and retention activities.

This science of allocation isn't static but evolves based on growth gaps, sales cycle analysis, and channel performance. The most successful companies continuously refine their allocation based on quantitative results, not just gut feeling or industry trends.

A New Marketing Resource Allocation Model

Forward-thinking B2B companies are adopting a new resource allocation model that combines strategic leadership with outsourced execution and smart technology integration:

• Strategic Leadership (20-25%): Maintain a small internal team (typically 1-2 people) focused on strategy, business alignment, and results oversight
• Outsourced Execution Engine (30-40%): Partner with specialized providers who deliver access to the full range of marketing capabilities at a fraction of the cost of hiring internally
• Discretionary Marketing Spend (35-50%): Maximize the budget available for campaigns, programs, content creation, and technology that directly drives business results

This 20/40/40 model provides several crucial advantages:

• Access to specialized expertise across all marketing disciplines
• Elimination of hiring, training, and turnover challenges
• Ability to rapidly scale up or down based on business needs
• Faster implementation of new strategies and technologies
• Significantly more budget for actual marketing activities

When evaluating potential partners, look beyond basic capabilities to assess how effectively they leverage technology—including but not limited to AI—as one component of scaling effectiveness without equivalent headcount costs. The right partner should demonstrate:

• Experience with your specific industry and technical sales processes
• Clear measurement frameworks that tie activities to business outcomes
• Strategic approach to technology integration, not just tactical deployment
• Ability to extend founder relationships through systems, not replace them

Modern marketing requires a balanced approach to technology integration. While AI enables valuable capabilities like predictive modeling of marketing channel performance, personalization at scale, and content optimization that would otherwise require multiple specialists, it's just one element of a comprehensive strategy. The most effective partners combine technology with human expertise to create systems that scale beyond individual capabilities.

Break Out Beyond Founder-Led Growth

The most successful engineering-led B2B companies aren't those with the largest marketing budgets—they're the ones that allocate resources most intelligently. By building marketing systems that extend beyond the founder's network, these companies create sustainable, scalable growth engines that don't depend on any single individual.

Systematizing founder relationships extends their impact rather than replacing their value. The goal isn't to eliminate the founder's role in business development but to multiply their effectiveness through systems that capture their insights, approach, and value proposition in scalable ways.

Breaking free from the founder-led growth ceiling requires both strategic resource allocation and operational discipline. Companies that make this transition successfully gain not just growth, but resilience and predictability—creating enterprise value that transcends individual contributors.

Ready to optimize your marketing budget allocation? Request a free growth assessment to see what your marketing budget could look like with a partner like Trelliswork.

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In a world drowning in AI-generated content, the difference between standing out and blending in comes down to one critical choice: are you using AI to amplify your original thinking, or are you letting it think for you?

If you're like most marketing teams today, you've experimented with AI content generation. You're encouraged by how quickly it can produce blog posts, social media updates, and even lengthy whitepapers. But you've also noticed something troubling: everything is starting to sound the same. The internet is becoming an echo chamber full of squawking parrots.

The problem isn't AI itself—it's how we're using it. The traditional 80/20 approach to content creation isn't wrong, but it needs refinement for the AI age. The key insight? We need to redistribute that 20% of human input—moving half of it to the beginning of the process.

It's time for a new model: the 10/80/10 rule. This isn't about replacing the 80/20 principle but evolving it.‍

By strategically bookending AI with human expertise—10% of original thinking upfront and 10% of expert refinement at the end—we transform AI from a thought replacement tool into a thought amplification engine.

Are you using AI to amplify your original thinking, or are you letting it think for you?

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The Pareto Problem: Why Most AI Content Falls Flat

If you're trying to build brand authority and generate qualified leads, you've likely discovered that AI-generated content often falls short. You've heard AI can automate 80% of the heavy lifting, leaving just 20% of the work for you to weigh in on, multiplying your ability to get shit done.

You give it a shot, initial progress is encouraging, and you see the light at the end of the tunnel leading you to your 5x content-engine machine. But the end of the tunnel seems always out of reach the more you work at it. Something's wrong with the process. Does any of this sound familiar?

