Enterprise content marketing teams often have a speed problem. Legal review cycles take weeks. Brand guidelines require twelve stakeholders to approve a single asset. Quarterly planning fossilizes your strategy before it ships. Meanwhile, you're expected to drive pipeline, prove ROI, and compete against companies that publish faster and test more aggressively.
But some companies crack the code. They build content engines that produce 300 assets a year with teams of five. They see 800%+ growth in earned media pickups with tiny budgets. They ship fast without sacrificing quality. They align cross-functional teams without endless meetings.
If that sounds hard to believe, then you haven’t listened to season 2 of the Animalz podcast. We talked to 13 content leaders at companies like Microsoft, Zoom, Adobe, Dropbox, Square, Zapier, and more. We asked them to share one thing: the most enterprise-specific strategy they’ve used to break through the bureaucracy and build content programs that actually drive business results.
What follows are 12 battle-tested strategies from leaders who've done this work at scale.
1. Focus Enterprise Content Teams on Creation, Not Distribution
Kay-Kay Clapp, Head of Content & Social at Typeform, uses Emily Kramer's (of MKT1) "fuel and engine" framework to define her team's role. Instead of trying to own both creation and distribution, her content team focuses on creating the "fuel" — messaging, words, visuals — while partnering with growth, product marketing, and brand teams who own the distribution "engine."
Content owns the fuel. Your team creates what needs to be said, not where it gets said. This keeps you from spreading thin across channels you don’t control.
Distribution teams own the engine. Growth, product marketing, demand gen, and brand take your fuel and run it through their channels. They know their systems best and can optimize without content becoming a bottleneck.
Align regularly to interface. Weekly or biweekly syncs help distribution teams know what’s available and content teams know what’s performing.
Listen to Episode 02 with Kay-Kay Clapp
2. Integrate Content, Creative, Product Marketing, and Campaigns from Day One
Enterprise content often fails because functions plan in silos. Heike Young, Head of Content, Social & Integrated Marketing at Microsoft Advertising, solved for that problem with this framework: treat content like a car. And its four wheels — content strategy, creative, product marketing, and campaigns — work as an integrated system.
Content strategy: Creates the messaging and narrative that drives everything else.
Creative: Handles branding, look and feel, visual identity across all assets.
Product marketing: Provides ICP, product narrative, and core messaging frameworks.
Campaigns/Demand gen: Manages distribution, paid promotion, ABM, and events.
“These four functional areas really need to not only play nice together in the sandbox,” she says, “but they need to be deeply, deeply integrated.”
Listen to Episode 03 with Heiki Young
3. Lead Strategic Planning, Don't Just Execute Content Requests
Content teams get stuck in a service provider role when they accept requests without context. Rhonda Hughes puts it bluntly: content strategists shouldn't be "a vending machine where you punch in A-6 for a blog post." Instead, she advocates for positioning content as a strategic business partner, while Jennifer Clark at Zoom shows how to structure those strategic conversations through quarterly planning pods.
Replace request forms with discovery conversations. When someone asks for a case study, push back: What's the business goal? Who's the audience? How will you distribute this? Often they want a customer quote or logo—not a full case study. Use your expertise in what performs across channels upfront when building campaigns.
Structure strategic planning through cross-functional pods. Jennifer's "triad pod" brings product marketing, integrated marketing, and content together quarterly to audit performance, set goals, and decide what assets are needed. "We come together quarterly, do audits, set goals, decide what assets we need," she explains. This eliminates finger-pointing and prevents duplicate content.
Track business outcomes, not just content metrics. Jennifer's pods set conversions around "book a demo," "talk to sales," or pricing-page visits and track them weekly. This creates accountability for business results across all functions.
Listen to Episode 04 with Rhonda Hughes
Listen to Episode 11 with Jennifer Clark
4. Build a Newsroom Inside Communications
Lauren Everitt, Director of the Newsroom at Okta, moved her editorial team from marketing to communications to launch a six-person newsroom focused on authoritative storytelling. "We really try to provide the second-day coverage... analysis or actionable insights—that's where the newsroom provides value."
Focus on analysis, not breaking news. Rather than competing with trade publications on speed, Lauren's team provides "second-day coverage" with context and actionable insights that help CISOs and CIOs make better decisions after the initial headlines break.
Turn video into a customer story workaround. Traditional case studies get bogged down in legal approvals, so Okta's Executive Exchange video series features C-suite leaders explaining their problem-solving process. "People are intrigued by how to think, so we film executives explaining their problem-solving process, not just rattling off product specs."
Use AI for prep work, humans for the final 30-40%. "Okta's not using AI to draft content wholesale, but it has condensed a lot of the prep work." AI handles research, outlines, and quote extraction while humans add voice, judgment, and nuance.
Listen to Episode 13 with Lauren Everitt
5. Structure Content Teams into Agile Pods
Traditional integrated campaigns follow a waterfall approach that makes it hard to pivot when you learn something new. At Dropbox, Kate Pluth, Director of Content Strategy, organized her eight-person team into specialized pods that operate on different cycles: "I've been thinking a lot about Agile versus Waterfall in our content operations... that traditional integrated-campaign motion is inherently Waterfall."
Create pods based on production cycles, not content types. Kate's pods include: performance content (ads, emails, landing pages), explanatory content (guides, articles), customer stories, and thought leadership. Each operates on different timelines with "rolling insight and reporting at the top, feeding everything."
