Content is a product.

Content is a product.

It has users. People choose to read it, watch it, listen to it, attend it, save it, share it, or use it to do something they couldn't do as well before.

Those people have expectations. The experience can fulfill them, disappoint them, become part of their routine, or give them a reason to avoid whatever the company publishes next.

Putting content inside a marketing department doesn't change any of that.

It does change how we talk about it. Content becomes campaign fodder, search inventory, a lead-capture device, sales collateral, thought-leadership material, or raw material waiting to be chopped into smaller rectangles.

Every label describes what the business plans to do with it. Almost none describes what the audience receives.

I think that omission explains a lot of the content decisions I've encountered in B2B.

• A campaign needs an ebook, so someone makes an ebook.

• Social needs feeding, so everything gets repurposed.

• A founder sees another founder getting attention with a podcast, and suddenly there's a podcast on the calendar.

Any of those choices could make sense. But the request can be satisfied without anyone deciding why a person would choose the result.

Try approaching your business product that way.

“But the product is the product!”

Whenever I describe content this way, the objection I hear is blunt:

I understand the objection. The company sells software, a service, equipment, or something else. Content exists to support that business. Surely calling content a product confuses the assignment.

I also think the objection mistakes the thing the company sells as the only thing it produces for people to use. Content doesn't replace the business product. It provides opportunities for the company to influence the people who buy it — again and again.

Still not convinced? Take the marketing label off for a moment and content sounds suspiciously like every other product:

• It has users. People choose it over everything else competing for their attention, then decide whether to come back. Calling those people prospects doesn’t erase the experience they’re having.

• It has jobs-to-be-done. It can help someone understand a complicated idea, complete a task, prepare for a conversation, or make a decision. The company has a job for it, too. That doesn’t replace the audience’s job.

• It makes a promise. A title, subject line, trailer, or description tells people what they’ll get in exchange for their time. Whether the content keeps that promise shapes whether they trust the next thing carrying the same name.

• It has a user experience. Discovery, registration forms, loading time, navigation, pacing, design, readability, and sharing are all part of it. Useful information can still arrive inside a miserable product.

• It can become a habit. A welcome email or “start here” page orients newcomers. Consistent voice, structure, formats, and hosts teach people what to expect. Familiarity can make each new piece easier to start. Checking for the next one can become part of someone’s routine.

• It has a lifecycle. Content gets conceived, produced, released, maintained, refreshed, repackaged, and retired. Leaving those decisions to accident doesn’t make the lifecycle disappear. It makes the product poorly managed.

I don’t know what else to call something that does all of that other than a product.

Let me be clear about something here — two things, actually:

1. Calling anything a product doesn't magically make it better — bad products exist.

2. Calling content a product doesn't mean every LinkedIn post requires a twelve-month roadmap or anything equally ridiculous.

Product thinking changes what content gets prioritized, how it’s made, and what evidence the team needs to justify the investment.

This is what changes when you treat it like a product.

Imagine two teams are tasked with putting on a webinar. One team doesn't treat content like a product, the other does religiously.

The first team asks: what do we need?

That question keeps them focused on getting the webinar made. So they pick a topic that supports the current campaign, get a subject matter expert on the calendar, and produce a webinar that follows precedent: a 30-minute “anything goes” slide presentation — Q&A promised for 15 minutes, usually cut to five.

The second team asks something different: why should this exist — why would anybody carve an hour out of their day, over everything else that warrants their attention?

That question directs their attention to what the audience needs to receive. So they work backwards: Who specifically? What would they need to get out of it? What would make them show up live instead of skipping the recording?

With those questions answered, they confidently choose a topic those people need help with, bring in a subject matter expert who can offer that help, and design the session around what attendees should leave with. A 30-minute presentation followed by Q&A might be exactly right. But now they have a reason for choosing it beyond “that’s how we do webinars.”

The first team can report how many people registered and attended. An attribution report might also connect those attendees to pipeline. Those numbers still leave questions about what the audience received and what the webinar contributed.

The second team has two jobs to assess: the one the audience showed up for, and the one that justified the company’s investment.

• If the webinar promised a practical approach, the team could follow up to learn whether attendees tried it, what helped, and where they remained stuck.

• If its business job was to help potential buyers evaluate the company’s offering, conversations with those buyers could reveal which questions the session answered and what remained unresolved.

Different jobs would call for different evidence.

Defining those jobs helps the team decide what feedback to collect and use when deciding whether to repeat the webinar, change it, or stop.

And those jobs give the team something to answer for: did the webinar deliver what the audience came for and what the business invested in?

Take responsibility for all your products.

When your company ships a business product, it accepts responsibility for the people, money, and time required to deliver what it promised. Fail to provide those resources and you risk breaking a promise to someone who was counting on you.

Content makes the same promises, too.

If that webinar promises to help the audience work through their actual problems, keeping that promise takes preparation. The team has to collect real cases. The team has to prepare with the practitioner. The team has to plan the discussion. Those requirements need to shape their budget and schedule before anyone commits to a date.

Recognizing content as a product doesn't change what you promised. It just makes the cost of keeping that promise visible.

Ready to take responsibility for your content products?

• Start with something the company already offers: a newsletter, guide, show, or recurring event. Identify the people it serves, the promise it makes, and who owns delivering that promise.

• Examine what you know about how people use it, what they receive, and the role it performs for the business.

• Then decide what deserves more investment, what needs repair, and what should stop.

Let those decisions shape the next brief and budget. Give the work you choose to keep an owner and the resources to deliver on its promise.

Thanks for reading. If this gave you something useful to bring back to your team, I’d love to hear about it.

I’m also looking for my next role after getting laid off July 2026.

If you’re a recruiter or hiring manager looking for someone to help your company decide what content is worth making, who it serves, and how it supports the business, let’s talk.

Know someone I should meet? I’d appreciate an introduction.

♥

Ronnie