Back to Blogs
Content earns attention and conversion when every asset supports a customer experience. Warren Daniels, Ellina Shinnick, and Katrina Klier show how CMOs can combine relevance, consistency, thematic campaigns, content operations, and channel-specific execution. Their approaches replace disconnected production with a journey that helps buyers find relevant information, recognize the brand, and move forward with confidence.
A strong report can attract attention. A useful case study can resolve a buyer’s concern. A compelling video can make a complex idea easier to understand. None of those assets can carry the customer journey alone.
Content experience describes how the pieces work together across channels, moments, and stages. It includes what buyers encounter, whether it feels relevant, how easily they can continue, and whether the overall experience supports a decision.
In a CMO Huddles Studio conversation, Warren Daniels, then CMO of Bynder; Ellina Shinnick, CMO of HUB International; and Katrina Klier, CEO of Sage Strategy Group, shared three approaches to creating content that connects rather than accumulates.
Warren defined content experience as delivering “the right content” to the appropriate person, time, and format.
That definition creates several operating requirements. The content needs to remain on-brand, reflect the audience’s context, move through approval efficiently, and reach the touchpoint where it can influence behavior.
A buyer may discover a company through search, encounter a social post, visit a product page, attend an event, receive a sales follow-up, and consult a case study. The experience succeeds when those interactions reinforce a coherent understanding.
It weakens when messages conflict, assets feel generic, or the next useful answer is difficult to find.
CMOs can begin by mapping important buyer questions across the journey. The map should identify which information exists, where it appears, which teams own it, and where uncertainty remains unresolved.
Brand consistency establishes recognition and trust. Relevance makes the message useful to a particular audience. B2B content needs both.
A global master asset may protect the brand while failing to reflect local market conditions. Highly customized content may improve relevance while creating inconsistent claims, design, or evidence.
Warren described content templating as a way to manage the tension. Approved structures, messages, visual elements, and claims can remain fixed while local teams adapt selected components for an industry, region, channel, or account.
That model requires clear governance. Teams need to know which elements can change, which require approval, and how outdated versions will be removed.
Technology can support the process, but the operating rules come first. A digital asset management system cannot resolve disagreement about ownership or brand standards by itself.
Ellina’s approach uses thematic, integrated campaigns to bring the brand’s expertise and personality to life. A shared theme creates a center for content across formats and channels.
Rather than commissioning unrelated articles, emails, videos, and events, the team begins with an idea the audience cares about. Each asset then explores a different part of that idea or serves a different moment in the journey.
Ellina advised teams not to create “disparate, small pieces” without an organizing theme. A thematic campaign can support thought papers, email, advisor content, social media, sales conversations, events, and customer engagement while preserving a recognizable narrative.
The theme should be broad enough to sustain multiple expressions and specific enough to mean something. “Digital transformation” is probably too broad. A research-backed point of view about a concrete industry shift gives the organization more to work with.
B2B expertise often becomes impersonal by the time it reaches the market. Formal language and conservative production can conceal the people whose judgment makes the company valuable.
Ellina’s work at HUB International demonstrated how profiling advisors as real people could make expertise more credible. Humor, energy, and personality did not weaken authority. They showed confidence in the quality of the expertise.
This does not mean turning every subject-matter expert into an entertainer. It means preserving recognizable human perspective rather than flattening every contribution into institutional language.
A content team can help experts express a strong point of view, use concrete examples, and explain what experience has taught them. The final asset should sound polished without erasing the person behind it.
Katrina uses a “Source and Savor” model to create fewer central narratives and adapt them for different moments.
The source is the substantial idea or body of material. It may be research, an executive point of view, a customer insight, or a long-form argument.
The savor pieces are channel-specific expressions drawn from that source. They can include short videos, social posts, emails, sales materials, graphics, event segments, or articles.
This approach differs from mechanical repurposing. Each piece must be appropriate for the channel and audience. A sales enablement asset needs different context from a LinkedIn post, even when both draw from the same source.
The model improves consistency while allowing variety. It also concentrates the team’s research and thinking on fewer ideas with enough substance to support repeated use.
Short-cycle performance content often emphasizes an immediate action. Long-cycle brand work builds recognition, meaning, and preference. Treating them as separate systems can create inconsistent customer experiences.
Katrina recommends carrying the brand purpose into performance marketing. That might mean using the same strategic narrative, visual identity, proof, and tone across paid programs and longer-term thought leadership.
The call to action can remain specific. The surrounding content should still help the audience understand why the company matters.
CMOs can review campaign assets for both conversion mechanics and cumulative brand value. Does the page make the next step clear? Does it also reinforce the positioning the company wants buyers to remember?
Demand for content has expanded across websites, social channels, sales platforms, customer communications, events, partner ecosystems, and regional teams. Creative and editorial teams often become the bottleneck.
Warren argued that content operations have received less automation and operating attention than other parts of marketing. The result can be slow approvals, duplicated production, lost assets, outdated versions, and inconsistent distribution.
A content operating model should define:
The objective is not maximum output. It is reliable delivery of useful content without exhausting the team.
Downloads, views, and clicks describe isolated interactions. Content experience measurement examines how those interactions contribute to movement and conversion.
CMOs can assess:
Warren cited a templated localized campaign that increased recall by 32%. That kind of result connects the content operation to a meaningful audience outcome.
The team should also retire or consolidate content that no longer serves the journey. Maintaining an expanding archive of unused assets creates cost and confusion.
It is the connected sequence of information and interactions a buyer encounters across channels and stages. It includes relevance, consistency, format, timing, usability, and the path to the next step.
Use approved templates, modular content, clear governance, and controlled adaptation. Preserve central positioning and claims while allowing relevant examples, formats, or language to change.
It begins with a substantial source narrative and develops channel-appropriate pieces from it. Each smaller asset retains the central idea while adapting to a specific audience and context.
Measure movement, conversion, sales use, customer engagement, message recall, and journey performance alongside asset-level engagement. The right measures depend on the content’s intended job.
Listen to the complete CMO conversation.
CMO Huddles helps B2B marketing leaders compare operating models and solve challenges with experienced peers. Apply to join the community.