Executive Summary
Content is underperforming in most organisations, not because teams lack talent, but because the stack is under-resourced, poorly aligned, and built for a linear journey that doesn’t exist. Two structural blockages do the most damage: data silos and the Sales and Marketing fault line. The result is content that shows up everywhere except where it can create the most value. This piece aims to show you how content can be transformed from background into a revenue engine, and the role it can play in creating a dynamic organisational ecosystem.
The State of Play
Is content considered a vital part of your business strategy? For many organisations, the answer (at least for now) is no. Innovations in generative artificial intelligence and an evolving SEO landscape leave many wondering if there’s much ROI to be had in investing in content anymore. This leaves many marketing departments grappling with the fallout from the perceived drop in market value for content, and the organisation’s bottom line suffers as a result. The disconnect between perception and reality is felt most keenly on three fronts:
- Lack of budget or resource allocation
- Deprioritisation by leadership
- Data and cross-department silos
This increasingly pervasive undervaluation cripples content stacks from reaching their full potential as a customer experience enhancer, shock absorber, and dynamic growth engine for businesses. Content is being left out of the most important conversations, and the onus is on marketers to reeducate their colleagues and reverse this alarming trend. Where and how should they begin? The first step is to review their current stack and check for leaks.
Questions to Ponder
What separates high-impact content from the rest? Arguably, it’s whether your strategy is proactive or reactive in approach. Passively eyeballing your competitors’ movements is only going to hold your teams and the quality of your content hostage. Similarly, throwing an AI-generated newsletter out into the ether every quarter does not make an optimised content strategy.
Convincing content requires putting in what you want to get out. When re-evaluating your content stack, this means starting with a no-holds-barred audit and not shying away from the results. Research carried out by the Content Marketing Institute inspired us to ask the following questions of our content, as you should of yours.
Is your content:
- Intimately intertwined with the customer journey
- Data-driven
- Based on research
- Focused on quality over quantity
- Reflective of customer pain points
- In line with trending industry dialogues
- Coherent with your brand voice
If you can’t say yes to all of these questions, then you need to evaluate your strategy as soon as possible. Your organisation’s name should read like shorthand for your standards (X is synonymous with Y), and that derives from impeccable external communications and an unmistakable brand voice.
Why Isn’t This Happening Already?
A lack of regard for the modern B2B buyer journey is often a major sticking point. It is no longer a neat funnel, if indeed it ever was. Buying groups research in parallel, compare notes in private channels, collect proof from third parties, and only surface when they are close to conviction. Stakeholders often show up late in the game, wielding the power to veto and potentially upend weeks or months of ongoing dialogue.
A prospect might read a technical guide, watch a peer explain how they solved a problem, ask a question in a community space, and then circulate a screenshot of your pricing model internally before anyone even comes close to filling out a form or requesting a demo. If your content strategy assumes enterprises move in a straight line, you’re planning for a world that does not exist, which will be reflected in your results. Another common fallacy is falling for the AI panacea hype.
Where AI Belongs
AI is not the be-all and end-all that some desired and others feared. Despite evolving at breakneck speed, readers can still tell when the words in front of them carry a human touch and make decisions accordingly. The saturation of subpar AI-generated slop pressures teams to work twice as hard to produce high-quality, customer-led content, but the benefit is that the calibre is instantly recognisable. Moreover, over-reliance on AI begs the question:
If AI does not know your customers as intimately as you should, how can you look to it to guide their experience across your touchpoints?
Now, this is not to say that there is no scope for AI at all. It absolutely has a place at the table when it comes to automation. Delegating technical and repetition-heavy manual tasks to machines makes good business sense in general, but especially when it comes to content. Offloading the ancillary legwork burdening marketing operations frees up creatives to do what they do best.
If you’d like to explore this topic further, check out What to Automate and What to Leave Alone.
The Inevitability of Scale
If your content stack isn’t built for scale, you’re running on borrowed time. Echoing our sentiments on the importance of taking a proactive approach, if your strategy doesn’t include at least a footnote on what to do next, expect roadblocks, bottlenecks, obstacles and problems down the line, without question.
Why? Because if your content strategy performs as it’s meant to, then you will have to scale up, and if your machinery isn’t fit for purpose, you’re going to have issues. A properly constructed stack acts like a scaffold and a safeguard when organisations decide they’re ready to expand.
To prevent self-sabotage, marketing teams must be crystal clear on a few salient focus areas before even considering implementing any kind of strategy. These should be their:
- Goals
- Purpose
- Values
- Mission
While clearly defining each and every one of these foundational components is crucial, crafting a compelling mission statement is the most important of all, as it incorporates the needs and aspirations of other areas of the organisation. This provides an invaluable opportunity to deepen alignment between different departments, which is something we strongly recommend.
What Now?
Once you have a clear understanding of the vision and mission behind your content strategy, you can start moving with intent in the right direction. You have the right kind of questions to optimise your existing content, and you’ve aligned your mission with other departments, which means you can build new assets that address the specific pain points your potential customers face. Empathetically addressing their concerns consolidates your brand equity and deepens their trust.