Automate the content calendar to eliminate bottlenecks. "If you really want a humming content engine, you've got to automate as much of that as you possibly can." Kate's team tripled production for Dropbox Sign by connecting their content calendar to workflows, SOPs, and campaign data.
Use digital listening as your secret weapon. "Digital listening feels like a secret weapon. Seeing audience conversations in aggregate and deciding our credible right to join." Tools like BrandWatch and Sprinklr help identify where the brand can add genuine value to existing conversations.
Listen to Episode 14 with Kate Pluth
6. Plan For Distribution First
Both Aditya Vempaty, VP of Marketing at MoEngage, and Tracey Wallace, Director of Content Strategy at Klaviyo, refuse to approve content without clear distribution plans. "If you can't tell me how you're going to distribute it, you're not doing it," says Aditya. Tracey takes a similar approach: "My very first question back to them is always, 'How are you gonna promote it?”
Make distribution planning mandatory before creation. Whoever requests content should be able to explain which customer, partner, or influencer will help share it.
Use quarterly planning to enforce the rule. Tracey eliminated intake forms entirely—teams must secure distribution partnerships through quarterly planning sessions.
Listen to Episode 06 with Aditya Vempaty
Listen to Episode 07 with Tracey Wallace
7. Pool Budgets Across Teams for Flagship Content
Stephanie Losee, former Director of Industry & Portfolio Marketing at Autodesk, convinced multiple departments to pool their separate research budgets into one integrated program. "If we combine those budgets with a team of two, we can do the work of 15 people at Ipsos," she told stakeholders—and delivered on that promise.
Find departments already commissioning separate studies. At Autodesk, brand, events, and demand gen each had budgets for commissioning studies from Deloitte, Forrester, or Ipsos. Instead of three separate reports, Stephanie convinced them to fund one comprehensive program.
Show how pooled budgets achieve each team's individual KPIs. The key is demonstrating that one shared study can hit unrelated KPIs across departments. This requires an executive sponsor who has relationships across the organization and can broker these budget conversations.
Listen to Episode 09 with Stephanie Losee
8. Treat Content as a Product with Roadmaps and Iterations
Build content platforms that evolve over years—single reports become webinars, summits, and campaign assets. As Former VP of Global Integrated Content Marketing at Square, Mallory Russell's "Future of Commerce" started as one research piece but grew into a multi-format platform used across every marketing program.
Start small, prove value, then iterate. "I'm a big fan of piloting and then iterating over time," says Mallory. "If you go really big from the get-go and it falls flat, you won't get the investment again." Her Future of Commerce started as one report and grew into a multi-format platform over five years.
Design content for multi-channel repurposing. Mallory uses the "Thanksgiving turkey" analogy—create the big centerpiece content, then slice it into social clips, email sequences, and sales enablement. "One core asset becomes dozens of customer journey touchpoints."
Optimize for algorithms, not just search engines. Mallory's team changed "SEO" to "Organic Discovery" to cover "all the places that algorithms are used to drive organic discoverability—YouTube, Reddit, Amazon, now AI." In AI platforms, "you don't rank, you get mentions" by building authority.
Listen to Episode 10 with Mallory Russell
9. Use Two-Tier Content Production to Balance Speed with Quality
Both Lane Scott Jones at Zapier and Kirti Sharma at Adobe use AI strategically to increase output without sacrificing quality on high-stakes content. Lane's team increased output by almost 30% while Kirti balances speed with strategic positioning through a clear tier system.
Use AI to accelerate routine production tasks. Zapier created bots that generate customer data for screenshots, write template copy, and turn Zoom transcripts into outlines in 30 seconds. Adobe uses AI for webinar follow-ups and routine communications that can be drafted with tools like Copilot, then edited by humans.
Reserve human writing for high-stakes, hands-on content. At Zapier, humans draft their top-performing "Wirecutter-style" app evaluations where writers actually test tools. Similarly, Adobe keeps strategic thought leadership and positioning work with humans.
Listen to Episode 08 with Lane Scott-Jones
Listen to Episode 12 with Kirti Sharma
10. Hand-Deliver Content in Person
Traditional content distribution fails at enterprise scale because it treats prospects as anonymous leads in a funnel. Matt Hummel at Pipeline360 takes the opposite approach. He hand delivers research reports to 600-700 marketers through in-person meetings.
Make content delivery an event. Matt travels globally to deliver research through 90-minute "therapy sessions" where prospects share their challenges while he tailors insights to their specific situation. This builds trust that digital channels can't replicate.
Focus on relationship expansion, not lead generation. Matt measures success by whether accounts continue to grow and expand services, plus whether content opens doors to new contacts within target accounts through warm introductions.
“We’re doing one-to-one ABM… we’re taking long-form content, personalizing it, and delivering it at the individual account level.”— Matt Hummel, Chief Marketing Officer at Pipeline360
Listen to Episode 05 with Matt Hummel
Enterprise Strategy Requires Coalition Building
Most enterprise content teams underestimate the political work required to change how organizations operate.
Kay-Kay convinced growth and product marketing teams to take ownership of distribution. Heike got executives to restructure how four functions planned together. Jennifer got product marketing and integrated marketing to show up for shared metrics.
These leaders spend as much time on organizational change as they do on content strategy. They build coalitions, broker budget conversations, and restructure planning processes.
Before trying any of these approaches, map who needs to say yes, who controls the resources you need, and who benefits from the current way of doing things. Then make change feel inevitable rather than optional.