Shifting From Content as a Service to Content as a Program

Managing content can feel a lot like treading water. One minute, you're responding to an urgent sales team request. The next, you're editing a last-second blog post. Then, you're wrapping up the CEO's fast-tracked case study.

Sure, you're staying afloat. But you're operating in service mode, focusing all your bandwidth on meeting other teams' demands.

This approach certainly meets immediate content needs. But it doesn't leave any space for building a long-term strategy or a scalable program—which can lead to misalignment and lost opportunities.

The ultimate goal is shifting away from treating content as a service (i.e., a commodity) and toward thinking of content as a program (i.e., a strategic initiative). This way, your content strategy becomes the main priority, helping you collaborate more effectively, scale more quickly, and deliver more impactful content.

Making this move isn't exactly easy, as it requires getting stakeholder buy-in, rethinking workflows, and reviewing priorities. So I spoke with several content leaders to learn the best way to approach this shift, why it's so important, and how to set your team up for success.

What happens when content teams stay in service mode

Sticking to a service model might not seem so problematic at first. But over time, this approach can create serious concerns for both your content team and the business.

Endless firefighting

Sales needed that enablement content yesterday. Growth wants to get those SEO posts published ASAP. And your CEO has already followed up five times about that research report.

When you treat content like a service, you spend most of your time fulfilling requests from stakeholders. There's no room for strategic planning—just executing on tasks.

It's no surprise then that only 29% of content marketers report that their strategy is very or extremely effective.

Misaligned teams

"We've created so much content, and one of our biggest challenges has been making sure it's packaged and distributed in the most effective way so people realize that it even exists," Kasey Fleisher Hickey, Head of Content and Brand at Retool, explains on an episode of Content, Briefly.

When you focus more on checking boxes and less on developing a cohesive strategy, you're likely to feel disconnected from other departments. If you spend all your time cranking out content, you don’t have much left to communicate your efforts or prove your value to other teams. This takes a toll on both morale and output.

This might be why aligning content across sales and marketing is an ongoing challenge for 43% of content marketers. And why 40% of B2B marketers find it difficult to communicate across organizational silos.

Lost opportunities

When you're in service mode, you're constantly responding to what's in front of you. So while your content might fulfill one-off needs, it doesn't align with broader business goals.

When you can't see the forest for the trees, you end up missing out on important opportunities. For example, you might miss chances to build valuable partnerships, lean into impactful formats, or run insightful experiments.

You could end up with a content program that never really takes off. You wouldn't be alone: only 35% of B2B content marketers report having a scalable model for content creation.

Practical steps to build a strategic content program

Shifting from viewing content as a commodified service to taking a long-term programmatic approach can improve strategic focus, lead to smoother collaboration, and set the stage for scaling. Here's how to make it happen.

Create a reliable workflow

A structured content program needs a reliable workflow. For many content teams, this starts with an intake form.

Instead of letting sales, growth, customer success, or the C-suite request content on their own terms, the intake form standardizes the process. It ensures you receive requests in one place and get the answers you need.

What to include in your intake form

Your form should collect all the information you need to consider the request and decide how to move forward.

"We cover the tactical bits within the intake form—SME, suggested format, timing, purpose, and data sources or background materials," shares Mychelle Peterson, Director of Content & Social at HUB International. "But the most important part focuses on the objective of the piece, the key takeaways, and how it aligns to a business goal."

"The content team I lead supports our entire portfolio of 15 industry practices and lines of business, so it’s critical for us to ladder back to goals. We need to know the content we’re creating is valuable to the right audiences: namely our clients and prospects," Mychelle explains.

Why an intake form is so important

Content requests from other departments might be well-intentioned. But they might not be as urgent or as necessary as the requester thinks.

"We found that someone would ask for something because it was a hot topic or because they saw a competitor talking about it. But they wouldn’t be able to articulate why we needed the piece, why our point of view was unique or additive, or what the main takeaways should be."