This is because, when done correctly, content strategy has the power to smooth the friction that stalls momentum and plug the information gaps that weaken a brand’s external perception. Moreover, if supported with the right data, organisations can pinpoint the moment most prospects fall off in the buyer journey and plug those gaps with compelling content designed for the decision in front of them.
Given that we now understand that content has something to offer to every aspect of an organisation if utilised correctly, it’s imperative to dismantle its two greatest barriers to growth. For the vast majority, that looks like data silos compounded by fractured communication and resistance towards collaboration between departments.
If that’s the current state of play, how can we win? By dissolving the two biggest blockages – data that doesn’t move and teams that don’t move together. Once that’s accomplished, you’ll be amazed at how the stack starts to work like never before.
Taking on the Final Boss(es)
Cracked content stacks are often down to silos. Silos are pockets of data that get trapped within systems like air bubbles, paralysed, instead of flowing to where they could have the most impact. This stagnation of valuable assets creates barriers within teams, producing conflicting metrics, inaccurate analyses, and mounting technical debt. Decision-making falters because teams cannot seem to align. This is because intuitive contextualisation of data is the only way to make confident business decisions, and silos make that virtually impossible.
Breaking down these silos accelerates the sales cycle. The B2B buyer journey is much more complex and convoluted than B2C, and that won’t change any time soon. Prospects aren’t walking a straight line; they’re comparing notes in channels you don’t see, weighing risk with people they trust, and surfacing late with near-final preferences. To show up with the right proof at the right time, you need shared facts, a single source of truth and a holistic map of progress.
Now that we’ve established that silos impede visibility and access, drive inefficiency and cost, weaken governance, and leave valuable insights on the table, we should take a closer look at how this plays out practically, and what organisations can do about it.
Dismantling Data Silos
In a perfect world, data would flow freely through an organisation like electricity. But unfortunately, that ideal is still likely a long way off. Data clusters remain splintered across departments, systems and platforms, hindering cross-functional collaboration and forcing the reconciliation of opposing truths. If this is exactly the opposite of what organisations need to operate efficiently, how did they happen, and why are they still happening?
The reasons are multifactorial; some of it is due to lingering vestiges of legacy systems and one-off integrations, some of it is down to tool sprawl (different teams buying different tools and applications that may offer similar functions but don’t speak the same language), and a significant amount is attributable to operational habits and customs.
To clarify: that means there are no shared working definitions to bridge the operational knowledge gap between teams, the prohibition of access to valuable information by “external actors” is widespread and minimal reporting obligations exist to rectify the problem.
Getting Started
No matter how sluggish your data flow is currently, improvement is possible. The first step to igniting change and breaking down barriers is to create a unified language. This establishes both a solid foundation and launch pad for mutually intelligible conversations across departments, something essential for a successful organisational strategy.
Following the creation of a single unifying language:
- Publish a simple data dictionary for stages, qualification and influence, and use it everywhere.
- Lock in a minimum viable schema: company and contact hygiene, consent status, stage signals, product interest, and owner.
- Assign named owners for consent and deliverability.
- Swap copy-paste for pipes: connect CRM to marketing automation and analytics data via an integration layer.
- Run the unglamorous controls: ID resolution, field validation, role-based access, and a monthly hygiene pass.
- Retire duplicate tools so data travels without unnecessary repetition.
By implementing this framework, you get data verified by multiple authorities, accelerate decision-making cycles, and create reporting procedures that increase leadership’s confidence to spearhead novel initiatives. This is because businesses get a real-time, holistic and unified view of their operations.
Moreover, prioritisation sharpens, personalisation gains real context, governance risk drops, and your AI plans finally rest on solid ground. With data silos defeated, the next move is obvious: bridge the gulf between Sales and Marketing.
The Sales and Marketing Fault Line
Inter-departmental friction is an inescapable reality of most organisations, regardless of size, industry or maturity, but never more seen than between sales and marketing. One could argue that it’s the most prevalent in modern enterprise operations, and this needs to change. Sales and marketing share common goals and interests, and would achieve better results through working together harmoniously than they do as separate business units.
Where does this clash stem from? The most common causes are threefold: misaligned incentives (volume vs. revenue), unclear ownership of key processes like who defines qualification and who owns the follow-up, and fragmented information flows. Essentially, they track different success metrics, keep data in different places, and hand off work without a common playbook. The outcome is predictable: inconsistent messages to customers, friction in the buyer journey, and internal disputes over “what worked.” EY takes it even further, stating that until customer and revenue data are unified and visible to both sides, you can’t create a coherent experience or credibly show marketing’s impact on sales at all.
Quick Wins, Then Steady Gains
When Sales and Marketing operate from a single source of truth, or at least share one operational view and pull in the same direction, the benefits make themselves visible quickly.
