Sixteen frameworks to steer your content marketing.

StrategyMarket model

The 95-5 rule

In B2B, roughly 5 percent of your potential buyers are in the market at any given moment. The other 95 percent will only buy later, but are already forming an impression now. Ads aimed at purchase intent reach that 5 percent. Content also reaches the 95 percent: someone who reads today how to compare quotes may buy in eighteen months, and will then think of whoever helped them earlier.

Origin

Professor John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, for the LinkedIn B2B Institute, 2021.

Suits

Explaining why content needs time, and why you should not only target people who are buying today.

Effect after

A way of thinking, usable straight away

Difficulty

Apply straight away

How to start

1. Estimate how often your customers switch suppliers: every five years is about 20 percent per year, or 5 percent per quarter.
2. Divide your content: some for those buying now, the largest share for those buying later.
3. Measure the 95 percent on recognition and preference, not on this month's leads.

Watch out Using the 5 percent as a fixed number. It is an estimate based on switching frequencies, not a measurement in your market. In sectors with short buying cycles it is higher.

Work it out: Content simulator

Read more: marketingscience.info

StrategyEffectiveness research

The Long and the Short of It

Activation, advertising that prompts action now, produces a sharp but short peak. Brand building works more slowly but for longer. For B2C, Binet and Field found a balance of around 60 percent brand and 40 percent activation; for B2B, according to the LinkedIn B2B Institute, it is around 46 to 54. Search ads are activation: they stop when the budget stops. Brand campaigns keep working for months, but deliver few direct clicks. Content does a little of both.

Origin

Les Binet and Peter Field, IPA, 2013, based on 996 campaigns from the IPA databank. The LinkedIn B2B Institute applied it to B2B in 2019.

Suits

Dividing budget between ads, brand and content, and explaining why search ads alone are not enough.

Effect after

Brand effect after 6 to 24 months

Difficulty

Easy

How to start

1. Put your current budget in two columns: what prompts action now, and what builds memory.
2. Place content in both: help articles for those searching, stories and original research for those buying later.
3. Measure brand differently from activation: awareness and preference, not cost per click.

Watch out Reading the ratio as a law. These are averages from large campaigns. For a small SME, the principle is what counts: activation alone makes you dependent on paid clicks.

Work it out: Content simulator

StrategyCustomer insight

Jobs to be done

People do not buy a product, they hire it to make progress. For content, that means: do not start from your product or from a keyword, but from the reader's situation. What progress do they want to make, what is holding them back, and what have they already tried? A good briefing describes that job in one sentence.

Origin

Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School, developed in Competing Against Luck (2016).

Suits

Content that is correct but feels interchangeable, and briefings about your product instead of about the reader.

Effect after

Straight away, as the basis of your briefing

Difficulty

Easy

How to start

1. Interview five recent customers: what happened just before they started searching?
2. Write down the job for each customer: when I am in this situation, I want this, so that I achieve that.
3. Put that sentence at the top of every briefing and use the customer's words in your titles.

Watch out Inventing jobs around a table. They come from conversations with real customers, not from a brainstorm.

Read more: www.christenseninstitute.org

Topics and planningPlanning framework

See, Think, Do, Care

An alternative to the funnel that starts from the customer's intent. See: everyone in your target audience, with no purchase intent. Think: people starting to explore a problem. Do: people who want to buy now. Care: existing customers. Each stage gets its own content and its own metrics.

Origin

Avinash Kaushik, Google, July 2013.

Suits

Organising your calendar and agreeing per stage what success means, so you do not measure See on sales.

Effect after

Planning framework, usable straight away

Difficulty

Easy

How to start

1. Next to each planned piece, note the stage it is for.
2. Agree one metric per stage: reach, returning readers, enquiries, repeat purchases.
3. If a stage is missing entirely, you know what to create next quarter.

Watch out Putting everything in Do because that is easiest to measure. Then you only reach people who are already buying.

Work it out: What does a better next step deliver?

Read more: www.kaushik.net

Topics and planningTopic selection

They Ask, You Answer

If a customer asks it, you answer it publicly, honestly and fully. Sheridan distinguishes the big 5: price and cost, problems and drawbacks, comparisons, reviews, and best-of lists. These are the topics companies most like to avoid and buyers search for most. Salespeople can send the pieces on instead of giving the same explanation ten times.

Origin

Marcus Sheridan, developed for his swimming pool company River Pools; book in 2017, revised in 2019.

Suits

An expensive or complex purchase, and salespeople who get the same questions again and again.

Effect after

3 to 9 months

Difficulty

Apply straight away

How to start

1. Ask your salespeople and customer service for the twenty questions they get most often.
2. Start with an honest article about price: what does it depend on and what are the ranges?
3. Let salespeople use the pieces in their emails and conversations, and measure how often.