• You generate an article in 30 seconds, but then spend 2 hours editing it to make it "good enough" to publish, realizing that won't scale
• You spend 30 minutes in add-on prompting trying to make the AI article not sound like an AI-generated article, "make this 5 bullets, not 3", "extend this paragraph", etc.
• You try to find the source for a statistic the article included, but it doesn't exist
• You've published 30 AI-generated articles for your company but web traffic's not moving
• You used an AI article generator, published 300 articles last month, traffic ticked up, but no one's engaging

This is what 95% of the marketing world is doing wrong today. They're starting with AI—asking it to generate content from scratch—and then trying to fix the output. This is the naive approach to the traditional 80/20 rule, applied to content creation:

• 80%: Start with a prompt, get 80% to the finish line (e.g., "write me an article on a topic that's trending in go-to-market aligned to my ideal customer profile")
• 20%: Edit the output, add additional thoughts, make follow-up prompts

The problem? When you start with AI, you're starting with recycled, derivative thinking. You're building on what AI has learned from analyzing thousands of other articles—many of which were themselves uninspired or generic. You're amplifying the noise, not the signal.

This approach fails to position you as an industry leader because it lacks the originality needed to truly stand out. Let’s give this approach a name - call it, the Prompt-to-Human method (P2H).

The idea is that 80% of the effort starts by relying on prompt engineering, followed by 20% of the user rationalizing and modifying the results to an acceptable output.

Note - there are plenty of use cases where this approach works great, but thought leadership specifically is what we’re concerned with here.

Why 80/20 Doesn't Work for Thought Leadership

The traditional 80/20 approach fails with AI content generation for three key reasons:

1. It scales the wrong thing: Instead of scaling your unique expertise and insights, you're scaling generic information that dozens of other companies in your industry are also publishing.
2. It puts the heavy lifting in the wrong place: You end up spending most of your time editing generic content rather than contributing original thinking—the exact opposite of where your value lies.
3. It creates a race to the bottom: As more companies adopt this approach, content across the web becomes increasingly homogenized. Your brand voice disappears into a sea of AI-generated sameness.
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The true cost of this approach goes beyond wasted time. It damages your brand reputation as readers recognize the lack of original insight. It creates audience fatigue as people tire of reading slight variations of the same ideas. It undermines your search visibility as algorithms increasingly prioritize original, high-value content. And perhaps most importantly, it squanders the opportunity to establish genuine thought leadership in your industry.

Traffic might tick up temporarily, but it's a vanity metric that doesn't translate to meaningful engagement or conversions. Using AI the wrong way simply gets you a different version of the same bad results.

Scale Your Experience with 10/80/10

There's a better way to leverage AI for content creation—one that amplifies your expertise rather than diluting and marginalizing it. Think of it as the 10/80/10 approach, or simply a ‘modified Pareto principle’.  This approach focuses on leveraging AI to help you scale your content engine without sacrificing originality or authenticity. The key is simply relocating 10% of human ‘think time’ to the beginning of the process to get better results. Here’s what it looks like:

First 10%: Original Thinking

The process begins—not with AI—but with you. What original opinion do you have about the topic? What experience have you gained that shapes this opinion? How can you help your audience learn faster from your experience?

This first 10% is where you identify the core insight that only you can provide. It's the seed of true thought leadership—the unique perspective that comes from your expertise and experience in the field.

This step cannot be outsourced to AI. It's where you differentiate yourself from competitors who are letting AI do the thinking for them.

Middle 80%: AI-Enhanced Development

Once you've established your original thinking and articulated an opinion, now is the time to bring in AI. But instead of asking it to generate content from scratch, you're asking it to build upon your foundation:

• Draft the article from your base opinion and thought
• Fill in the gaps in your prose and points
• Connect the narrative and tell a better story
• Add supporting research that reinforces your original insight
• Help translate complex expertise into accessible content

In this model, AI isn't making things up for you—it's amplifying what you already know. It's handling the "busywork" of content creation so you can focus on contributing original value.

Final 10%: Human Refinement

The last step is adding the final touches that make the content truly yours:

• Include details and illustrations from your personal experience
• Add emphasis to key points that reflect your priorities
• Ensure the final piece authentically represents your perspective
• Add nuance that only human experience can provide
• Incorporate more specific details from a case study

This final polishing ensures that the content remains authentic to your voice and expertise, even with AI assistance.

Implementing 10/80/10: Practical Frameworks

To get the most from the middle 80% where AI plays its role, use these prompting frameworks to start your next thought leadership piece. By investing time here, at the input, you're investing in the most important part of the process. There are dozens of these out there, but here are four to start with.

