Our Insights

Get The Scoop

Featured Topics
The Lab Results Are Fine: When B2B Marketing Data Hides a Sick System

The Lab Results Are Fine: When B2B Marketing Data Hides a Sick System

Key takeaways: Healthy B2B marketing data can make a broken system look fine. Isolated metrics, such as organic traffic, cost per click and lead volume, can hide problems with buyer intent, sales trust and pipeline movement. When sales cycles exceed historical norms or sales teams stop trusting marketing leads, marketing teams need to look at […]
Read more
Why AI Is Ignoring Your B2B Customer Case Studies

Why AI Is Ignoring Your B2B Customer Case Studies

Key takeaways: When B2B customer case studies bury customer problems and measurable results beneath company background and product details, AI systems can’t identify the information buyers need. As a result, many case studies never appear in AI-generated answers. Most B2B customer case studies make it hard to identify the problem, the solution and the results. […]
Read more
The Thought Leader’s Shortcut: Build a Content Bank From 1 Asset

The Thought Leader’s Shortcut: Build a Content Bank From 1 Asset

Key takeaways: Break one anchor asset into a Content Bank of articles, social posts, carousels, videos and sales tools. Use a content repurposing strategy and employee advocacy to distribute those assets and support a 90-day, multichannel campaign. This allows you to reach buyers throughout their research process. In the last Expert-Led Content Engine article, we […]
Read more
The Trust Gap: Why Human Content Wins in an AI Market

The Trust Gap: Why Human Content Wins in an AI Market

Key takeaways: Human-first content in B2B is grounded in experience, a clear point of view and informed judgment. It helps buyers build trust before they with speak with sales. For years at The Simons Group, our North Star has been “content-first.” It’s how we keep the focus where it belongs: on the message rather than […]
Read more
Stop Asking Experts to Write: The Two-Touchpoint Content Workflow

Stop Asking Experts to Write: The Two-Touchpoint Content Workflow

Key takeaways: A two-touchpoint content workflow concentrates expert involvement into two focused moments that support speed, cost discipline and buyer expectations. By structuring participation around an input session and an accuracy review, organizations share insights while buyers are evaluating options. In addition, this workflow reduces inefficient use of expert time, supports consistent execution and aligns […]
Read more
Create a Quarterly Content Planning Sprint

Create a Quarterly Content Planning Sprint

Key takeaways: Quarterly content planning gives B2B teams a clear, repeatable way to set direction before execution. Rather than reacting to scattered requests, teams align on priorities, themes and proof points during a focused planning sprint that brings marketers and experts together at the right moment. Experts contribute insight once per quarter, while marketers carry […]
Read more
B2B Trust Has Turned Inward. Thought Leadership Gets You In

B2B Trust Has Turned Inward. Thought Leadership Gets You In

Key takeaways: B2B trust now forms early and close to home. Buyers place greater confidence in familiar people and proven judgment. New research shows that thought leadership content plays a role in helping buyers assess expertise and reduce perceived risk. However, today, merely showing up with content isn’t enough. Organizations that pair expert-led insights with […]
Read more
The ROI of Content Marketing: Why Sales Wins Start With Relevance

The ROI of Content Marketing: Why Sales Wins Start With Relevance

Key takeaways: The ROI of content marketing is measured by its ability to accelerate sales cycles, increase pipeline value and establish credibility before sales outreach. By answering buyers’ questions early, content marketing reduces time to close and improves marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads (MQL to SQL) conversion rates. Effective content also functions as always-on sales […]
Read more
Build a Scalable Thought Leadership Content Strategy

Build a Scalable Thought Leadership Content Strategy

Key takeaways: A strong thought leadership content strategy treats expert time like the scarce resource it is. With one structured input session and one final accuracy review, you build a full quarter of content from a single anchor asset. By bringing experts in early and giving them clear direction, the result is consistent messaging, reduced […]
Read more
The Hidden Bias in AI Marketing Content

The Hidden Bias in AI Marketing Content

B2B marketers depend on artificial intelligence (AI) tools as assistants for many tasks, often without considering every request carries an unseen slant. Every answer starts with a human prompt. Therefore, bias can slip in before these tools write a single word. This cycle makes bias in AI marketing content more common than people realize. How […]
Read more
Chess pieces represent how content marketing crushes cold calling.

How B2B Content Marketing Crushes Cold Calling

Business-to-business (B2B) content marketing crushes cold calling when it’s done well. I emphasize that point because crappy content marketing won’t get you anywhere. True cold calling probably won’t either, because it’s not based on problem-solving. It’s a fishing expedition to sell products and services. When I started working in corporate

Read More
A typewriter page illustrates how content marketing writers need key information for their assignments.

Help Your Content Marketing Writers Succeed

The internet is full of advice about how to win at content marketing. Whether you want to create a strategy, plan and build out content or stand out from your competitors, you’ll find plenty of guides, how-tos and tips. Want to know what’s missing? No one explains how to set

Read More

Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?

Before I followed my passion and made content marketing my career, I took time off after college. I had to get my head together and mature a bit. Many of my friends did the same. Their activities included backpacking in Asia and working on a fishing boat in Alaska. In

Read More

Marketers: Don’t Fear ChatGPT (Yet)

The marketing world has been abuzz about ChatGPT for a hot minute. And content marketers feel threatened. But is ChatGPT going to replace us? Here’s my take: Don’t worry – yet. Read on to learn why. What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to answer

Read More

Balance Readability and Complexity in Marketing Content

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the Party had several ways of ensuring conformity. The Party limited independent thinking and banished forbidden thoughts and actions. Deleted images and stories landed in the “memory hole.” And of course, Big Brother was watching you. But “Newspeak” was the central initiative through which these original

Read More
A compass represents staying the course on the content marketing road map.

The B2B Content Marketing Road Map Has Changed. Are You Lost?

What’s a business-to-business (B2B) content marketing road map look like these days? Overall, it’s not much different than it was 10 or even five years ago. But if you look closer, you’ll see subtle changes. The focus is on quality more than ever before. Churn and burn doesn’t win customers.

Read More
Writers follow style guides as the standard in content marketing

Style Guides Set the Standard in Content Marketing

To set the standard in content marketing at your business, it’s important to make sure writers are aligned. Their copy should follow agreed-upon rules. For example: Is it “don’t” or “do not”; “can’t” or “cannot”? Can a subhead be a question? Is the hyphen necessary in “non-essential”? What’s the plural

Read More
Brand marketing case studies

The Why and How of Customer Case Studies

Why are customer case studies so important? Customer case studies prove your company delivers results. You can tell prospects that your company “meets and exceeds expectations. Doing that, however, isn’t as credible as real customers sharing real successes. Unfortunately, case studies often promote what businesses do. Instead, they should focus

Read More
FREE E-BOOK

Unlock Your B2B Growth Engine

“B2B Content Hubs: The Complete Guide to Driving Revenue” is packed with smart strategies – and it comes with three bonus tools to power your next steps.