Content as infrastructure

Not a channel. Not a tactic. The layer that powers everything.

👋 Hey, I’m George Chasiotis. Welcome to GrowthWaves, your weekly dose of B2B growth insights—featuring powerful case studies, emerging trends, and unconventional strategies you won’t find anywhere else.

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Even though I started my marketing career in content, throughout the years, I’ve touched pretty much every other aspect of marketing:

• Events

• Paid media

• Signal-based outbound

• Building in public

• And more

If that sounds like bits and pieces of a generalist job description, well, it’s because it is.

I’m a marketing generalist, and to be honest, I like it that way.

Even though you can earn a lot by specializing and going deep into one of these areas, I refuse to do it.

There are two reasons behind my logic:

1. I enjoy it that way.

2. In a time when AI is crushing business models and marketing channels, I want to maintain optionality.

But wait, what was I saying?

Ah, yeah, content…

After touching all these different aspects of marketing, I realized that content is the layer that powers—or supports—almost every aspect of most B2B SaaS companies.

Let me explain.

Content as infrastructure

The idea of content as infrastructure isn’t really novel.

In fact, there have been some lone wolves openly discussing the importance of content for pretty much every aspect of running a business.

In marketing specifically, content has been, is, and always will be the cornerstone of a company’s strategy.

If your CEO tells you otherwise, they either don’t understand marketing or don’t believe in it enough—or both.

So, content is infrastructure.

The problem is that following the 2020-2022 ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) period, content became somewhat of a “luxury.”

Oddly enough, after ChatGPT’s public release in late 2022, the perception of content shifted and became synonymous with a commodity.

Put simply, for a while, people treated content as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have, especially in an environment of heightened ROI scrutiny. At the same time, the marketing industry breathed a collective sigh of relief when AI promised to reduce content costs.

But that was short-lived in my opinion.

Then AI search rose. Executive ghostwriting followed. And traditionally reliable channels like paid media started underperforming. Marketers sought shelter in content once again.

Regardless of the macro or micro environment, content never stopped being important—at least in my view.

It is infrastructure for many companies.

And if you’re struggling to explain how content actually drives the business forward in your next internal meeting, keep reading.

How content helps

I tried to collect as many ways as I could regarding how content helps with different marketing channels or functions within an organization.

The list is certainly not exhaustive, though.

Demand Capture

When I say “demand capture,” I mean literally capturing demand from in-the-market buyers.

Keep in mind that many of these buyers—depending on several factors—are simply window shopping.

Luckily, there are ways to nurture them, further educate them, and develop the relationship with them beyond that first touchpoint.

For example, the first touchpoint may be a piece of content or a content campaign.

From there, you can layer additional touchpoints, such as paid retargeting on social media.

All that is to say that there are many ways content helps capture demand.

Here are some of these ways:

1. Gives you visibility in Google search

2. Gives you visibility in AI search

3. Keeps you discoverable without ongoing spend

4. Can be used for generating leads

5. Captures long-tail, high-intent queries that don’t justify ads

6. Let’s you rank for problem-aware searches

7. Continues capturing demand during budget freezes

Let’s move on to the next one.

Demand Generation

Capturing demand is one thing—generating it is another.

I find it surprising that most marketers—even “experienced” ones—can’t recognize the difference between the two concepts.

I also find it interesting that most marketers don’t realize most of what they work on daily is demand capture—not demand generation.

Semantics aside, demand generation means creating demand from buyers who are either early in their journey or not actively in the market yet, but fit the criteria of someone who could eventually buy from you.

In that context, here’s how content helps with demand generation:

1. Helps you build trust and authority

2. Familiarizes prospects with your POV

3. Helps you build mental availability

4. Helps you build brand

5. Helps you form relationships with influencers

Let’s move on to the next one.

Paid Media

One of the best things about content is that it plays nicely with other marketing channels or functions.

An example is paid media, which I briefly touched on earlier.

Content strengthens paid media by acting as the underlying asset and support mechanism.

Here are some ways:

1. Can be used as a destination for ads

2. Can help you build a retargeting audience

3. Lets you test positioning and messaging

Let’s move on to the next one.

Outreach

Content’s contribution doesn’t stop at paid media.

It can help with other marketing channels and activities, such as outreach.

This applies to both cold outreach and signal-based outreach.

Here are a couple of ways:

1. Can be used for outreach

2. Helps you de-anonymize high-intent visitors

Let’s move on to the next one.

Sales

Content’s contribution to sales can be significant.

In an ideal world, marketing and sales should operate as equals.

This isn’t always the case, as marketing is often treated as a stepchild that’s there only to “bring us the leads.”

Needless to say, that’s a recipe for failure.

Here are some of the ways content can help sales:

1. Can be used as sales collateral

2. Answers common objections before or after sales calls

3. Gives sales proof points that aren’t just “trust me” claims

4. Helps sales re-engage stalled deals with relevant context

Let’s move on to the next one.

Customer Success

Content helps other functions and teams within an organization besides the obvious ones (e.g., sales).

A good example is customer success, which often has significant content needs.

Here’s how content fits in:

1. Can be used for educating customers

2. Reduces repetitive support questions

3. Helps customers self-diagnose issues before contacting support

4. Improves retention by helping customers use the product correctly

5. Shortens time-to-value for new customers

6. Gives support a consistent reference point instead of ad-hoc answers

Let’s move on to the next one.

Strategy

Besides specific marketing channels or even functions within an organization, content also supports strategy.

It’s powerful in several ways—here are just a few:

1. Enables asynchronous trust-building at scale

2. Creates compounding returns over time

3. Reduces dependency on short-term tactics to hit targets

4. Increases the effectiveness of every downstream channel

5. Creates leverage without proportional increases in headcount

Let’s move on to the next one.

Internal

I’ve also found that content helps address internal challenges and support key factors that determine a business’s success, such as building an “institutional memory” for the company.

If you think about it, your SOPs, internal guides, workshops, and educational programs are all forms of content.

Just because it’s internal doesn’t mean it’s not content—or that you shouldn’t care about metrics like consumption and engagement.

Metrics you’d normally associate only with external-facing content.

Regardless, content can be really helpful for internal purposes.

Here are some ways in which content helps:

1. Acts as institutional memory for the company

2. Speeds up onboarding for new hires

3. Aligns different teams on messaging

There are many more ways content supports running and growing a company.

My intent here was simply to outline a few of them—a fraction of what content actually enables.

Because content is infrastructure.

Final thoughts

Content is changing fast.

You either drive that change and control your environment, or you follow someone else’s lead—and that’s rarely a winning position.

I like winning, even though obviously I don’t always win.

One of the things that helped me keep winning over the years has been content.

So, I’ll keep doing it, and will keep treating it as infrastructure in the businesses I build, help, advise, and work with.

Thank you for reading today’s note, and see you again in two weeks.

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