Experience Amplification

This keeps your original thinking central while using AI to develop supporting arguments. For example.

"Based on my experience that [your specific insight], help me expand on the following [key points]..."

Storytelling Enhancement

This approach leverages AI's ability to structure content while keeping your experiences as the foundation.

"Using my core insight about [X], help me craft a narrative arc that illustrates this point through these specific examples..."

Perspective Preservation

This approach creates guardrails to prevent generic content.

"I'm writing from the perspective of someone who has [your unique experience]. Using that lens, help me articulate how [topic] connects to [your audience's needs]

Expertise Extraction

This uses AI to make your expertise more accessible without diluting it.

"Based on my expertise in [field], I believe [key insight]. Help me articulate the implications of this for [target audience]."

Measuring Success Beyond Vanity Metrics

When you adopt the 10/80/10 approach, you need to shift your measurement focus as well. Traffic alone is a vanity metric, not a conversion. Instead, look at engagement metrics that actually matter:

• Time on page (are people actually reading your content?)
• Return visitors (are they coming back for more?)
• Lead attribution (are new leads coming in being influenced by your articles?)

These metrics reflect the true impact of thought leadership—not just eyeballs, but engagement, influence, and ultimately, conversion. Just remember, the investment in authority content takes time. Stay focused on disciplined execution, maintain high quality standards that set you apart from your competition, and see your brand evolve into the industry leader you need it to be.

We Need Thought Leaders, Not Noise Amplifiers

In a world where anyone can generate content at scale, the competitive advantage doesn't come from publishing more—it comes from publishing with purpose, perspective, and expertise that no one else can offer.

Lazily applying the 80/20 rule to thought leadership content turns you into a parrot, repeating variations of what's already been said. The 10/80/10 approach turns you into a thought leader, amplifying your unique expertise and making it more accessible to your audience. By focusing on your ideal customer profile and using responsible AI practices, you can build brand authority and position yourself as an industry leader.

The choice is clear: start with your original thinking first, then let AI amplify your expertise. In a world of AI-generated noise, authentic expertise is the ultimate differentiator.

Are you ready to stop being a parrot and start being a thought leader?

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The Authority Content Quick-Reference Checklist

5 Questions to Identify Your Unique Expertise

1. What problem did you solve this week for a client?
2. What challenge have you solved that most of your industry is still struggling with?
3. What conventional wisdom in your field do you disagree with based on your experience?
4. What mistake have you made that taught you something valuable?
5. What trend are you seeing that others haven't recognized yet?
6. What counterintuitive approach has worked for you when conventional approaches failed?

3 Prompting Templates for the Middle 80%

1. "Based on my core insight that [your original thought], expand on how this applies to [specific audience situation]."
2. "I've provided my unique perspective on [topic]. Help me structure this into a compelling narrative with supporting points while maintaining my distinctive point of view."
3. "Using my expertise in [field] as the foundation, help me articulate the practical implications of [your insight] for professionals who need to [audience need]."

4-Point Quality Check for the Final 10%

1. Does this content contain specific examples or anecdotes from my personal experience?
2. Would someone who knows me recognize this as reflecting my authentic perspective?
3. Does this content go beyond conventional wisdom to offer a new perspective?
4. Would this content be valuable even if 100 other articles on this topic already existed?

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In 2025, the best brands aren’t just talking about their industry—they’re leading the conversation within it. Podcasts have become a critical tool in Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy, providing a platform for thought leadership, customer engagement, and industry influence.

For brands looking to modernize their growth tactics and channels, a podcast is more than just content—it’s an owned media channel that supports demand generation, sales enablement, and market positioning. If you’re serious about growth, launching a podcast isn’t just an option—it’s a strategic advantage.

Podcasts Are a Brand Game-Changer

Few initiatives can compete with the authenticity and thought leadership that come from a well-executed podcast. As part of a strategic go-to-market framework, a brand podcast serves multiple purposes including:

• Building brand authority – Position your company as the go-to expert in your industry.
• Accelerating demand generation – Engage prospects earlier in the buying journey with valuable insights.
• Fueling sales enablement – Equip sales teams with high-value content that addresses customer pain points.
• Enhancing market education – Educate your audience on key trends and innovations, reinforcing your value proposition.

By integrating a podcast into your GTM playbook, you're not just producing content—you’re engineering a system that drives demand, nurtures leads, and strengthens your market position.

