Why Companies Fail to Create Product-Led Content (And What to Do About It)

by Lalit Singh Patel | Oct 16, 2022 | Creation, Strategy

You understand what product-led content is. You recognize why your current content strategy isn’t driving conversions. You’re convinced PLC is the answer.

Then you try to implement it—and hit walls everywhere.

Your writers struggle to integrate products naturally. Your product team resists sharing screenshots. Your review cycles stretch to weeks. Your first few PLC attempts feel forced and promotional rather than helpful and natural.

You’re not alone. Most companies that attempt PLC fail to execute it properly. Not because the strategy is flawed, but because they underestimate how different PLC is from traditional content marketing.

Understanding why companies fail—and how to overcome each obstacle—is the difference between PLC that transforms your business and PLC that becomes another abandoned initiative.

The Seven Obstacles to Product-Led Content Success

Obstacle 1: Your Writers Lack Product Knowledge

This is the single biggest reason companies can’t create effective PLC—and it affects both freelance and in-house writers.

Why This Happens

Most content writers fear technical products. B2B SaaS products are complex. They have detailed features, technical specifications, integration requirements, and industry-specific use cases. Most content writers lack the technical background or inclination to deeply understand these products.

Writing skills don’t translate to product understanding. Your writers might be excellent at crafting engaging content, optimizing for SEO, and structuring arguments. But writing ability doesn’t automatically mean they can understand how your provisioning engine works or why your discovery method differs from competitors.

Product complexity overwhelms generalist writers. When writers look at your product, they see an intimidating system of interconnected features, workflows, and use cases. They don’t know where to start, which features matter most, or how customers actually use the product.

Even in-house writers remain at surface level. Proximity to the product doesn’t equal understanding. In-house writers might attend product demos and read documentation, but without deep, structured training, their knowledge remains superficial.

The Result

Surface-level content that doesn’t convert. Writers who lack product knowledge can’t integrate products naturally or meaningfully. They resort to:

• Generic mentions: “Our platform helps with this”
• Vague claims: “Powerful automation capabilities”
• End-of-article CTAs disconnected from content
• Feature lists without context or demonstration

Missed opportunities throughout articles. Writers can’t identify natural moments to integrate product because they don’t understand when and how customers use specific features. An article about reducing IT tickets during onboarding should naturally introduce your automated provisioning feature—but writers who don’t understand provisioning can’t make that connection.

Content that looks like PLC but doesn’t function like it. You get articles with product screenshots and mentions, but they feel forced. The integration interrupts rather than enhances because writers are checking a box (“include product”) without understanding the strategic purpose.

What to Do About It

Invest in comprehensive product training. At our agency, we invest 10+ hours in initial product training before writers create their first piece, and over 100 hours total in ongoing product education.

Your training program should include:

1. Hands-on product access

• Give writers full access to your product (test accounts, sandbox environments)
• Have them complete key workflows as a user would
• Let them experience “aha moments” firsthand

2. Structured product walkthroughs

• Record detailed product demos focused on key use cases
• Break down each feature: what it does, why it matters, how customers use it
• Show before/after scenarios of problems solved

3. Customer story immersion

• Share customer case studies with specific problems and solutions
• Provide testimonials explaining which features deliver value
• Give access to customer success call recordings (with permission)

4. Competitive context

• Explain how your product differs from alternatives
• Show comparison demos highlighting your advantages
• Clarify your positioning and unique value proposition

5. Regular product update sessions

• Monthly syncs on new features and changes
• Explanation of why features were built (customer problems they solve)
• Use case examples for new capabilities

Make product understanding a hiring criterion. When hiring writers for PLC, prioritize:

• Technical aptitude and willingness to learn complex products
• B2B SaaS experience (they understand the space)
• Curiosity about how things work (they ask “why” and “how”)
• Strategic thinking beyond just writing skills

Create a product knowledge library. Build a centralized resource with:

• Product demo recordings
• Feature documentation written for content team
• Customer case studies and testimonials
• Competitive analyses
• Glossary of technical terms and concepts

Obstacle 2: Your Processes Aren’t Built for PLC

Traditional content marketing workflows don’t support PLC creation. The collaboration models, review cycles, and approval processes that work for generic content break down when creating product-led content.

Why This Happens

Content teams work in isolation. In most companies, content teams operate separately from product teams. They get product information through:

• Marketing briefs (often outdated or incomplete)
• Product marketing docs (written for different purposes)
• Their own limited understanding
• Occasional requests to product teams (often low priority)

No structured collaboration exists. There’s no regular touchpoint between content and product. No shared Slack channels, no weekly syncs, no collaborative planning. Product teams are surprised when content team asks questions, and content teams feel like they’re bothering product.

Review cycles are undefined or too slow. PLC requires technical accuracy review from product experts. But if you don’t have:

• Clear ownership of who reviews what
• Defined SLAs for review turnaround
• Process for handling feedback efficiently
• Priority signaling for urgent reviews

…then content sits in “pending review” for weeks, killing momentum and productivity.

Too many approval gates. When legal, product, marketing leadership, and sometimes even executive team need to approve content, the process becomes:

• Slow (waiting for multiple approvals)
• Diluted (everyone has different concerns)
• Political (avoiding anything controversial)
• Compromised (final result pleases committees but doesn’t convert)

The Result

Slow production that misses opportunities. What should take days takes weeks or months. Your competitors move faster. Market conditions change. Product updates make drafts outdated before publication.

Content that’s technically inaccurate. Without proper product review, content includes:

• Outdated information about features
• Misunderstanding of how features work
• Wrong use case descriptions
• Claims the product can’t actually deliver

Watered-down content that doesn’t differentiate. To get through approval gates, teams remove anything specific, any competitive claims, any demonstration that might be “risky.” The result is safe, generic content that doesn’t convert.

