Solutions to Common Content Strategy Challenges

If you’re a B2B content marketing leader heading into a new fiscal year, chances are you’re being asked to deliver more on your content strategy with less again.

More traffic. More engagement. More leads. More pipeline.

But with tighter budgets. 

Hence, with shifting buyer behaviour and growing pressure to show ROI, the question becomes: How do we make our content strategy work?

Content is no longer just about visibility or thought leadership; it’s about revenue growth. It must influence decisions, support long sales cycles, and help your team close deals faster. Yet, most marketers still struggle with key challenges that prevent their strategy from reaching its potential.

That’s because too many strategies still revolve around quantity, not impact. 

Content calendars get filled, topics get brainstormed, but results remain elusive. It’s not a lack of effort, it’s a lack of alignment. In an environment shaped by longer buying cycles, more skeptical audiences, and a growing need for relevance, misalignment costs time, money, and credibility.

This blog breaks down the most common content strategy problems we see, and how to overcome them with a results-driven, scalable approach.

Challenge 1: Finding the Right Topics

You’ve got the channels, the content strategy, and maybe even an editorial calendar. But one fundamental challenge keeps cropping up: What should we talk about?

Most B2B content marketers still default to what they want to say, product updates, awards, features. But your buyers? They don’t care unless it solves a problem or helps them move closer to a decision.

The disconnect between what you publish and what your audience wants is often the root cause of low engagement, high bounce rates, and content that quietly fades into irrelevance.

You’re wasting resources if you’re not creating content that resonates with real business needs. More importantly, you’re missing the opportunity to position your brand as the trusted advisor in a crowded and noisy market.

How to fix it:

Instead of building a calendar around topics, build it around buyer friction. Map out where deals stall. Interview sales teams. Identify objections. Then, build content that answers those questions clearly and credibly.

The traditional funnel still has value—it gives you a framework for organizing messaging. But it doesn’t tell you what’s slowing buyers down.

That’s where modern content strategy begins: identifying and addressing friction.

Let’s say your analytics show strong engagement at the awareness stage, but conversion from MQL to SQL is low. That’s not a sign you need more TOFU blogs. It’s a sign something’s missing deeper in the journey. Perhaps buyers are unsure about integration complexity. Maybe they don’t see clear ROI. Or maybe there’s internal pushback from IT or Finance.

Topic ideation needs to shift from keyword brainstorming to audience research and buyer intent mapping.

Ask:

What problems are your prospects trying to solve?

What do they search for when they’re confused, skeptical, or under pressure?

What internal conversations are they having when they’re evaluating your product category?

Data-driven sources for topic ideas:

• Sales call transcripts (use tools like Gong or Chorus)
• Google Search Console and intent tools like Semrush or SparkToro
• Customer support tickets and chat logs
• Peer forums (Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn groups)

Real-world approach:

A cloud infrastructure company created a topic model by analyzing sales objections and demo feedback. They discovered a recurring concern around data residency and compliance. Instead of adding more “Why Our Cloud is Better” blogs, they created a compliance content hub. The result? Improved demo-to-conversion rates and 3x higher engagement with their target accounts.

Pro Tip:
Validate content ideas before creating them. Use quick polls, ask sales what buyers are confused about, and A/B test headlines in paid campaigns to see what draws clicks before you invest in full-scale production.

Challenge 2: Measuring Performance (Beyond Vanity Metrics)

We’ve all been there, with monthly reports loaded with clicks, impressions, and bounce rates. The dashboards light up with activity, yet when the CMO asks, “What did this content do for the business?”, there’s a pause.

That’s the disconnect.

In B2B, where buying cycles can span 6–12 months (or longer), measuring content performance is rarely straightforward. One blog post or whitepaper won’t close a deal. And with multiple stakeholders involved in every decision, pinpointing what worked and what didn’t becomes fuzzy.

Yet this is the clarity that marketing leaders need to make better decisions and secure continued investment in content.

Vanity metrics aren’t strategy.