Watch out Half answers. A price article without a price indication does more harm than good.

Work it out: What does a better next step deliver?

Read more: marcussheridan.com

Topics and planningStructure for search

Pillar pages and topic clusters

Per topic, one pillar page that covers the whole topic broadly, surrounded by cluster pieces that each explore one sub-question in depth. Everything links to everything else. That way search engines and AI assistants understand that your site covers the topic thoroughly, and readers find their way from overview to detail.

Origin

HubSpot, 2017, in response to how search engines understand topics rather than individual keywords.

Suits

A field in which you are a real expert and that raises many sub-questions.

Effect after

6 to 18 months

Difficulty

Needs some practice

How to start

1. Choose one topic and gather all the sub-questions through keyword research and your salespeople.
2. Write the pillar, and then eight to fifteen cluster pieces.
3. Link each cluster piece to the pillar and to each other, and only then move on to the next topic.

Watch out Building clusters around topics nobody searches for. Do the research first.

Work it out: What is your organic traffic worth?

Read more: blog.hubspot.com

Topics and planningFormat mix

Hero, hub, help

Three layers of content. Help answers the questions people search for every day. Hub is recurring content people come back for: a series, a newsletter, a podcast. Hero is the big moment: a campaign, an event or a study that attracts a lot of attention in one go. You see at once whether you are only making campaigns or only help articles.

Origin

YouTube Creator Playbook, around 2014, originally as hero, hub, hygiene.

Suits

Brands that need to be visible on several channels at once, with video as an important format.

Effect after

3 to 12 months

Difficulty

Easy

How to start

1. Start with help: your customer's questions, answered one by one.
2. Then build a hub with a fixed rhythm.
3. Only plan a hero once there is an audience and a library to send them to.

Watch out Too much budget for hero, too little for help. Over time, that last layer delivers the most traffic.

Work it out: What does content cost per month?

Topics and planningMaintenance

Content audit: keep, improve, merge, delete

You list all your existing pieces with traffic, positions, conversions and date, and decide per piece: keep, improve, merge or delete. Old pieces that almost work are often the quickest win. Pieces that compete with each other get merged. Whatever does nothing and is no longer correct disappears with a redirect.

Origin

Content strategy practice, described among others in Content Strategy for the Web (Kristina Halvorson, 2009).

Suits

A large archive, falling traffic, or a site where nobody knows any more what is on it.

Effect after

1 to 6 months

Difficulty

Needs some practice

How to start

1. Export all URLs with traffic, positions and conversions from Search Console and your analytics.
2. Give each piece a label: keep, improve, merge or delete.
3. Start with the pieces in positions 5 to 15. Plan a new round every quarter.

Watch out Deleting without a redirect. Then you lose the links and traffic the piece did have.

Work it out: What is your organic traffic worth?

CreatingAuthority

Original research

A survey of your customers, an analysis of your own data, a benchmark from your projects. Original research is the only format an AI cannot make up, and that is exactly why it gets cited: by journalists, bloggers and AI assistants. One good study feeds a year of articles, posts, a webinar and press coverage.

Origin

Data-driven content. In 2026, Orbit Media found that publishing original research raises the odds of strong results by half.

Suits

When you have access to data or an audience that others do not, and you want to be cited.

Effect after

3 to 12 months

Difficulty

Needs a plan

How to start

1. Choose one question that occupies your sector and that you can ask again every year.
2. Make sure the sample is large and fair enough, and publish the method alongside it.
3. Turn the results into a report, an article, a webinar, posts and a press release.

Watch out A sample that is too small or too leading. Bad figures backfire on you.

Work it out: ROI of your content programme

CreatingQuality framework

E-E-A-T

Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It is not a switch in an algorithm, but a description of what Google wants to reward. For readers it means the same thing: who wrote this, have they done it themselves, and why should I believe it?

Origin

Google, from the guidelines for quality raters. The extra E for experience was added in December 2022.

Suits

Topics where trust matters: money, health, legal questions, expensive purchases, and every B2B decision.

Effect after

Ongoing

Difficulty

Easy

How to start

1. Put an author with name, job title, experience and possibly a photo under every piece.
2. Show your own experience: photos, figures and examples from real projects.
3. Cite sources with dates and update pieces when something changes.

Watch out Adding an author box and thinking you are done. Experience must be in the content, not just in the byline.

Read more: developers.google.com

CreatingRepurposing

COPE: create once, publish everywhere

Create one strong core piece and turn it into other forms. A study becomes a report, a webinar, five LinkedIn posts, a newsletter and a press release. Each channel gets its own form, but you do the thinking and the knowledge work once. Ideal for small teams.

Origin

Daniel Jacobson, NPR, 2009. The American public broadcaster built its systems so that one story could appear everywhere.

Suits

Little capacity, but you still need to be present on several channels.