What to Do About It

Establish product-content collaboration rituals:

Weekly sync meetings (30 minutes)

• Content team shares upcoming articles and questions
• Product team provides updates on new features and changes
• Quick Q&A on technical details
• Works because: Regular cadence prevents bottlenecks

Dedicated Slack channel (#product-content-collab)

• Content writers can ask quick questions
• Product team shares relevant updates
• Async communication for non-urgent items
• Works because: Lowers barrier to asking questions

Quarterly planning sessions (2 hours)

• Align on product roadmap and content calendar
• Identify big opportunities for product-led content
• Assign product champions to major content initiatives
• Works because: Creates strategic alignment

Build efficient review processes:

Assign clear reviewers:

• Technical accuracy: Product Manager for relevant feature
• Positioning/messaging: Product Marketing
• Legal/compliance: Only for sensitive claims
• Final approval: Content Director (not committee)

Set and enforce SLAs:

• Technical reviews: 48 hours
• Marketing reviews: 24 hours
• Final approval: 24 hours
• Total cycle: 5 business days maximum

Create review guidelines:

• What reviewers should focus on (technical accuracy, claims)
• What’s outside review scope (style, tone, structure)
• How to provide feedback (specific, actionable, in-doc comments)

Use tools that streamline collaboration:

• Google Docs for collaborative editing and commenting
• Notion or Confluence for shared knowledge bases
• Loom for quick video explanations of products
• Project management tools to track status

Get leadership buy-in for prioritization:

Have a conversation with product leadership about why content collaboration matters:

• Show the revenue impact of PLC (improved conversion rates, shorter sales cycles)
• Quantify the opportunity cost of slow reviews
• Frame product reviews as sales enablement, not content favor
• Get explicit commitment to response time SLAs

Obstacle 3: Your Strategy Isn’t Aligned with Business Outcomes

Even when companies attempt PLC, they often maintain metrics and goals that undermine its effectiveness. You can’t optimize for conversions while being measured on pageviews.

Why This Happens

Inertia of traditional content metrics. You’ve spent two years building authority and traffic. Your dashboards show:

• Organic sessions
• Pageviews
• Rankings
• Time on page
• Bounce rate

Everyone understands these metrics. Leadership celebrates when they go up. The team is measured by them. Changing feels risky.

Lack of attribution infrastructure. Many companies can’t connect content to revenue because:

• CRM and analytics aren’t properly integrated
• Attribution models don’t exist or are overly simplistic
• Sales team doesn’t tag lead sources accurately
• Multi-touch attribution is too complex to implement

Without clear revenue attribution, teams default to metrics they can measure (traffic) rather than metrics that matter (pipeline).

Misaligned incentives. When writers are measured by articles published per week, they optimize for volume. When content managers are evaluated on traffic growth, they choose high-volume keywords over high-intent ones. When CMOs report on “content performance” using engagement metrics, everyone focuses on engagement rather than conversion.

Fear of traffic decline. PLC often means:

• Fewer articles published (higher quality, more intensive)
• Targeting lower-volume, higher-intent keywords
• Potentially lower overall traffic numbers

Teams fear that shifting to PLC will make their metrics look worse, even if business outcomes improve.

The Result

Traffic growth with stagnant conversions. You keep creating high-volume content because that’s what drives your metrics. But these articles target awareness-stage prospects, not decision-stage buyers. Traffic grows, but conversion rates stay flat or decline.

Wrong topic selection. You choose topics by search volume, not conversion potential. An article targeting 10,000 monthly searches but attracting students and job-seekers wins over an article targeting 500 monthly searches attracting enterprise buyers actively evaluating solutions.

Optimization efforts focused on wrong outcomes. You A/B test headlines for click-through rate. You optimize images for engagement. You improve page speed for SEO. These things matter, but they’re not what’s preventing conversions. You’re optimizing the wrong part of the funnel.

No way to prove PLC works. Without proper attribution, you can’t show that PLC drives revenue. Which means you can’t get buy-in for continuing it. Which means teams revert to traditional approaches that feel safer because the metrics are comfortable.

What to Do About It

Redefine content success metrics:

Primary metrics (what you’re measured on):

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) from content
• Conversion rate: visitor → lead
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) from content
• Conversion rate: MQL → SQL
• Closed-won deals attributed to content
• Pipeline generated from content
• Revenue attributed to content

Secondary metrics (monitoring health):

• Organic traffic (ensure you’re not tanking visibility)
• Rankings for target keywords (maintain search presence)
• Content engagement (ensure quality remains high)

Build revenue attribution:

1. Implement first-touch attribution:

• Track the first content piece prospects engaged with
• Tag blog posts with UTM parameters
• Capture source in CRM when leads convert
• Report on which articles generate most leads

2. Add multi-touch attribution (if resources allow):

• Track all content touchpoints before conversion
• Weight based on funnel stage (BOFU content gets more credit)
• Show content’s role across buyer journey

3. Enable sales-content feedback loop:

• Have sales team tag lead quality (high/medium/low)
• Track which content sources produce best leads
• Identify which articles sales team shares most
• Gather qualitative feedback on lead readiness

Create topic selection framework based on conversion potential:

Instead of choosing topics by search volume, evaluate by:

Business value score:

• Does this target our ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)?
• Does this address a problem our product solves?
• Is this a bottom-of-funnel topic?
• Do prospects in this stage have budget/authority?

Conversion potential score:

• Can we naturally integrate product deeply?
• Do we have screenshots/demos to show?
• Can we differentiate from competitors here?
• Will this pre-qualify prospects effectively?

Keyword opportunity score:

• Can we realistically rank (given competition)?
• Is search volume sufficient (even if lower)?
• Does search intent match our content goals?

Choose topics scoring high across all three dimensions, even if search volume is moderate.