Pageviews, likes, and open rates may be easy to measure but are weak indicators of actual business impact. They tell you if something was seen, but not if it influenced, educated, or accelerated a sale.

And here’s the danger: When you can’t tie content to revenue, it becomes the first thing to get slashed in tough budget conversations.

High-performing marketing teams know better. They move beyond surface-level engagement and ask:

Did this content influence a deal?

Did it help a buyer justify the decision internally?

Did it support the sales team at a key moment?

That’s where actual performance lives. Content teams without proper attribution risk more than poor reporting—they risk building the wrong content entirely.

Without a clear sense of what content moves the pipeline, marketers may:

Focus too heavily on top-of-funnel vanity assets

Miss creating content for mid-to-late-stage decision-making

Fail to enable sales with the tools they need

Ultimately, this leads to misaligned strategy, wasted resources, and a team spinning its wheels trying to prove value.

Shift to Influence-Based Measurement

Instead of measuring what’s easy, measure what matters.

Track Assisted Conversions

Ask: What content consistently appears in deals that convert?

Use tools like HubSpot or Salesforce to tag key assets and track which ones are present in customer journeys that lead to opportunities. Look at not just the first or last touch, but every meaningful one in between.

Measure Content Consumption Per Opportunity

Monitor how much (and which types of) content is consumed by accounts that progress through the funnel.

Are buyers engaging with technical guides before a pricing conversation?

Do case studies appear before deals move to the proposal stage?

Are specific formats, like webinars or one-pagers, showing higher conversion rates?

This insight can radically shift how you prioritize your editorial calendar.

Align Content Metrics With Sales Conversations

Sometimes, the most powerful signal isn’t found in marketing platforms; it’s found in sales calls.

Are reps using your content?

Are specific one-pagers or videos helping overcome objections?

Can sales leaders point to assets that help advance stalled deals?

If content is being cited in demos, emails, or executive conversations, that’s value, even if it never shows up in Google Analytics.

Tools That Can Help

If you’re serious about tracking performance, build your content stack accordingly:

CRM-integrated platforms: HubSpot, Salesforce

Attribution and journey tools: Dreamdata, Ruler Analytics, Bizible

Sales enablement analytics: Highspot, Seismic

Account engagement tools: 6sense, Terminus

Each tool helps map content performance to actual business outcomes, whether deal progression, content-assisted conversions, or influence on closed revenue.

Content success in B2B cannot be measured in isolation. It must be understood in the context of revenue, retention, and relationship-building.

That means defining new KPIs, shifting reporting habits, and, most importantly, educating leadership on meaningful performance.

Challenge 3: Targeting the Right Audience

Your content might be thoughtful, well-written, and beautifully designed. But if it only speaks to one person on the buying committee, you’re missing the broader decision-making circle and leaving money on the table.

A single stakeholder rarely makes B2B buying decisions. Most mid- to enterprise-level deals involve 6 to 10 people across functions, each with different roles, concerns, and priorities. That means your content strategy can no longer be one-size-fits-one.

And yet, many content programs still revolve around a single persona—usually the end user or the marketing lead—because it’s easier to focus that way.

If your content doesn’t help your champion convince the rest of the team, it doesn’t matter how good it is.

Today’s buyers don’t just need content, they need ammunition.

They’re not reading your blog or downloading your eBook just for themselves. They’re trying to make a case internally, to IT, finance, legal, and leadership. If your content doesn’t arm them with answers to those cross-functional concerns, the deal stalls. Or worse, disappears.

Put simply: Relevance fuels revenue. If your content isn’t helpful to the full buying group, your influence and ROI shrinks.

Build Content Ecosystems for the Buying Committee

Targeting the right audience doesn’t mean refining your persona map, it means expanding it. Think about buying roles, not just job titles.

Ask yourself:

Who initiates the buying conversation?

Who approves the budget?

Who has security, compliance, or integration concerns?

Who signs off?

Then build a content ecosystem that reflects each stakeholder’s lens.

