How to Orchestrate Technical Content to Drive Business
In the second webinar in our “How to Set Up a Content Marketing Engine” series, Manuel Weiss shared proven frameworks for orchestrating technical content that directly drives business revenue. As the co-founder of a tech startup that scaled to millions in ARR through strategic content marketing, Manuel revealed how companies can move beyond inspiration-driven content to systematic, revenue-focused strategies.
This session covered the essential elements for transforming content marketing from a cost center into a predictable revenue engine, particularly in the age of AI overviews and zero-click content.
Here’s What We’ll Cover:
- Understanding the Content Funnel in the AI Era
- How to Build Evergreen Content as Your Traffic Foundation
- How to Create Strategic Content Clusters
- How to Leverage Spiky Content for Brand Awareness
- Strategic Content Planning and Execution
- Maximizing Content ROI Through Retargeting
- Answering Your Questions
- Conclusion
Understanding the Content Funnel in the AI Era
The foundation of strategic content orchestration starts with understanding where your readers are in their journey and adapting to new realities. Manuel explained how AI overviews have fundamentally changed top-of-funnel content strategy.
About 75% of extremely generic top funnel content is answered in such a satisfying way and in such a good enough way by the AI overviews that people don’t even click through to the website where that original information came from. – Manuel Weiss
The content funnel remains crucial for understanding reader intent, but companies must now start deeper in the funnel. Rather than competing with AI for generic “what is” content, successful technical content marketing requires more specific, long-tail approaches that provide value beyond what AI can summarize.
Manuel emphasized that different business goals require different funnel focus. Early-stage companies might concentrate on awareness (top-of-funnel), while established products need middle-of-funnel content to bridge the gap between awareness and product consideration. This strategic approach to breaking down the marketing funnel in B2B ensures content aligns with business objectives.
Content Funnel Strategy
Why is AI taking away from the top of the funnel? AI overviews now answer about 75% of generic, basic questions directly in search results without requiring clicks to websites. When someone searches “What is continuous integration?” they get a satisfactory answer from AI without visiting your site. This forces marketers to create more specific, valuable content that goes beyond basic definitions.
Should I avoid top-funnel content because of AI overviews? No, but go deeper. Instead of “What is continuous integration?” target “Different types and benefits of data integrations for enterprise teams.”
What’s the biggest mistake companies make with content funnels? Creating large content gaps between funnel stages. Most companies struggle with middle-of-funnel content that bridges awareness and product consideration, leaving readers without a clear path to conversion.
How to Build Evergreen Content as Your Traffic Foundation
Evergreen content serves as the heartbeat of sustainable content marketing, providing the guaranteed traffic base that companies can systematically convert into leads and revenue.
This compounds over time. And the really important thing here is, we are very strategic about how we think about which topics to utilize that we can use for evergreen content. Content discovery here is a science, not an art. – Manuel Weiss
The key to successful evergreen content lies in strategic topic discovery based on keyword research, competitive analysis, and understanding your capacity to produce quality content. Manuel shared how one Draft.dev blog post consistently generates 1,000 page views per month, demonstrating how 20 such articles can create a guaranteed base of 16,000 unique visitors monthly.
This approach requires patience, as evergreen content typically builds momentum over 2-3 months rather than generating immediate traffic spikes. However, the compound effect creates a reliable foundation for lead generation and business growth. Our guide on generating content ideas that resonate with software developers provides additional frameworks for systematic topic discovery.
Evergreen Content Strategy
How long does it take for evergreen content to start working? Typically 2-3 months to reach base traffic levels. Manuel’s example showed a post taking about 2 months to reach its consistent 1,000 monthly page views.
What’s the minimum publishing frequency for evergreen content? At least twice per month to establish momentum and signal search engines about consistent, fresh content. This creates accountability and builds topical authority over time.
How to Create Strategic Content Clusters
Manuel introduced the concept of content clusters—organized groups of related articles that work together to establish topical authority and guide readers through the customer journey.
The framework involves creating umbrella articles (covering broad, high-volume keywords) supported by sub-articles (targeting specific, lower-competition keywords). This structure enables natural internal linking opportunities and helps search engines and AI platforms understand your domain’s expertise.
If you have the topics that belong together, and then you start interlinking them, this makes search engines, but also AI platforms understand what topics on your domain are about. So it gives you topical authority. – Manuel Weiss
Each content cluster can also generate lead magnets, with umbrella articles serving as the foundation for downloadable assets that capture qualified leads through gated forms. This systematic approach to topic clusters ensures content works together strategically rather than competing for attention.
The power of this approach extends beyond SEO benefits. Content clusters create multiple touchpoints for readers to engage with your brand, increasing the likelihood of conversion through repeated exposure and deepening expertise demonstration.
Content Clusters
How do I turn a content cluster into a lead magnet? Use the umbrella article as a foundation for a comprehensive PDF guide. Since it already covers all sub-topics at a high level, it naturally becomes valuable gated content.