As Mychelle puts it, "Ultimately, I always say, 'If you can’t complete the form, it’s because you’re not ready to create a new piece.' There’s more thinking to be done before looping the content team in, and that’s why those fields are required."

A thoughtful intake form can also help your team avoid wasting time or taking on too much. For Michelle Jackson, Chief Strategy Officer at BackPocket Agency, this element was essential for executing a successful rebrand.

“A client had just completed a major merger of multiple hospitals, so the requests for content were coming at warp speed from all sorts of stakeholders. We had also just instilled a new content brand and needed to make sure new content requests were on brand."

Michelle explains, "This intake form helped us prioritize efforts as well as build up a strong content brand and content deliverables all supporting organizational objectives.”

Set priorities that matter to your team

Once you know what kind of content your stakeholders need, it's up to you to prioritize their demands. You can do this by creating a clear framework for processing requests and making sure they align with your content strategy.

As Mychelle says, "Everyone thinks their content is important, and in reality, it all is, but we have finite resources. That’s why goals are our foundation."

Use a proven formula

Setting priorities and ranking requests can get complex. A tried-and-true framework helps you get started quickly.

"We used this framework called ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) early on. It was super helpful when we were building our content strategy culture," shares Erika Musser, Content Lead at Zenmaid.

"Individual team members would score ideas from 1-10 on each factor. If something had a high impact score of 9, decent confidence level of 5, and was super easy to do (10), we'd prioritize it over something with lower scores."

But it's important to let your process evolve with your content program. "These days, since we have a more established content flywheel, it's become more of a natural process," Erika explains.

Create your own custom framework

When established formulas don't quite fit your team's needs, develop a custom framework instead.

"Our approach to content prioritization balances business impact with timing and opportunity," explains Kasey. She asks questions like these to gauge the potential business impact for Attentive:

• "Is this tied to a larger initiative like a GTM launch or campaign?"
• "Will it significantly change how we communicate about our products and business?"
• "Is this going to deliver value to our customers and help with adoption, expansion, or advocacy?"
• "Does this fill a gap?"

Business impact is only part of the equation for Attentive. "Timing and opportunity are equally crucial," Kasey confirms.

"When major industry news breaks and we have a strong perspective to share, we need to move quickly to establish thought leadership and customer education. These moments often present both risks and opportunities that we can't ignore.”

Get stakeholders on board

To create a successful content program, you need buy-in from both stakeholders and your team. Clear communication is often the foundation of these relationships.

"My advice is always about communication," Mychelle explains. "Level set. Be clear. If you’re testing a new process, let people know you’re open to feedback and really listen. I’m the first one to say what we tried didn’t work, so let’s refine again."

Be prepared to adapt. "Nothing about content is set in stone," Mychelle says. "We’re evolving along with the rest of the business world, seemingly by the second. We have to keep changing along with our stakeholders."

Find effective ways to negotiate with stakeholders. "We’ve made progress in communicating that not everything needs to be a white paper or a long-form article," Mychelle elaborates.

"Getting people on board with new content types that might take less time to produce has won some folks over, because it minimizes their own time commitment, too. Everyone is looking to do more with less."

Most importantly, find creative ways to say yes to stakeholders. Move forward in a way that meets their needs while still aligning with your strategy.

“When it comes to working with teams, I believe in transparency," Kasey shares. "We share the why and back it up with past experiences and performance data. Ultimately, we do our best to not say no. Rather, we work through the right content solution to a problem, challenge, or opportunity."

Adopt centralized tools

The simpler your content marketing tech stack is, the easier you can focus on what really matters: producing impactful content. Once you decide to produce a piece of content, you need an easy way to execute it.

With a content operations platform like Relato, you can manage everything in one place. Upload strategy documents, manage briefs, set deadlines, and request approvals all in one place.

Relato replaces the Frankenstack that many content teams get stuck with—a disconnected jumble of tools that don't sync and often end up creating more work for everyone.