Run PLC as a measured experiment:

If leadership resists changing metrics, propose a test:

1. Select 10 high-traffic articles to rewrite with PLC
2. Track conversions before and after rewrite
3. Compare lead quality and close rates
4. Calculate ROI based on incremental revenue
5. Present results to justify broader rollout

When you can show “we rewrote 10 articles and generated $500K in pipeline,” resistance melts.

Obstacle 4: Your Product Positioning Is Unclear

PLC magnifies positioning problems. If you haven’t nailed your positioning, attempting PLC becomes frustrating and ineffective.

Why This Happens

You’re still figuring out your market position. Early-stage companies often haven’t clarified:

• Who their ideal customer is (trying to serve everyone)
• What unique value they provide (still iterating)
• Why customers choose them over alternatives (no clear differentiators)
• Which problems they solve best (many features, unclear focus)

Your differentiation is weak. In crowded markets, many products have similar features. If you can’t articulate what makes you distinctly better, your content will sound like everyone else’s—just with your product name swapped in.

You’re positioned against the wrong competitors. You might be comparing yourself to established players when you should create a new category. Or claiming to be “better” at things that don’t actually matter to your target customers.

Internal misalignment on positioning. Product team emphasizes certain features. Sales team focuses on different benefits. Marketing has its own angle. This confusion makes consistent, compelling content impossible.

The Result

Comparison content that doesn’t differentiate. You write “[Your Product] vs. [Competitor]” articles, but both products sound similar. You make the same claims they do. You can’t show meaningful differences because you haven’t identified meaningful differences.

Weak product demonstrations. Your screenshots and demos show features, but don’t tell a compelling story about why those features matter or how they’re uniquely valuable.

Generic use cases. You discuss broad problems (“improve productivity”) rather than specific, differentiated solutions your product delivers best.

Content that doesn’t position you strategically. PLC should control the narrative and define evaluation criteria in your favor. But if you don’t know your strategic position, your content can’t establish it.

What to Do About It

Do the positioning work first. Before attempting PLC at scale, clarify:

1. Your ideal customer profile:

• Company size, industry, growth stage
• Specific roles who use/buy your product
• Key problems they face
• Budget and buying process

2. Your unique value proposition:

• What do you do better than anyone else?
• Why do customers choose you over alternatives?
• What would they lose if they switched to competitors?

Use customer interviews to validate: “Why did you choose us?”

3. Your differentiation:

• Feature differences (what you have that competitors don’t)
• Approach differences (how you solve problems differently)
• Philosophy differences (what you believe about the problem)

4. Your category position:

• Are you creating a new category or competing in existing one?
• How do you want prospects to think about your product?
• What criteria should they use to evaluate solutions?

Use customer language in positioning:

Don’t use internal jargon or marketing speak. Talk to 10-20 customers and ask:

• What problem were you trying to solve when you found us?
• How did you describe this problem to colleagues?
• What alternatives did you consider?
• Why did you choose us?
• How do you explain our product to others?

Their language reveals how your target market thinks about the problem and your solution. Use that language in your content.

Create positioning documents for content team:

Document your positioning clearly:

• Positioning statement: For [target customer] who [faces this problem], [your product] is the [category] that [unique approach] unlike [alternatives] that [their approach].
• Key differentiators: 3-5 specific ways you’re meaningfully different
• Proof points: Customer examples, metrics, features that prove each differentiator
• Competitive positioning: How you compare to main alternatives
• Language guidelines: Terms to use and avoid

Share this with content team and use it to guide topic selection and product integration.

Test positioning through content:

PLC can actually help refine positioning. Create content around different positioning angles and see what resonates:

• Which articles generate most engagement from target customers?
• Which positioning angles get shared most by sales?
• Which differentiation claims get mentioned in customer conversations?
• Which competitive comparisons drive most conversions?

Use this feedback to refine positioning iteratively.

Obstacle 5: Your Organization Fears Transparency

Some companies hesitate to create PLC because leadership fears competitors will copy their product or customers will discover limitations.

Why This Happens

“Competitors will steal our secret sauce.” CTOs and product leaders worry that showing features in detail will make it easier for competitors to copy their approach.

“We should save product details for sales calls.” Leaders believe product information is a sales asset that should only be shared with qualified prospects, not published openly.

“Showing everything reveals our weaknesses.” Every product has limitations. Some leaders fear that transparent content will help competitors attack those weaknesses or give prospects reasons not to buy.

“We’re not ready to show the product publicly.” UI might be rough. Some features are incomplete. Leaders want to wait until everything is “perfect” before showcasing it.

The Result

Content can’t demonstrate value. Without screenshots, demos, or detailed feature explanations, your content remains abstract. You make claims but can’t substantiate them. Prospects remain skeptical.

You lose to competitors who are transparent. While you hide behind vague descriptions, competitors are showing their products in action. Prospects trust transparency. They choose vendors who demonstrate rather than just claim.

Sales team inherits the full burden. Without content doing product education, sales must start from scratch with every prospect. Cycles lengthen. Conversion rates suffer.

You miss the opportunity to control the narrative. When you don’t show your product, analysts, reviewers, and competitors define it for you. You lose the ability to frame conversations around your strengths.

What to Do About It

Reframe transparency as competitive advantage:

Have honest conversations with leadership about the reality:

Competitors who want to copy you will find a way:

• They’ll sign up for trials
• They’ll attend demos under fake names
• They’ll interview your customers
• They’ll reverse-engineer your approach

Hiding your product from prospects to protect it from competitors means you lose sales to those same competitors.