- Conversations get warmer and cycles shorten because the same story turns up in more places, consistently
- Numbers lift because the specific proof sales needs (use cases, customer evidence, product clarity) are produced on purpose and on time
- Expansion gets cleaner because product and success signals loop back into planning instead of living in their own islands.
This is due to teams coordinating on a shared picture in real time rather than reconciling spreadsheets after the fact. Once the silos have been dissolved, the unified operational apparatus is up and running, and the internal leaks have been plugged, it comes time to widen the lens even further. The only way to create a truly seamless digital experience is to build an ecosystem.
Exponential Benefits of Ecosystems
Building an agile, cross-capable ecosystem isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Ecosystems create an integrated customer experience across every touchpoint and are genuinely greater than the sum of their parts: teams work symbiotically, pooling knowledge and manpower to produce richer insights, more compelling customer moments, and deliberate innovation. The result is a force multiplier – an innovative growth engine that amplifies the work of each business unit and feeds into a dynamic, living organism whose capacity and potential compound over time.
Once silos fall and teams speak one language, content becomes the connective tissue of an ecosystem spanning partners, product, success and community. Well-run ecosystems deliver both short-term gains and long-term growth and resilience; McKinsey calls this “pay twice.” Their analysis also quantifies the upside: the integrated network economy could be a $100T value pool by 2030 (about 33% of total world sales), but only 10 – 15% of incumbents currently generate distinctive non-core revenue from ecosystem plays, which is exactly why design and discipline matter.
What to Expect
The self-reinforcing people, product, and community feedback loops found within an intentionally designed ecosystem pose a huge advantage over competitors. Co-building content and experiences with the right partners extends qualified reach and improves account intelligence without needing extra revenue injections. It’s also a faster route to customer acquisition and cross-sell when the proposition is integrated across journeys, not bolted on afterwards.
Similarly, when product and success feed real proof, usage data, and crisp use cases into planning, content becomes the user’s guide, not just another campaign, fast-tracking adoption and expansion. Community activity de-risks decisions for buyers and gives sales portable proof that lands in late-stage conversations. You get a cleaner line of sight from data point to content to revenue, because the voices are real and the evidence is reusable across touchpoints. McKinsey even argues that ecosystem efforts often modernise the tech stack and build data and analytical capabilities as secondary benefits.
But Wait, There’s More
The advantages of building an ecosystem don’t stop there. Organisations that opt in to what is essentially corporate world-building can expect:
Robust Networks: As you connect more partners and touchpoints, signals multiply and stories sharpen; over time, segmentation improves and the distance from insight to asset shrinks. Leaders who engineer ecosystems deliberately, that is, choosing roles, control points, and incentives, unlock growth in both their core and complementary offerings.
Greater Trust: Seamless digital experiences build recognition, confidence and trust, and they do not happen by accident. Ecosystem architects must set the control points, align incentives, and codify governance so the experience feels coherent instead of stitched together. HBR offers a five-point evaluation test that hinges on this core tenet.
Resilience and Value: In choppy quarters, well-structured ecosystems keep momentum and optionality. Deloitte finds that organisations taking a broader ecosystem stance create more enterprise value by expanding who the ecosystem serves (beyond end-customers) and by getting three levers right: data monetisation opportunities, security governance across partners, and reduced technical complexity so the network doesn’t collapse under its own weight.
Fortified Bottom Line: Building an ecosystem unlocks greater capabilities continuously, like cleaner data and analytics, tighter “middle platform” plumbing, stronger partner management, and governance for scale. Treat content as the binder, link partners, product and success to the same scaffold, run rules for contribution, data use, incentives and control points, and you’ll build a stack that gets stronger every cycle.
The Takeaway
Customers expect a seamless digital experience, and you need to give it to them. Content can do this, but only if adequately supported by the entire organisation.
For a content stack that maximises ROI:
- Set the posture: Treat content as an essential tool, used to educate, explain and prove value to prospects and existing customers across a non-linear journey.
- Plug the leaks: Dismantle data silos, publish shared definitions, create new ways of working.
- Unify the revenue team: One map, one cadence, one compact view of what’s working and what isn’t.
- Use AI where it helps: Automate repetitive tasks and keep the craft for the creatives.
- Build for scale: Clear goals, purpose, values and a unifying mission alongside the creation of repeatable workflows and adequate governance frameworks
- Measure what matters: Attention quality, pipeline, velocity, win rate and expansion.
- Widen the lens: Turn alignment into an ecosystem. Partners co-create, product and success feed proof, and community adds credibility – all of which create one seamless story from end to end.
Do these consistently, and you will see results. Quick wins, then steady gains, followed by establishing an ecosystem that gets stronger with every confident, data-reinforced decision your organisation makes.
Chesamel’s Approach
Chesamel is more than a consultancy; we’re your partner in transformation.
Our work bridges strategy and scale: we dismantle silos, embed lightweight governance, and introduce automation that frees creatives to do their best work.
The result is fully optimised content and a seamless end-to-end digital customer experience.
If you’re ready to maximise the ROI on your content strategy and so much more, let’s talk.