As David Baum, Relato's CEO and Co-founder, explains, "Relato is a content operations platform that puts AI to work on boring, repetitive chores so that you don't have to do them."

Tips for a successful strategic shift

Keep these tips in mind as you plan your move from content as a service to content as a program, so you can make the process better for everyone.

Make it easier to self-serve

"For us, one major shift had to do with mindset: Be a resource, not a roadblock," shares Taylor Sutton, Content Manager at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. "Because content production moved through our very small team, it was easy for our bandwidth to be a bottleneck in getting content out."

Taylor's team provided templates and guides, essentially creating a "self-service publishing setup" for internal departments. This way, his team could act as resources rather than gatekeepers.

"Instead of reviewing and editing things after they were written, we set teams up with guidelines that let them move faster while still being on brand," Taylor explains. "That gave us enough space to start work on the slower, content marketing projects that we knew we were missing."

Get stakeholders involved

When you publish new content, make it as easy as possible for everyone to find. "What's really helped [at Zenmaid] is keeping everyone in the loop," Erika shares.

"We have this Marketing Announcements channel in Slack where we regularly share what's being published and what's coming up. I also keep a spreadsheet of content ideas suggested from other team members so they know they're being heard, even if we're prioritizing other things at the moment."

Measure your impact

To refine your approach, you need to know what's working. Content measurement and attribution aren't always easy, so finding the right metrics might take some experimentation.

“To measure our effectiveness, we track multiple indicators," explains Kasey. "Organic traffic and brand awareness are important, but we also look closely at pipeline influence, SEO metrics, backlinks, and word-of-mouth feedback. This data helps inform our decisions and conversations with stakeholders.”

Erika's team at Zenmaid is testing better ways to "track the user journey from content to conversion." But attribution presents a challenge.

"Between ChatGPT, Reddit, and the general evolution of organic search, plus all the privacy updates from Apple and cookie changes, it's gotten pretty complex," Erika shares. "Outside of more obvious indicators of success like more trial sign ups, we're experimenting with different engagement metrics like time spent on blog posts and email interaction rates."

Consider your growth stage

Not all content teams should approach strategy the same way. Always consider what's most important given your growth stage.

"For early-stage startups, all content efforts should support two outcomes: First, accelerating the journey toward product-market-fit and second, building your audience in preparation for a broader GTM motion," David suggests.

It's not until later (e.g., when you reach the growth stage) that you'll be ready to build a scalable program.

"Working on product-market-fit early on, it makes the most sense to build a founder brand and double down on the channel and tactics that work," David explains. "Tactics involve describing the problems you solve and building a solution in public. Once you get traction with an audience, stick to it and do more of that thing."

However, David cautions against launching an SEO program early on, citing the many startups that invest in search-driven content, only to pivot when it doesn't work right away. "Everything you do in content at this stage is in the service of understanding your customer and building a product that meets their needs."

Scale your content program

Once you're certain about your ICP and the channels and tactics that work for your customers, David advises, "Stay focused and do more of what works. Much, much more. And wait with everything else."

Watch for performance to stall and outcomes to plateau. This is your sign to add a new tactic or channel. Get it to work smoothly. Then, rinse and repeat.

"This is the point you should start thinking about adding talent to your team," David suggests. "Don’t drop what’s working until it runs well without you, with the same quality."

"A constant struggle when scaling content under strict resource constraints—doing more with less—is managing all the busywork while securing time to think clearly, go deep, and stay creative. All of those 'pass the butter' tasks get in the way of what really matters—doing great work."

Build the best process for your team

It's time to stop treading water and scrambling to meet requests. When you move from content as a service to content as a program, you prioritize impactful work, empower teams to deliver results, and implement processes that scale.

Relato makes this shift a reality for content managers. With tools to manage workflows, priorities, and collaboration in one place, Relato gives your team the clarity and control you need to operate strategically.