✍️ good content, bad leads

Here’s something too many marketers learn the hard way. Great content gets you halfway there—then stalls out.

You can nail your content strategy, hit every editorial beat, and build real audience loyalty. But if your demand gen strategy is slapping generic promos on thoughtful content?

You’re building a beautiful storefront with a broken cash register.

Kyle Denhoff, Senior Director of Marketing at HubSpot, has seen the brand–demand disconnect play out firsthand. More on his “ACOM” framework below.

When was the last time you were excited to watch a mid-video YouTube ad? 

Exactly. 

“One misstep brands make is assuming they can put a promotion into their content, and it’ll work just because there’s an audience there,” says Kyle. 

He should know. HubSpot Media boasts an impressive suite of newsletters, YouTube channels, and over 30 podcasts, reaching tens of millions of people every month—and a tailor-made offer strategy to convert them.  

For many marketers, the offer comes as an afterthought. People think, ‘Oh, I have this great media product, now what can I plug in to monetize it?’” he says. 

The smartest marketers flip the script: reader first, you second.

“The better question is, ‘I have this great library of assets I can monetize. How do I package those across formats and channels that actually meet my audience where they are, with what they need?’” 

To better tie lead gen to content, Kyle developed the ACOM framework: Audience-Content-Offer Match.

Here’s a preview of how it works. 

Step 1: The demographics trap (and what to track instead) 

Yes, the usual demographics—job titles, company size, industry—help. But deeper insights come from figuring out where your audience actually spends their time online.  

After all, content and its role in the buying journey have drastically changed since HubSpot first wrote the book on inbound SEO. 

→ YouTube has become the second-largest search engine
→ Substack has hit tens of millions of subscribers
→ TikTok-ification has come to nearly every social media platform

People are also increasingly consuming content on mobile (yes, even B2B buyers), app-hopping across 3–5 content apps on any given day. 

Kyle’s team realized the old workhorse—SEO blog posts—wasn’t pulling the same weight. It just wasn’t the format of choice anymore.

In response, they conducted customer interviews that revealed a growing interest in podcasts. “And so, the first investment that we made was into podcasts, and My First Million came over with our acquisition of The Hustle,” he says. 

We sat down with Kyle to dive deeper into his full framework. Take notes on the remaining 2 steps from his full playbook here.

Campaigns that got us talking:

We’ve all thought it: what if we just hire an influencer to rep our brand? Well, turns out there’s a lot more nuance to it if you want to drive real results. Typeform asked 1,300+ marketers, influencers, and consumers what they really think about influencer marketing.

AI tool you pretend to already know:

Have you given the video model Veo 3 a spin yet? The results are insane, and some creators are taking advantage of this new frontier video model. Check out the prompt to re-create it.

Stuff that made us scroll back up:

“If your brand could say one final thing before it died…what would it be?” Sarah Suzuki Harvard shares the dying wishes of famous brands.

Our 30-minute interview template will help you get right to the heart of what your audience wants and how they act once they get it. Think of this process as reverse-engineering your audience's decision-making process, so you can meet them exactly where they are with exactly what they need to take the next step.

The downloadable template. Mobile-unfriendly, a little clunky, and yet we just can’t let it go. Template or trap? You tell us.

Vote here.

• Actionable > aesthetic, always

• Not mobile-first? Dead to me

• Maybe—depends on audience

• I’m a checklist devotee

And here’s what you told us last week:

All dressed up and nowhere to go. That’s what beautiful, tailored content with not-so-tailored offers can feel like. But with the ACOM framework, you can bring audiences to a truly valuable destination: your sales funnel. 

Are there marketing topics you want us to cover? Expertise you want to share? Hit that reply button. 

See y’all next time. 

— the storyarb writers’ room 🫡

Oh! And another thing… Here’s a marketing strategy we haven’t smelled before. Razor brand Billie plastered NYC with 8-foot tall scratch n’ sniff armpits.