A Real-World, Mid-Market Example

To show how effective a podcast can be in a go-to-market strategy, we recently helped a warehouse automation systems integrator launch a branded podcast as part of their GTM efforts.

• Within 30 days, they went from concept to publishing their first episode.
• They now release two episodes per month, featuring industry partners and customers discussing innovations in automation.

Minimal Time Commitment, Maximum Impact

Mid-market businesses can’t afford to burden senior leaders with busywork and coordination that comes with managing, producing, and distributing a podcast, let alone the creation of all the derivative content that comes with a successful initiative.

If your podcast feels like yet another burden layered onto the leadership team, you’re doing it wrong.

The good news is the right partner (like Trelliswork) can ensure your brand gets all the benefits of a regular podcast without the operational burden, and at a fraction of the cost.

As an example, our team  handles production, distribution, content repurposing, and all content promotion - meaning the internal team spends just 60 minutes every two weeks showing up for a new recording.

This process ensures the podcast supports business growth without adding excessive workload and cost, making it a scalable and repeatable part of their overall GTM effort.

Podcasts Are Essential in 2025

Branded podcasts are no longer a niche experiment—they’re a proven GTM channel, and the numbers speak for themselves:

• 42% of Americans (12+) are monthly podcast listeners.
• More people listen to podcasts weekly than have Netflix accounts.
• 82% of marketers plan to maintain or increase investment in podcasts.
• Podcast ad spend is projected to surpass $2.6 billion in 2025.

Podcasts Build Trust, Improve SEO, and Accelerate Sales Cycles

In an era of AI-generated content, human connection is critical. A podcast establishes trust by:

• Featuring candid conversations with industry leaders, customers, and partners.
• Providing actionable insights that buyers can use to solve real business challenges.
• Keeping your brand top of mind throughout long sales cycles.
• Establishing expertise, experience, authority, and trust (E.E.A.T) for SEO improvement

Studies show that 81% of podcast listeners trust the hosts and content they engage with, making this format one of the most effective trust-building tools in modern marketing.

As an additional piece of rich content for your brand, every episode gives you an opportunity to share the most recent industry insights in follow-up emails and lead nurture sequences you send as part of your business development.

A Podcast is a Core Asset in GTM Engineering

Consider you’re going after a strategic account. You hear from the chief revenue officer that they’re struggling to navigate all the different AI tools getting thrown at them, they’ve jumped at a few that promise ‘guaranteed leads in 3 days’, but the results are never what they expect and they’re lost.

Now, consider the simple feedback loop of incorporating a segment in your next episode related to mid-market founders struggling to navigate the barrage of AI tools that all promise incredible results, yet never deliver. You explain why they never deliver, what the offer looks like, and why under the surface there’s no shortcut to first establishing the brand fundamentals. That episode is now a slam dunk for a follow-up email to try and close the deal with the CRO, and every other deal like it down the road.

You’ve established authority and expertise with the CRO, and she is more likely to forward your mail and link to the podcast to their CEO who is struggling with the exact problem.

The CEO now feels like you’re talking directly to him. Like you’re reading his mind! To the CEO, you’re now exactly who they want to work with, you’re human, you have an opinion that resonates with what they’re currently experiencing.

You win.

Your Podcast Pays Content Dividends. 10x.

A single podcast episode fuels an entire GTM content engine. What you’re capturing is the purest form of thought leadership, recorded straight from your train of thought into a shareable video and audio recording. If you do it right and plan your content engine, each episode creates a goldmine of content for you to remix, repurpose, and reshare.

For a single podcast episode (w/ video recording), here’s an example of what your podcast content engine should produce:

• 1 Podcast streaming episode (e.g. Spotify, Apple Podcast, etc)
• 1 Youtube Video
• 1 long-form article (from transcript)
• 5 topical articles
• 15 social posts
• 5 Youtube Shorts
• 10 more social posts

Here’s what that looks like in relation to the workflow required to connect the pieces from beginning to end.

A branded podcast isn’t just a marketing tool—it’s a structured GTM Engineering asset that scales across channels.

Podcasts Improve SEO and Brand Discoverability

Search engines are prioritizing rich media content, making podcasts a powerful asset for SEO and inbound marketing.