Transparency builds trust that drives conversions:

• B2B buyers are skeptical of vague marketing claims
• Showing your product proves you have substance
• Transparent companies are perceived as more credible
• Prospects choose vendors who demonstrate value

PLC gives you first-mover narrative control:

• You define the evaluation criteria
• You explain your approach in your terms
• You control the comparison framing
• You establish thought leadership

Establish transparency guidelines:

Create clear rules for what to show and what to protect:

SHOW freely:

• UI/UX screenshots (they can see this in trials anyway)
• Feature capabilities and benefits
• Common workflows and use cases
• Integration approaches
• Results and outcomes customers achieve
• Comparisons with competitors (honest, fact-based)

PROTECT legitimately:

• Proprietary algorithms (high-level approach is fine, code isn’t)
• Security implementations (capabilities yes, technical details no)
• Unreleased features (until launch)
• Customer-specific configurations
• Actual customer data

The list of what to truly protect is shorter than most leaders think.

Address the “product isn’t perfect” concern:

No product is perfect. Every product has limitations. The question isn’t whether to acknowledge this, but how:

In PLC, you can:

• Focus on what you do well (genuine strengths)
• Be honest about what you’re not optimized for
• Show your roadmap addressing gaps
• Position limitations as trade-offs for benefits

Example: “We prioritize ease of use over advanced customization. For teams that need extensive configuration, [Competitor] might be better. For teams that want to get up and running in 24 hours, we’re the right choice.”

This honesty actually builds trust and helps prospects self-select.

Show the ROI of transparency:

Track metrics that prove transparency works:

• Conversion rates from product-demonstrative content vs. vague content
• Sales cycle length for leads who engaged with detailed product content
• Close rates for prospects who saw product before demo
• Customer satisfaction for those with realistic expectations

When data shows transparency drives revenue, fear diminishes.

Obstacle 6: Your Company Culture Doesn’t Support PLC

Even when leadership approves PLC conceptually, organizational culture and team dynamics can prevent effective execution.

Why This Happens

Siloed teams don’t collaborate. In many companies:

• Content sits in marketing
• Product sits in engineering
• Customer success sits in operations
• Sales sits in revenue

These teams have different priorities, metrics, and incentives. They don’t collaborate naturally.

Information hoarding is the norm. Some companies have secretive cultures where:

• Product doesn’t share customer usage data (worried about misinterpretation)
• Sales doesn’t share win/loss insights (too busy)
• Customer success doesn’t share feedback (protecting customer relationships)
• Leadership doesn’t trust teams with competitive information

“That’s not my job” mentality. Product teams think content is marketing’s job. Content teams think product education is product marketing’s job. No one takes ownership of ensuring PLC succeeds.

Lack of executive sponsorship. Without a leader who champions PLC across functions and holds teams accountable for collaboration, it becomes optional. Teams deprioritize it when other work competes.

The Result

Content team can’t access information needed for PLC. They don’t know:

• How customers actually use the product
• What problems features solve in practice
• Why customers chose you over competitors
• What objections sales encounters repeatedly
• Which features drive retention vs. churn

Reviews and approvals stall indefinitely. Content sits in queues because:

• No one’s accountable for reviewing
• Product team doesn’t see content as priority
• Leaders are too busy to review quickly
• Feedback is vague or contradictory

PLC quality suffers from lack of input. Without cross-functional collaboration, content is:

• Technically inaccurate
• Disconnected from customer reality
• Missing key differentiation points
• Not aligned with sales messaging

What to Do About It

Get executive sponsorship:

PLC requires leadership commitment at VP or C-level. Find a sponsor (CMO, CEO, VP Product) who will:

• Champion PLC cross-functionally
• Hold teams accountable for collaboration
• Remove roadblocks and resolve conflicts
• Celebrate PLC wins publicly
• Allocate resources (time, budget, headcount)

Without this sponsorship, PLC becomes just another marketing initiative that other teams ignore.

Create cross-functional PLC team:

Form a working group with representatives from:

• Content/Marketing (leads execution)
• Product Management (provides product expertise)
• Product Marketing (ensures messaging alignment)
• Sales (shares customer insights)
• Customer Success (provides usage data and feedback)

Meet monthly (or more for major initiatives) to:

• Align on priorities
• Share insights across functions
• Solve collaboration problems
• Plan upcoming content together

Build information sharing systems:

Break down silos by creating shared resources:

Customer insight repository:

• Win/loss interview summaries
• Customer testimonials and case studies
• Usage analytics and adoption patterns
• Support ticket trends and common questions
• Renewal and churn analysis

Competitive intelligence database:

• Competitor product comparisons
• Win/loss competitive analysis
• Sales battlecards
• Market positioning research

Product knowledge center:

• Feature documentation for content team
• Demo recordings and screenshots
• Product roadmap and release notes
• Technical architecture overviews

Make these accessible to content team so they’re not constantly requesting information.

Align incentives:

Ensure teams are rewarded for PLC success:

Product team:

• Track product adoption from content-sourced leads
• Celebrate when content drives qualified pipeline
• Recognize product managers who support content

Sales team:

• Show them how PLC shortens sales cycles
• Track close rates from PLC-educated leads
• Let them see content impact on their quotas

Content team:

• Measure and reward based on conversion metrics
• Celebrate pipeline and revenue attribution
• Connect their work to business outcomes

When everyone benefits from PLC success, collaboration improves.

Obstacle 7: Creating PLC Is Slow and Resource-Intensive

Even with the right knowledge, processes, and culture, PLC takes significantly more time and effort than traditional content.

Why This Happens

PLC requires more research. For each article, you need to:

• Understand the specific use case deeply
• Identify which product features are relevant
• Gather screenshots, demos, or create new visuals
• Find customer examples or testimonials
• Research competitor approaches
• Verify technical accuracy

Traditional content might require 2-3 hours of research. PLC might require 8-10 hours.