Here’s what that might include:

Narrative content for champions: Tell the big-picture story. Focus on vision, differentiation, and transformation.

Technical enablement content for IT: Provide integration guides, architecture overviews, and product documentation.

ROI-focused content for finance: Share TCO calculators, procurement checklists, and cost-benefit analyses.

Risk-reduction content for compliance: Address regulatory standards, data protection, and security certifications.

Your Content Is a Sales Toolkit: Treat It That Way

Your job as a content leader isn’t just to attract attention. It’s to empower buying.

That means creating assets that buyers can use internally—not just consume privately. Think:

• Explainer decks
• Email templates for internal advocacy
• Short videos that break down complex topics
• Slide-ready proof points and customer quotes

In complex B2B deals, your content must often perform in rooms you’ll never be in. Make sure it’s equipped for the task.

Pro Tip: Build for Forwardability

Ask yourself this:

If a mid-level manager read this and wanted to convince their CFO, would they forward this asset?

If not, rethink the format or messaging.

Forwardability is a high-value filter for content design. Whether it’s a clean executive summary or a 2-minute video, your assets should pass the “can this travel well inside a company?” test.

Content strategy in 2025 isn’t about better targeting, it’s about better orchestration. That means:

• Mapping content to buyer groups, not just individual personas
• Anticipating internal objections
• Helping your champion build consensus

When you build content for the entire committee, you stop being a vendor and become a trusted partner in the decision.

That’s how you win more significant deals, faster.

Challenge 4: Maintaining Consistency (Without Burning Out Your Team)

You’ve got a content strategy. A content calendar. A motivated team. And maybe even a strong start. But fast forward a few months, and the cracks start to show.

Deadlines slip, internal requests pile up, the blog goes dark for weeks, content feels rushed, and creativity flatlines.

This isn’t a lack of commitment; it’s a lack of operational structure, and it’s one of the most common reasons good content strategies quietly fail.

Most content teams operate on a “treadmill model”, constantly running to keep up with immediate demands but never building a system that allows them to scale sustainably.

Inconsistent content doesn’t just impact publishing cadence, it chips away at your brand’s authority and credibility. Audiences notice when your newsletter stops arriving. Prospects lose trust when your website or blog hasn’t been updated in months. Internally, teams lose confidence in the content engine when it starts missing deliverables.

But here’s the more significant issue: inconsistency leads to inefficiency. You duplicate work, rushing deliverables, and firefight rather than strategically executing.

Build a Content Operating System

The answer isn’t to hire more writers or add more platforms—it’s to design a content operating system that prioritises sustainability and scalability.

Think of it as shifting from campaign-based thinking to product-based thinking. You’re not just publishing blogs—you’re building reusable, modular, evergreen assets that can feed the entire funnel.

Plan quarterly, not weekly.

Weekly planning is reactive. Quarterly planning allows you to prioritize themes, align cross-functionally, and batch content in a manageable way.

Create modular content assets.

Start with one flagship asset, like a research report, long-form guide, or keynote talk and break it into smaller pieces. 

Use templates, playbooks, and workflows.

Repeatability is key. Create standard operating procedures for briefs, reviews, and distribution. This will reduce ambiguity, accelerate production, and allow your team to onboard new contributors quickly.

Partner with a trusted content agency.

If you’re facing internal bandwidth issues or struggling to scale without compromising quality, partnering with a specialised content creation agency can be a game-changer. A strong content partner brings editorial discipline, strategic insight, and creative horsepower. They help you stay consistent in publishing cadence, brand voice, quality, and performance. Look for partners who understand your audience, align with your business goals, and can collaborate seamlessly with your in-house team.

Tools That Can Help

You don’t need a massive martech stack to build a scalable system. But the right project visibility makes all the difference.