How to Leverage Spiky Content for Brand Awareness
While evergreen content builds consistent traffic, spiky content creates opportunities for massive exposure and retargeting audience building. This type of content aims to get picked up by “multiplicators”—platforms like Hacker News, tech newsletters, and industry publications that actively work to grow their audiences.
Manuel recommended a strategic approach: for every three evergreen articles, attempt one piece of spiky content. This content should be timely, opinionated, or take contrarian stances that spark discussion and sharing.
You want to basically get picked up in what I call multiplicators, and multiplicators are basically places platforms that work hard on getting more eyes onto their platform. – Manuel Weiss
The real power of spiky content isn’t the immediate traffic—it’s building retargeting audiences. When an article generates 20,000 visitors in one day, those visitors can be retargeted for 90 days with brand awareness messages and relevant lead magnets.
Understanding how to maximize your content marketing ROI becomes crucial when leveraging these traffic spikes effectively.
Spiky Content
What topics work best for spiky content? Timely content (new product releases, beta reviews), controversial takes, or strong opinions about industry trends. Avoid jumping on competitors’ outages unless it aligns with your values.
How often should I attempt spiky content? Once per month if publishing weekly, or once per quarter if publishing bi-weekly. The key is consistency in attempting, not in succeeding.
What if my spiky content doesn’t get picked up? That’s normal. Even a 1-in-6 success rate can fill your retargeting audience for months. Focus on creating genuinely valuable, shareable content rather than chasing virality.
Strategic Content Planning and Execution
Success requires moving from reactive, inspiration-driven content creation to strategic, systematic planning. Manuel emphasized the importance of content calendars and consistent publishing schedules.
Companies should aim to publish at least twice per month to establish momentum and signal search engines about consistent, fresh content. The content mix should align with business goals—early-stage companies focusing on awareness, growth-stage companies emphasizing consideration and conversion content.
We want to be able to act and not react. We want to strategically plan what type of content we can put out there right? – Manuel Weiss
This systematic approach enabled Manuel’s previous company to generate 1,500 marketing qualified leads per month from content marketing, with a base level of 85,000 unique readers monthly—all managed by a three-person team.
The planning process involves understanding your target audience deeply, conducting thorough keyword research, analyzing competitive gaps, and creating content that fits strategically within your funnel framework. Our comprehensive guide on how to create a technical content plan provides additional frameworks for systematic content strategy.
Maximizing Content ROI Through Retargeting
The webinar emphasized that content marketing success depends heavily on what happens after publication. Retargeting allows companies to stay connected with readers who visit once and leave, turning single interactions into ongoing brand awareness opportunities.
Manuel recommended setting up retargeting audiences with exclude lists to avoid spamming users who have already converted. For example, visitors who download a lead magnet should be excluded from ads promoting that same asset, ensuring respectful and strategic audience engagement.
The most powerful aspect of retargeting is its cost structure—impressions are free, and you only pay when someone clicks. This means you can maintain brand awareness with thousands of visitors for months without additional cost, unless they actively engage.
Retargeting Strategy
What should my retargeting ads promote? Start with simple brand awareness (logo + tagline), then promote relevant lead magnets that match the original content topic. Always use exclude audiences to avoid showing ads to people who’ve already converted.
How do I set up exclude audiences effectively? Create conversion events on thank-you pages after form submissions. Then, exclude visitors to these pages from seeing ads for the same offers, ensuring you don’t spam converted prospects.
Answering Your Questions
What’s a good mix of evergreen content and spiky content? What’s the minimal setup?
Publish at least twice per month to establish momentum. For this frequency, attempt one spiky content piece per quarter—so one spiky attempt for every six evergreen articles. If publishing weekly, try one spiky piece monthly alongside three evergreen pieces.
What if I’m just on a very small team? What content output should I focus most on?
For technical co-founders, start with bottom-of-funnel content since you’re already writing documentation and building the product. Create tutorials naturally extending from your documentation. However, if you have cash flow, focus on top-of-funnel awareness content to cast a wider net, understanding the longer conversion timeline.
Can you talk more about retargeting and other good strategies?
The key is using exclude audiences respectfully. After someone downloads a lead magnet via a thank-you page, exclude them from ads promoting that same asset. You can also create targeted ads based on URL parameters—showing Python-specific ads to visitors who read Python content, and Ruby ads to Ruby content readers.
Conclusion
Orchestrating technical content to drive business requires a systematic approach that combines strategic planning, consistent execution, and smart amplification tactics. By understanding the content funnel, building evergreen traffic foundations, creating strategic content clusters, and leveraging both spiky content and retargeting, technical companies can create predictable revenue engines from their content marketing efforts.
The key is moving beyond ad-hoc content creation to disciplined, data-driven strategies that compound over time. As Manuel demonstrated through his own experience and client successes, this approach can generate millions in revenue when implemented with consistency and strategic focus.
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