Effect after

Straight away

Difficulty

Apply straight away

How to start

1. Choose one core piece per month: a webinar, a study, a long guide.
2. When planning the core piece, immediately put five derivatives in your calendar.
3. Let an AI flow create the first drafts of the derivatives, and a human do the final edit.

Watch out Pasting the same piece everywhere word for word. Each channel needs its own form.

Work it out: What do you get out of one core piece?

CreatingWriting structure

The inverted pyramid

The most important thing first, then the details, then the background. Start with the answer in one or two sentences and then expand on it. Readers in a hurry are helped faster, and AI systems more readily take a clear answer as a source. Clear subheadings that read as a question or a statement do the rest.

Origin

Journalism, since the 19th century. Today the basis of writing for skimmers, search engines and AI answers.

Suits

Every piece that answers a question, from a help article to a product page.

Effect after

Straight away

Difficulty

Apply straight away

How to start

1. Write the answer in no more than two sentences before you write the rest.
2. Put it at the top, under the title.
3. Use subheadings that say something on their own, and give figures with source and date.

Watch out Building suspense in a help article. Give the answer only at the bottom and you lose the reader and the citation.

Work it out: What do AI answers cost you?

Distribution and findabilityDistribution

The PESO model

Four types of media that work together. Paid: paid promotion. Earned: mentions in media, by partners and in AI answers. Shared: social media and what others share. Owned: your own site, newsletter and channels. Content is the engine of owned, but without paid, earned and shared, almost nobody sees it.

Origin

Gini Dietrich, Spin Sucks, launched in 2014.

Suits

A distribution plan per piece, and dividing budget between creation and promotion.

Effect after

Ongoing

Difficulty

Needs some practice

How to start

1. Put the four letters next to each planned piece, and fill in what you do for each letter.
2. Reserve a fixed promotion budget and put it behind the pieces that lead to conversations.
3. Let colleagues share in their own words, and pitch your best piece to a trade publication.

Watch out Only owned. A strong library that nobody sees delivers nothing.

Work it out: What does content cost per month?

Read more: spinsucks.com

Distribution and findabilityAI visibility

GEO: content for AI answers

AI assistants and AI summaries in search engines read your page, summarise it and sometimes refer to your source. The click is becoming rarer: in the Pew study, only 1 percent of visits clicked a link in the AI summary itself. Being cited and mentioned is therefore a goal in itself. Good GEO is largely good SEO, with more emphasis on clear answers, figures and sources.

Origin

The term generative engine optimisation comes from a study by Princeton and partners, November 2023.

Suits

Anyone who wants to be found by customers who ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity first.

Effect after

3 to 12 months

Difficulty

Needs some practice

How to start

1. Ask three AI assistants what you would want them to say about your topic, and note whom they cite.
2. Give the answer first, with figures, source and date, in plain HTML on the page.
3. Make sure others write about you: trade media, partners, reviews. AI cites what is frequently confirmed.

Watch out Thinking GEO is something completely different from good content. Tricks to influence AI go out of date faster than you can apply them.

Work it out: What do AI answers cost you?

Read more: arxiv.org

Distribution and findabilityPlatform content

Zero-click content

Platforms such as LinkedIn, Google and AI assistants prefer to keep people with them. Zero-click content therefore delivers the value in the post or the answer itself, instead of luring people to a link. You build recognition and trust where your audience already is, and those who want more will find you anyway.

Origin

Amanda Natividad, SparkToro, around 2022.

Suits

Social media and newsletters, and any audience that rarely clicks through.

Effect after

Weeks to months

Difficulty

Easy

How to start

1. Summarise your best article in a post that stands on its own, without a link in the text.
2. Measure recognition: profile visits, followers, mentions and what new customers say.
3. Put the link in a comment or in your profile, for those who want more.

Watch out Giving everything away without ever showing a next step. Recognition has to lead somewhere.

Work it out: What do AI answers cost you?

Distribution and findabilityMarketing and sales

Inbound and the flywheel

Inbound is about attracting instead of interrupting: content brings people to you, forms and newsletters turn them into leads, sales turns them into customers. The flywheel replaces the funnel: satisfied customers give the wheel extra momentum through recommendations, reviews and stories, which in turn become new content.

Origin

HubSpot: inbound marketing since around 2006 (Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah), the flywheel since 2018.

Suits

Companies with a sales team and a CRM that want to see which content leads to deals.

Effect after

6 to 18 months

Difficulty

Needs some practice

How to start

1. Connect your website to your CRM, so you can see which pieces a lead read.
2. Agree with sales which leads they want, and only put that behind a form.
3. Turn every satisfied customer into a case study, a review or a quote.

Watch out Putting everything behind a form. If every guide can only be downloaded in exchange for an email address, you collect contacts that are not leads.

Work it out: What does a better next step deliver?

Read more: www.hubspot.com