Some tools to consider:

Notion or Airtable – For editorial calendars, asset tracking, and collaboration

Asana or ClickUp – For project management and approvals

Figma or Canva – For design templates and content repurposing

HubSpot or Contentful – For managing and deploying content across platforms

Pro Tip: 

Use a shared dashboard (even a simple one) that gives visibility into what’s live, what’s in production, and what’s blocked. This helps avoid duplication and surfaces process bottlenecks early.

When we talk about consistency in content marketing, we don’t mean volume for the sake of it. We suggest the predictable delivery of high-value content that supports your brand narrative, sales process, and customer journey.

In 2025, the most successful content teams aren’t the ones doing the most; they’re the ones doing the most strategic work, consistently, without burning out.

So step off the treadmill. Build the engine.

Consistency isn’t just what builds trust, it’s what makes your content strategy sustainable and prosperous in the long haul.

More Tips To Improve Your Content Strategy

Attribution, Rethought: Focus on Strategic Influence, Not Last Click

One of the most common frustrations for CMOs is proving the value of content.

Attribution tools have evolved, but there’s still no silver bullet. The reality is that content doesn’t work in isolation. A buyer might engage with a blog, a LinkedIn post, a product page, a customer story and still take weeks to act.

That’s why attribution in 2025 is less about assigning credit to a single asset and more about understanding content’s role in the journey.

Remember, not all content closes deals, but the right content can keep deals alive.

Relevance Is the New Personalization

By now, most B2B marketers understand that personalization matters. But many still confuse it with tokenisation: adding someone’s name to an email or changing the industry label on a landing page.

In 2025, that’s not enough.

Buyers expect content that reflects their context, role, challenges, and decision-making environment. Generic thought leadership no longer impresses. If your content doesn’t speak their language, they’ll scroll past it.

Relevance drives action. And that means deeper segmentation, smarter content paths, and more effort upfront.

But here’s the payoff: When people feel like content was created for them, they read it.

Scaling Smart: Systems Over Speed

As the demand for content grows, many teams respond by simply producing more. But volume alone won’t win. It often leads to lower quality, misalignment, and burnout.

The better approach? Build systems that scale without sacrificing strategy.

This is where modular content comes in. Instead of reinventing the wheel for every channel or campaign, create core content pillars, like a research report, a flagship whitepaper, or a webinar, and then atomize.

Scaling isn’t about creating faster. It’s about creating smarter.

Bring Sales Into the Content Conversation

One of the most significant missed opportunities in B2B content strategy? Sales enablement.

Too often, marketing teams create great content that sits unused because it doesn’t match what reps actually need. The disconnect is real.

In 2025, high-performing teams treat content as a sales tool, not just a marketing asset. That means co-creating with sales, collecting feedback loops, and proactively enabling reps with tailored resources.

If your content isn’t helping close sales deals, it’s not doing its job.

Don’t Overlook ABM: Precision Wins Over Popularity

Account-based marketing isn’t new, but in 2025, it’s mainstream.

And content plays a central role.

In an ABM strategy, content isn’t just personalized, it’s purpose-built. That could mean creating industry-specific landing pages, co-branded whitepapers for strategic accounts, or even personalized videos from your CEO to a key stakeholder.

In ABM, quality matters more than quantity. One piece of hyper-relevant content delivered at the right time can outperform 50 generic assets.

What Great Content Strategy Looks Like in 2025

Let’s recap.

A high-impact B2B content strategy in 2025 is:

Buyer-centric, not funnel-centric

Focused on friction, not just awareness

Measured by influence, not just clicks

Delivered with relevance, not just reach

Aligned with sales, not siloed

Built for scale, not speed

Intentional in ABM, not opportunistic

This isn’t a checklist, and it’s a mindset shift. From content as output to content as growth.

Because in 2025, content is no longer just “marketing’s job.” It’s the connective tissue between brand, demand, and revenue. It’s the vehicle for trust, clarity, and momentum.

And the organizations that understand this—really understand it—will be the ones that not only cut through the noise but also lead the market.

Want to audit your current strategy and spot quick wins?

Let’s do a 30-minute content strategy teardown, no fluff, just honest advice. Get in touch.