Production is more complex. Beyond writing, PLC involves:

• Creating or sourcing product screenshots
• Annotating images to highlight relevant elements
• Recording or editing demo videos
• Building comparison tables
• Testing interactive elements
• Ensuring all product information is current

Review cycles are more involved. PLC requires:

• Technical accuracy review from product
• Screenshot approval (legal, product, sometimes customers)
• Competitive claim validation
• Multiple rounds of iteration

Writers need more support. Even trained writers need ongoing:

• Answers to product questions
• Access to subject matter experts
• Feedback on whether integration feels natural
• Help understanding technical concepts

The Result

Slower publication pace. Where you might have published 8 articles per month before, you might publish 3-4 PLC articles. Leadership questions why output decreased.

Writer frustration. Writers feel bottlenecked waiting for:

• Product team responses
• Screenshot access
• SME interviews
• Review and approvals

Pressure to cut corners. When deadlines loom, teams compromise:

• Publish with surface-level product integration
• Skip technical reviews
• Use generic stock images instead of product screenshots
• Revert to traditional approaches that are faster

Difficulty scaling. Even if you master PLC, scaling production is hard because each article requires significant specialized effort.

What to Do About It

Set realistic expectations:

Be transparent with leadership about PLC production realities:

• Fewer articles published, but each one drives more conversions
• Focus on quality and conversion impact, not quantity
• Track ROI per article, not just article count
• Expect 6-12 week ramp-up period as team learns

When everyone understands PLC is an investment, the slower pace is accepted.

Create efficiency systems:

Build a screenshot library:

• Maintain organized folders of product screenshots
• Keep them updated with each product release
• Include annotations and callouts ready to use
• Catalog by feature/use case for easy searching

Develop demo video repository:

• Record common workflows once, reuse across content
• Create modular videos (2-3 minutes each) for different features
• Keep videos evergreen (avoid date-specific references)
• Update quarterly or when features change significantly

Create product integration templates:

• Standard ways to introduce features
• Comparison table formats
• Screenshot annotation styles
• CTA placement and copy options

Templates speed production while maintaining quality.

Implement batching:

Instead of doing everything for each article individually:

Batch research: Deep-dive into a product area (e.g., “automation features”), then write 3-4 articles using that research

Batch screenshots: Capture all needed screenshots in one product session rather than ad-hoc requests

Batch reviews: Send 3-4 articles for review at once, making efficient use of SME time

Hire or train specialized roles:

Consider adding: Technical content writers: Writers with SaaS background who understand products faster

Content operations specialist: Handles screenshot management, demo coordination, review tracking

Product content liaison: Product team member (25-50% time) who supports content needs

These roles reduce bottlenecks and improve quality.

Prioritize ruthlessly:

You can’t make every article PLC. Focus on:

• Highest-traffic articles targeting decision-stage keywords
• Topics closely aligned with key product capabilities
• Content targeting your ideal customer profile
• Articles sales team requests or shares frequently

Let some lower-priority content remain traditional while you focus PLC efforts where they’ll have the most impact.

The Implementation Framework: From Obstacles to Execution

Understanding obstacles is necessary but not sufficient. Here’s how to systematically overcome them and implement PLC successfully:

Phase 1: Foundation (Weeks 1-4)

Get leadership alignment:

• Present PLC business case with expected ROI
• Secure executive sponsor
• Get commitment for cross-functional collaboration
• Agree on new success metrics

Audit current state:

• Identify top 20 articles by traffic
• Assess current conversion rates
• Map content to product use cases
• Prioritize optimization opportunities

Establish processes:

• Define content-product collaboration model
• Create review workflows with SLAs
• Set up attribution tracking
• Build product knowledge resources

Phase 2: Training & Piloting (Weeks 5-12)

Train content team:

• Intensive product training (10+ hours)
• PLC writing workshops
• Review successful examples
• Practice on low-stakes content

Run pilot program:

• Select 5 articles for PLC transformation
• Go through full process start to finish
• Document what works and what doesn’t
• Measure conversion improvements

Refine systems:

• Fix bottlenecks discovered in pilot
• Improve collaboration processes
• Develop additional resources needed
• Gather feedback from all stakeholders

Phase 3: Scaling (Weeks 13-24)

Expand production:

• Increase to 10-15 PLC articles
• Establish sustainable pace (quality over quantity)
• Continue refining processes
• Build efficiency through templates and systems

Measure and optimize:

• Track conversion metrics religiously
• A/B test different PLC approaches
• Identify what types of integration work best
• Double down on what drives results

Prove ROI:

• Calculate pipeline generated
• Show sales cycle improvements
• Demonstrate close rate increases
• Present business impact to leadership

Phase 4: Maturity (Month 7+)

Systematize excellence:

• Document your PLC playbook
• Train new team members efficiently
• Maintain quality at scale
• Continuously improve based on data

Expand to new formats:

• Apply PLC to video content
• Develop interactive demos
• Create comparison landing pages
• Build comprehensive product content hub

Build competitive moats:

• Dominate search results for key terms with superior PLC
• Establish thought leadership in your category
• Make it hard for competitors to replicate your content advantage

The Bottom Line: PLC Is Hard, But Worth It

Product-led content is significantly harder than traditional content marketing. It requires:

• More specialized skills
• Deeper collaboration
• More complex processes
• Greater time investment
• Cultural change

But the payoff is transformational:

• 2-3x improvement in conversion rates
• 30-40% shorter sales cycles
• 20-50% better close rates
• 25-40% reduction in CAC
• Sustainable competitive advantage

The companies that succeed at PLC don’t do it because it’s easy. They do it because it’s the only way to turn their content investment into a real revenue engine.

Every obstacle is solvable. Every barrier can be overcome. The question is whether you’re committed enough to do the hard work of transforming your content from traffic generator to revenue driver.

Start with one article. Prove the model. Build from there.

The competitive advantage goes to companies willing to do what’s difficult, not what’s easy.

