Content: The MVP in Your Demand Generation Framework

Today is Major League Baseball’s Opening Day 2025, so we’re stepping up to the plate to help marketers enter this new season — and Q2— with fresh demand generation strategies.

Every baseball team enters the season with a standout player to lead the charge. In demand generation, that MVP is content – commanding attention, driving strategy, and keeping buyers engaged. But even this G.O.A.T. doesn’t win without a strong team behind them:

Strategy is the coach – crafting the game plan, setting the plays, and ensuring every move aligns with the bigger picture.
Distribution channels are the scouts – getting your content in front of the right audience at the right time.
Nurture is the catcher – keeping the game in rhythm, ensuring smooth transitions and making sure the audience stays engaged throughout.
Paid media, earned media, and owned channels are the sports analysts – amplifying the message and drawing attention to the star.

When “everyone” does their job, that’s what keeps the audience engaged until the final out (conversion) and eager to come back for the next season (adoption, upsell, cross-sell).

Before diving into the strategies that make content the MVP of demand generation, let’s break down the key components of a content-led demand generation framework. From building a strong strategy to ensuring seamless nurture and distribution, we’ll explore how content fuels engagement, shortens sales cycles, and drives revenue.

Demand Generation Starts with Strategy, Not Tactics

Crafting content is akin to developing a game-winning line up, but one common mistake is an over-reliance on short-term tactics, like paid ads, which can neglect long-term engagement. The best demand gen programs take an integrated approach that keeps content relevant across multiple touchpoints.

Before building your demand generation playbook, start with strategy. Define these key elements first:

Message: What are you trying to communicate? How is it differentiated from what’s in the market already?
Audience: Who needs to see this message? What are their challenges and objectives? Why should they care?
Consumption: Where is your audience most likely to see or hear your message?
Format: What’s the best way to deliver the message?

Remember, don’t try to be all things to all audiences. Clear, intentional, and focused content is going to be the winner.

The Buyer’s Journey: Why Content, Distribution, and Nurture Matter at Every Stage

Strategy alone isn’t enough. You also need to understand how buyers move through the purchasing process—that’s where nurture and distribution come into play. Just as a team evolves throughout the season, content must also adapt to each stage of the buyer’s journey – shifting tone, adding value, and building momentum.

Buyers are doing their homework before stepping up to the plate

Today’s buyer is inundated with research, information, and perspective. They appreciate self-service tools and the opportunity to independently research solutions.

Seventy percent of B2B buyers are nearly three-quarters through their purchasing process before engaging with sales.
The average buying cycle is 11.2 months in North America, 10.2 months in EMEA, and 13.2 months in APAC.
Eighty-one percent of B2B buyers have already picked a preferred vendor before engaging with sales.

To stay in the game, your demand generation strategy must cover all three bases:

Content: Educate, add value, and help buyers understand their problem.
Distribution: Reach your audience through the right channel mix.
Nurture: Guide prospects through their journey with relevant, timely touchpoints.

B2B buyers tend to engage with multiple content formats from blogs, sponsored content and LinkedIn to paid ads, industry events, and webinars. Ensure your content meets buyers where they are—especially in the age of AI. Why? Because nearly 95 percent of buyers anticipate using generative AI to support their decision and purchase processes in the next 12 months. Today, if AI engines aren’t aware of your brand, your buyer may not be either.

Content and Nurture: The Often-Overlooked Piece of Demand Gen

A demand generation strategy without nurture lacks a closer. In other words, it struggles to seal the deal late in the game, and the plan ultimately falls apart even sooner.

That’s because nurturing isn’t just about generating leads, it’s about charting what happens next. Consider:

For ideal customer prospects who aren’t ready to buy, what’s the next step to keep them engaged?
What information do they need to move forward?
What has prevented them from moving forward? Budget? Turnover?

Let’s keep with the baseball analogy. If these questions are not considered, and nurture isn’t a part of your overall marketing strategy, it’s similar to leaving runners on base – it’s a missed opportunity to bring them home.

When 86 percent of B2B purchases stall during the buying process, that signals a need for greater nurture flows. Tack on the fact that 81 percent of buyers express dissatisfaction with their chosen providers, and the importance of nurture experiences increases.

Creating a seamless nurture experience takes time

Here are some aspects of an effective nurture strategy:

Personalized email sequences: Confirm that follow-ups align with content buyers have engaged with previously.
Retargeting strategies: Use intent data to serve relevant content through paid and owned channels.
Behavior-based content recommendations: If a buyer reads a blog on a specific topic, recommend related case studies or whitepapers.

