For brands, content is no longer just a marketing tool, it’s a product. It has goals, life cycles, audiences, and a measurable impact. In a recent podcast conversation, Christine Deakers, Global Head of Content at Bessemer Venture Partners, emphasized how businesses should approach content with the same rigor and intention as they would any product. Drawing from her background in storytelling, brand marketing, and campaign orchestration across earned and owned media, Christine laid out a framework that redefines modern content strategy.
Through her insights, it's clear that content teams must evolve from reactive producers of assets to strategic partners who drive growth, shape narratives, and bridge the gap between technology and human experience.
Content as a Strategic Vehicle for Impact
Christine makes a compelling case for thinking of content as a tool for transformation, not just traffic generation. Whether it's content for developers or business decision-makers, she believes content has the power to create genuine impact across an entire organization.
“Content is a strategic vehicle to change the hearts, minds, and perspectives of your target audience. And most importantly aid in driving deal flow.”
Rather than simply generating clicks, Christine encourages content teams to anchor their work in outcomes and scale the connection between subject matter experts and the ideal reader or customer profile. She illustrates this with examples of developer-focused content that isn’t just educational but builds loyalty, advocacy, and drives the desired behavior businesses want to see in their audiences. Content is a tool, and every campaign or digital or IRL touchpoint must have an intended impact. The success of a campaign begins with aligning business objectives with key messages and ensuring the product or asset can drive awareness, deepen usage and engagement, and drive sales.
Christine emphasizes the importance of treating content creation as a full product lifecycle, with clear objectives, roadmaps, and collaboration across departments like product, sales, and customer success. You need to define what success looks like, measure it, and iterate based on feedback.
The Balance Between SEO and Human Relevance
Search engine optimization (SEO) is still crucial, but Christine warns against letting it drive content strategy entirely. Instead, she promotes a hybrid approach that values both visibility and value.
“Content should be optimized for SEO, but not built solely for it.”
At the time of publishing this article, Christine made it clear that while SEO still plays an important role in a digital strategy, the rise of generative engine optimization (GEO) is now a pressing priority for marketing leaders, as we’re in the very early innings of LLMs influencing brand equity, traffic trends, and aiding in discovery.
Too often, organizations treat content as a volume game, producing high-velocity outputs that might rank well but fail to connect meaningfully with readers. Christine shares how she has restructured content teams to step away from this transactional model. She advocates for editorial excellence, where content is designed with the user’s needs, pain points, and journey in mind.
Content should speak to real people, offer tactical insights, while still satisfying search algorithms.
“Content is about offering proprietary insights at scale,” she said. “When brands offer insightful, useful, and generous insights to their core audience, and do so ethically and with responsibility, they build platforms of trust and authority that can differentiate their business in any market.”
Storytellers as Architects of Technology’s Narrative
Christine sees content as the bridge between the technical and the human.
Sometimes it’s the experts closest to “the work” that struggle the most to articulate what will resonate with customers. That’s where product marketing and content come in—not just as documentation, but as a vehicle for education, trust, and inspiration.
“Teams building emerging technology often struggle to speak without industry jargon, or have yet to determine the right vocabulary on why it matters, clearly and simply. In fact, storytelling is a mission-critical job for all leaders. The language we use is an expression of vision, and language plays a critical role in the adoption of new technology and the trajectory of a business.”
She also highlights the importance of working closely with your organization’s subject matter experts. At a venture capital firm, this looks like the investors, founders, and operators associated with the firm. However, at an AI or SaaS startup, this is often the executives, along with the product and engineering teams who are solving problems for customers. The success of content stems from unearthing the most important insights and lessons from these SMEs and getting these insights into the hands of your ICP to drive awareness, engagement, and action. And as it relates to product launches, how you position and message something new is a huge lever for net-new technology adoption.
Final Thoughts: A New Era of Content Strategy
According to Christine, brands are shifting marketing efforts to owned channels: “It’s never been a better time for brand journalism and for storytelling to be expressed through so many modes, not just written stories, but also video, audio, and information design. Plus, emerging AI tools are making us all more creative in how we engage with audiences and steer the conversation.”
And treating content like a product allows marketers to hold more control over the outcomes. Building content products means solving real problems or answering tough questions, collaborating across teams, measuring impact, and offering new ideas and insights to the world that sets an agenda that matches your market ambitions.
In noisy landscapes, Christine offers clarity: content is not just what you want to publish, it’s how you connect, convert, and lead the conversation.
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