Who all are Involved in Running Content Marketing Operations?

by Lalit Singh Patel | Sep 11, 2022 | Creation, Strategy

I've helped a lot of startup founders and marketing heads build a content marketing team over the last few years. One of the biggest mistakes I see them making is hiring a content writer to run their content marketing operations. 

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While a writer can write well, they may not be the best person to include the substance. The writers are not subject matter experts.

While a writer can and should promote their articles, it doesn’t mean they are the best person to do so. The majority of them don’t have distribution skills.

These are the people you need for your content team to work efficiently:

1. Content writer(s) 
2. Content marketer
3. Content strategist
4. Content editor
5. Designers
6. Subject Matter Experts

Disclaimer

1. Here, we are assuming that your goal is to generate revenue from your content. You can see the list is a mouthful. This is because content marketing has changed a lot in the last few years. You need to make an investment if you are serious about content marketing. 
   
   Otherwise, if you want to do it for the sake of doing it or even if your goal is on vanity metrics like generating traffic, you can just hire a content writer or outsource to freelance writers or agencies who can produce content in bulk for you. But as we discussed in our previous article, higher traffic more often doesn’t mean more leads.

2. We are not saying you need to hire separate individuals for each of these positions to start your content marketing. In the beginning, one person plays more than one role. But you need to hire smart people who have the skillsets required to do these jobs.

As a general rule, seed-stage startups should have 3 roles in full-time positions to run content marketing operations: writer, marketer, and strategist. 

At series A, you can add 1-2 more writers and full-time designers to your content marketing team. For example, if you have any gap in your content marketing team, you can hire for that position, like a dedicated editor, social media specialist, or SEO specialist.

When building a team from scratch, it will take months to hire for these roles, and you can’t judge them if you have not done content marketing yourself/don’t have first-hand experience running content marketing. 

One Big Mistake to Avoid: Non-marketer building the content team

Even someone from a marketing background but with no hands-on experience in the content will most likely fail. 

Going with the cheapest option while building your content team only leads to time, money, and effort wastage. Is demoralizing. We’ve seen companies back to square one after months of working in this way. 

One of our customers did not choose to work with us because they have found a less expensive option but came back to us months later only to do the whole work from scratch. When they came back,  they had already published over 100 articles on their blog but it had generated 0 leads in 7 months. 

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Check out my post on hiring a content writer if you are doing it for the first time.

We are always looking for good content writers and markets and are in touch with them via many communities. If you need our help, you can take our content writer hiring service. 

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Let us see the responsibilities of each role:

The Role of Writers, Marketers, Strategists, Editors, and SMEs in a Content Marketing Team

1. Content Writer(s)

Technical content writers are foot soldiers of your content marketing operations. They write articles for your blog. 

Note that these writers should be dedicated to content marketing work. If you need content for other marketing or sales activities like newsletters, knowledge base, website revamp, or landing pages and copy for paid adverts, you will need another writer.

The content writers in the content marketing team must be well versed in the 3 key pillars of content writing for marketing purposes: target audience (TA), product, and market. 

Awareness of the target audience

Awareness of the target audience is required because articles must be written considering your ideal customers. Though it may seem obvious, I’ve seen many content writers lose awareness of their target audience while writing content.

In effect, this means:

• Saying obvious things that they already know
• Not respecting their expertise
• Not providing context
• Not addressing the pain points of decision-makers and end-users

Writing for B2B is very different than writing for B2C. Most companies hire generalists or creative writers. As a result, the content is poor. The writer struggles to write. 

Writing for travel or health niches is not very difficult as you can relate to these. We all have some experience in our personal lives. But when it comes to B2B, it is not easy to relate with decision-makers unless you have been in the position yourself. 

We have seen such content writers making weird analogies. For example, when we were working with a freelance writer in our early days, the writer was explaining a point about getting discounts when buying assets for their company in bulk. 

She explained that by giving an example of buying vegetables in bulk. Though there is nothing wrong with logic, since our target audience was procurement teams in enterprises, it was not an appropriate example. 

This was not the only instance. Even after a lot of training, it is very difficult for someone to get this if they have never worked in a B2B setting. 

We had constantly seen variations of such instances with many writers where we were frightened that if it went unnoticed, it would have posed the risk of losing credibility in front of the target audience. 

Product expertise

Most content writers have little to no knowledge about the product the company sells. Most companies don’t provide product training to their content writers. 

This is why we see writers not being able to sell the product in blog posts. Product expertise helps in weaving products in the blog post naturally—so that it doesn’t look forced at the bottom.

For example, take this article on employee retention. 

This article discusses ways to improve employee retention. 

In the best case, they would do something like this: 

There is no mention of the product in this entire article. If this product helps with employee retention, why did they not show it?

If it is one of the product use cases, then this is a lost chance of showing the product in action. I think it is because the writer doesn’t have a deep product understanding.

But you cannot sell the product unless you know the product very well. If your goal is to sell a product, then product training is very important. If your content writer doesn’t know the product, they cannot sell it via content.

Contextual product appearance in the blog suits well with selling the product. 

At Product Led Content, we ensure that everybody working on the content has in-depth product knowledge. 

Market

At PLC, we only work with companies who have nailed their positioning and messaging. That means you know your strengths and weaknesses compared to other products in the market. 

At the beginning of our work with any client, we discuss and get comparisons with competitors so we can include them in the article.

So, we provide our content writers with product battle cards, positioning, and other product marketing collaterals that are generally used during sales (sales enablement content) to show not only that your product can solve the target audience’s problem but it can solve it in the best way in the market. 

In fact, it is very easy for the target audience to smell the fakeness in such selling.

Note that content writers who are a part of a B2B content marketing team are very different from general writers, like those who write for hobby or social media, newsletters, copywriters, and B2C writers. It’s writing with a goal. 

Normally, everyone thinks they can write. But it is a job that requires creative and analytical skills. It requires immense research skills and a truth-seeking attitude. 