• Transcripts improve search indexability, capturing high-intent queries.
• Video podcasts gain visibility across key platforms (YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok).
• Search engines now index podcast content, boosting organic discovery.
• Long-form discussions generate backlinks, increasing domain authority.

By integrating a podcast into your GTM strategy, you're not just producing content—you’re engineering an evergreen SEO and demand generation asset. Once you get into the rhythm, you’ll also find yourself spending less time thrashing on that latest blog post that’s taken you over two weeks to get right.

The secret sauce here is that a podcast lets you capture your thoughts in a more raw and authentic medium, with virtually zero latency. From here, AI is great at remixing your thoughts into structured, consistent narratives. Let chatGPT will get rid of the structural, grammatical busywork that actually prevents you from getting your content out into the world.

And that’s structural, grammatical business is the work we want AI to get rid of, so we can prioritize more thinking.

The Biggest Challenges: What Holds Brands Back?

Staying consistent with a podcast is harder than it sounds. Life, work, and shifting priorities can easily push recording sessions down the to-do list. But consistency is what separates brands that build loyal audiences from those that fizzle out. The key is to create the right conditions—batch recording episodes, setting a realistic release schedule, and making podcasting a core part of your marketing rhythm. Without a system in place, even the best intentions can fall apart.

Consistency is Key to Podcast Success

• Build a backlog. Make sure you have at least two recorded episodes before launching. This ensures you never fall behind schedule if unexpected delays arise. Having a buffer allows you to maintain consistency, even when life or work interruptions occur. It also gives you time to refine your format, improve production quality, and gain confidence before releasing episodes to the public. A backlog eliminates last-minute scrambling and sets the foundation for a sustainable, long-term podcasting strategy.
  • We try to keep at least 2 episodes in the ‘ready to publish’ backlog. We’re not perfect, it doesn’t have to be, but so far this has worked for us!
• Set a cadence. Weekly or biweekly releases work best for audience retention. Sticking with a set schedule builds listener habits and keeps engagement steady.
  • For example, we record our episodes every Friday at 2:00 PM, allowing us to reflect on the week’s discussions and industry trends as part of our content approach. Having a fixed time each week ensures that podcasting becomes part of our routine, rather than an afterthought.
• Plan, but don’t over-plan. Avoid long production cycles—speed and authenticity matter more than perfection. You don’t need anything more than a few bullet points in notion ahead of your next recording, which serve as discussion prompts and starters, or incorporate strategic topics you know you want to hit on.
  • With the latest recording and distribution tools today a lot of the busywork goes away.

Stop Overthinking It

Authenticity wins in B2B storytelling. Be real.

I get it. There’s not enough time, everyone’s busy, what will you talk about, who’s going to listen, what’s the ROI, is it worth the effort?

It’s worth it, with the right approach. Just keep these tips in mind:

• Be human. In a world flooded with AI-generated content, authenticity stands out. The real, unscripted voices of industry leaders cut through the noise, building trust and credibility. Podcasts let your team share raw, unfiltered insights, making your brand more relatable. The more human you are, the stronger your connection with your audience.
• Don’t script it. Listeners can tell when something feels forced—don’t let your podcast sound like a corporate press release read by your lawyer. And it's not politics - there's no teleprompter!
• Keep it real. Your audience wants authentic, casual conversations - these resonate more than polished, corporate messaging.

How to Start Your Podcast: GTM Essentials

Equipment (Keep It Simple)

• Microphone: Shure MV7+ (great balance of quality & simplicity)
• Microphone stand: Gator Boom Arm Desktop Stand
• Headphones: Any reliable over-ear monitor headphones
• Video Camera: We're rolling with front camera on our macbook pros for now. Gets the job done!

Recording Software (Our Picks)

• Riverside.fm – Best for remote interviews and high-quality audio/video recording. Editing and distribution features are great. (We also tried zencastr, didn’t love it).
• Descript – we’ve used this in the past, easy editing and transcription, better if you need to get into the weeds with transcripts and higher fidelity editing.

Make a Podcast Part of your GTM Playbook

Launching a podcast is one of the smartest GTM Engineering plays you can make in 2025. With 505 million global podcast listeners projected this year, brands that invest now will establish a foothold in a high-growth channel that supports demand generation, sales enablement, and brand authority.

The hardest part? Pressing record.

So, what’s stopping you?

Need a hand getting started, or want to offload the heavy lifting to our team?

Let’s talk

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