The takeaway: Nurture programs should be dynamic and data-driven, adjusting to buyer behavior.

Your buyer’s priorities have likely shifted over the past six months, so why wouldn’t your approach?

Data-Driven Demand Generation: Using Insights to Shape Content & Distribution

That being said, even the best nurture strategy can’t succeed in a vacuum. To keep buyers engaged, you need real-time insights into what’s working, what’s not, and where adjustments are needed. That’s where data-driven demand generation comes into play.

We know—everyone claims to be “data-driven,” but what does that actually mean for demand generation? Let’s dig into some common demand generation questions and how you may answer them with a data-driven approach.

Where does your audience consume content?

Use analytics tools to track engagement across platforms, such as LinkedIn, YouTube, webinars, industry forums, and email. Once you know where your audience is consuming content, you can tailor your messages to the platform.

Put differently, if your audience spends all their time on LinkedIn, you wouldn’t try to reach them via gated white papers on your website; you would post on LinkedIn.

What are your ICP’s key challenges?

Buyer persona research and intent data can highlight recurring pain points. Not only is this information helpful to get an idea of buying signals and where they are on their journey, but it allows you to deliver more relevant content to that stage of the journey.

Just make sure you’re representing content across the full funnel here. It’s fairly easy to craft top-of-funnel content; it’s harder to write middle and certainly bottom-of-funnel content that resonates with your buyer and moves the needle.

Pro Tip: Bottom-of-funnel content is where a well-articulated Voice of the Customer (VOC) strategy pays dividends.

How do different buyers within the buying committee engage?

The B2B buying process now involves an average of 13 stakeholders, each with unique priorities and departmental responsibilities.

For instance, a marketing manager may gravitate toward blogs that spell out your strategy, whereas a CMO or CRO may engage more with case studies that highlight growth and ROI.

Pro Tip: Intent data and audience awareness tools should come into play here, too.

To accommodate such a wide range of stakeholders, personalized content is key. Speak to champions, influencers, decision-makers, and detractors with tailored messaging. Don’t silo this content, either. Let it inform itself. After all, the best content engines run on the three Rs.

Setting the Right Goals for Demand Gen Campaigns

Like a coach setting the game day lineup, demand gen goals should align with the overall marketing strategy, ensuring each piece of content contributes to the bigger game plan.

Defining success before launch

A strong demand generation campaign requires clear objectives that tie directly to business outcomes. Before launching, marketing leaders should ask:

What is the primary goal? Are we driving pipeline , increasing retention, or focusing on upsell and cross-sell opportunities? Your campaign’s purpose should always align with broader business objectives. This consistency extends to the content you generate – it should fall under that purpose.
Where are leads falling off in the funnel? Identifying weak points in the buyer’s journey (e.g., high drop-off rates after downloading a whitepaper) helps you refine nurture sequences and adjust content accordingly.
What content is missing to support the journey? Data should always guide content creation. If buyers are struggling to move from awareness to consideration, case studies or product comparisons may be necessary to fill the gap.

Establishing measurable KPIs for your demand gen content

Once goals and objectives are set, it’s time to define the right KPIs to track performance effectively. Instead of relying solely on vanity metrics (such as clicks and traffic), focus on metrics that demonstrate content’s impact on revenue:

Influenced pipeline and revenue impact: How is content shaping buyer perceptions and influencing new opportunities, when attribution isn’t always cut and dry?
Sales cycle acceleration: Is nurtured content helping prospects move through the funnel more efficiently?
Progression through the journey — not just lead stages: Rather than focusing solely on MQL to SQL conversion, how is content guiding prospects through the full buying journey in a meaningful way? This perspective emphasizes the importance of nurturing engagement and building relationships that lead to higher-quality (and longer-term) opportunities.
Customer retention and lifetime value: Does the campaign contribute to longer-term engagement and revenue growth?

By setting data-backed, outcomes-driven goals, you can craft demand generation campaigns that drive bottom-line impact.

The Power of Content-Led, Data-Driven Demand Generation

If there is one thing we hope you take away from this piece, it’s this: Demand generation isn’t just paid. It’s a strategic mix of content, nurture, and distribution. A strong content strategy helps you reach the right people, at the right time, in the right place, with the right message.

The brands that succeed in 2025 will be those that treat content like the MVP it is – building a powerful game plan, nurturing the audience through each inning, and ensuring it’s seen by the right people at the right time.

Want to level up your demand generation efforts? Demand More from your content.

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