SaaS products are more complex than other products and the writing requires technical (domain-expertise) understanding. I’ve seen many writers having fear when it comes to going into technical details. But you cannot write good articles and convince the TA without having in-depth knowledge/ understanding of the problem, product and competitors. 

It requires storytelling skills. You cannot engage people for long. 

2. Content Marketers

They are marketers at the core. They are well versed in consumer psychology. Many people have misconceptions about this role. They think content marketers mean content writers. But they are very different.

Till a few years ago, (till 2018) a content writer was sufficient to run content marketing. 

Earlier, just writing anything used to get a lot of attention because very few companies were leveraging content marketing. Just writing “top 10 tips” or “20 ways to improve your employee engagement” was enough.

Now, after the funding boom in the SaaS space, every startup wants to do content marketing because of the huge benefits it offers.

Because of this content supply is now more than content demand. So, there are dedicated efforts required to distribute content.

Because of this, the competition is very high. Now, just hiring a writer is not enough. To cut through the noise, you should be able to distribute it. So, having a content marketer and strategist is a must. It’s not optional anymore.

Earlier there was less/no competition, so people have no/fewer choices. Now the competition is more, to attract people you have to work with a distribution strategy. 

Content marketers are people who can do the distribution. Content promotion is their key role. So, things like SEO, social media, and community promotion are done by them. Their goal is to get the content in front of the target audience. If you fail at this, no matter how good your content is, it is bound to fail.

SEO is a vast and technical field. So, you can’t leave it to content writers.

In SEO, one main task could be building topical authority. A few other things that search engine optimizers will do: 

• On-page SEO: UX factors, internal linking, headings, keyword insertion, keyword research, etc.
• Off-page SEO: Outreach efforts are also from the content marketer to get relevant backlinks. They can also shortlist websites for guest posting.
• Technical SEO: They give technical SEO suggestions. There are few people in marketing who can implement these as well. Because not the standard for these people to touch the website/coding part. 

Apart from this, content marketers collaborate with designers to get the distribution materials:

• PPT
• Social media marketing
• Infographics
• Videos
• Youtube community

They repurpose the content for distribution on various other platforms. Find opportunities for promoting every article:

• Quora
• Reddit
• LinkedIn and Facebook group etc
• Other industry-specific communities 
• Social media (if there is no dedicated social media marketing executive) 
• Webinars, if you don’t have a separate community manager (optional)

3. Content Strategist

Content strategists own the entire content marketing outcomes. This is a managerial role. They are the ones who make the strategy, come up with new ideas, and talk to content writers and marketers internally to get things done. 

A content strategist hire and trains writers. They also work as editors in small teams. 

They talk to various stakeholders to make KPIs and work on the same to deliver that. First, they work with CMO to finalize the KPIs, and then they report on the same.

They also enable insights from other departments. They are the one who talks with other people like product managers, sales managers, account executives, customer success, and support. They enable the flow of information from these people to content writers and marketers. 

Content writers need to make a lot of decisions while working on a content piece. They need context. A proper content brief includes all these things which are required to make good decisions. Good decisions are a function of what information you have.

Some of the key tasks that a content strategist does:

• They do topic ideation and create content briefs. 
• Use keyword research inputs from marketers to finalize keywords worth targeting.
• Competitor research.
• They create content for the entire funnel: BOFU, MOFU, and TOFU.
• Identify low-hanging fruits. Find opportunities for quick conversion.
• When new content makes sense and when a content refresh/update is required.

A content strategist is not a project manager though it requires project management skills. Being a content strategist requires deep knowledge of content marketing to complete things on time (deadline).

Content writers without a content strategist (manager) are like an engineering team without a product manager and senior developers. First, they can execute many tasks, but these things don’t add up because of no clear direction. 

Running content marketing operations without a content strategist leads to content debt (similar to technical debt for engineering teams.) 

A content strategist can start with a raw idea and turn it into a thought leadership article. There is a lot of thinking required that a content writer can’t just do on their own. Before content writer starts writing, they need a lot of context and substance. 

They are the pillars of content marketing operations. If the overall content marketing fails, they are responsible for it.

4. Content Editors

Content editors’ main job is to ensure the quality of the content. They are a very essential part of the entire content creation process. They give feedback to writers.

If you look at the profiles of most content writers, they are not from a writing background (especially in India). They are engineers (or from any other field/domain) turned writers. Hence, they don’t know the techniques of writing.

Even when someone says they are experienced writers, it means they have been writing for a long time, but writing techniques would be the same as those of beginner writers. 

Why does this happen? Because they are not getting the feedback. Writing practice is a different thing than working on the techniques of writing.

For example, content editors help improve clarity. Help create a better narrative. But when writers don’t work on their techniques, their feedback is limited to improving the word choice and sentence structure. In the best case, they would work on improving the paragraph structure.

But great editors who have learned the techniques of writing will ultimately help you improve your communication, not just proofread your articles.

Examples of a few writing techniques:

1. Parallel structure
2. Cohesion and coherence
3. Active/passive
4. Types of sentence

Editing is a science because there are techniques involved. Most writers working on the company’s blog claim to be creative writers. But if you are working in content marketing, you need to be analytical as well. This is a very important skill for anyone working in the content team—content writers, editors, strategists, and marketers.

They review the article. It is not enough to hire the best writers; you need to give them feedback too. 

Writing style/Editor	Substance (SME+ Research)	Distribution/Promote
Narrative	Matter: Claims backups Audience + technical + product	SEO, social media marketers, email + HARO + paid ads
Word choice	Jargons, word make sense to the audience	Understanding of channels
Sentence structure: simple, compound, complex	Communication with other teams: product, sales, support, customer success	Audience + technical + product
Paragraph structure	Choice of arguments	Outreach + writing for outreach
Good command over the writing, grammar	Good command over the subject matter	Requires command over the channel
Content writer	Content Strategist/ Editor and Manager	Content marketer
	Customer research	Market research

Supporting Roles that will Jeopardize Your Content Marketing if Ignored

Whatever roles we have discussed till now would be working full time on the content marketing team. There are a few others that play an equally important role. We are calling them a supporting role because they are not involved full-time in content marketing.

1. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

SMEs provide substance. Here we mean SMEs in a general sense, not necessarily someone who has experience working in the industry (or they themselves are the part of target audience). 

That means anybody and everybody in the company that has consumer and market insights is SME for the content marketing team.

Weekly meetings with them are required, at least for the first few months. SMEs play the following roles:

• Make content relatable to the target audience, by providing jargon and relevant examples that help in gaining audience trust
• Prevent inaccuracy (in many fields, you will find different, sometimes opposing points of view. So, so content writers can’t just write based on online research)

SMEs may write too for content marketing if they are interested in writing but their main job is to provide inputs (by giving interviews, pointing to right resources, connecting with the right person, etc.) 

If they are doing webinars or podcasts for the company, that content can also be repurposed for the purpose of content marketing. 

SMEs also include people & teams who have the data or information that will be useful for the content marketing team, like salespeople and people in the customer service/support and success team. 

People in the product and engineering team can also act as SMEs as they can have unique and deep insights into the product, customers, and market. 

You don’t need to hire SMEs just for content marketing; just need to act smartly and work with other teams in collaboration. At Product Led Content, we develop our own expertise over time, but there is a good dependency on SMEs in the beginning.

2. Graphic Designers

Content marketing doesn’t mean just written content. There is a good amount of images required. Thus designers are an integral part of the content marketing team. The reason we include them in the supporting role is they may be working with other teams as well.

Designers start working on the image once the idea is conceptualized by the content marketers. They make images for blog posts and their distribution. 

Now, you can’t use free stock images on your blog posts directly. You need to customize it to convey your message. 

For images, we suggest buying access to premium stock image sites that aren’t available for free for everybody’s use (a good way of differentiation), for example, Shutterstock, iStockPhoto, PixaBay, and Evanto. 

3. Developers (Frontend and Backend)

Here the main thing is to provide developers resources to your content marketing team when required. When there is no marketing buy-in from company founders, content marketing suffers whenever you need to make any changes to the website. 

CTO has authority over developers and usually, they don’t allocate resources toward marketing. Therefore, it’s the job of business founders to make sure that the content team gets the necessary developer’s help as per requirement. 

Usually, developers’ help is required for the following tasks:

• For on-page SEO
  • UI improvements (adding a table of contents, relatable posts, featured posts, posts categorization, making improvements to overall blog design for differentiation, blog posts width, changes to font, etc)
  • Loading times
• Making 301 directs
• Options to download and collect email
• Schema implementation
• Setup for other tools like marketing automation, Google Analytics, GTM, etc.

4. Senior Marketing Leadership (CMO)/Marketing Manager/Founders

These people—CMO or founder marketer—don’t take part in the day-to-day operations of the content marketing team. 

Their job is to:

• Solve bottlenecks 
• Give strategic direction (High-level monthly meetings)
• Approve budgets

Founders also have good insights into the product, customers, and market. So, they are almost always the SMEs as well.

Why Most Startups Don’t Have These Roles?

After talking with so many founders, I feel the core reason why startups struggle to build a content marketing team is because of a lack of awareness of content marketing operations.

I’ve seen people struggle to build a content marketing team are of these roles:

• Startup founders with no marketing background
• Someone in the leadership role but no marketing experience
• CMO (GTM head or a senior marketer) but not from content background

In all these situations, the common issue is no first-hand experience running a content operations. 

Moreover, whatever advice you see on the internet is mostly obsolete information that doesn’t work in the current scenario. That’s why most startups just hire writers to run their content marketing.  

So, there is low awareness about these roles. The main problem is not about money. We have seen even the funded startups making this mistake. There is no reason why they won’t invest. Content marketing is a key channel for B2B SaaS startups. It also  acts as insurance in case of funding winter or any other negative market scenario. 

At Product Led Content, every piece of content passes through at least one person other than the writer himself for quality purposes. This is because you cannot eliminate all errors by yourself. You need another pair of eyes for that. 

For self-editing, our writers leave that piece for a week and start working on other things so that their mind is occupied with other things and they get a refresh. Then they can see the article with a fresh pair of eyes.

Writers can only perform when they are given support. Just like, foot soldiers can win or lose a battle depending on the leaders who make strategy, and provide equipment and morale, the same applies to foot soldiers of the content team. 

This is our approach to content marketing at Product Led Content. When working with us, you get all of these things. 

These Mistakes Only Lead to a Waste of Time and Money

Just hiring a writer and thinking you will achieve the same results you heard a unicorn startup got will only lead to disappointing results. 

To get the best results, you need to hire the right people and empower them to do their job. Support them in all ways. It is not cost-saving thinking you just need a writer. In fact, it is time wastage as well. This is similar to hiring a backend developer to do all the jobs.

The cost of a writer running your entire content marketing is very high. This is not obvious to many founders in the early stages. Only after a few months or a year, do they think that content marketing is not generating enough value that they have expected. By the time, you reach your growth stage; you need to have at least one marketing channel working that you can double down on.

At the seed stage, this pain may not be visible because you need a few clients that you can get via other channels, like paid ads or word of mouth, or references. But these are not highly scalable. They reach a plateau after a while and don’t help you much post series B and C growth stages when you actually need them. 

Content marketing could be that channel. But if not taken the right approach, it fails.

Content marketing is a good channel, the one that will definitely work even if other channels fail. But it requires seriousness (involvement) from the founders to get the best from it. 

This means starting at right time. If you start when other channels fail and you are to start your next (series A) fundraising process, it is already late.