There’s a quiet crisis in B2B marketing. MQL targets are being hit, but sales teams aren’t converting—and they’re losing trust in marketing.
On Thursday, January 29th, we brought together Ashley Faus (Head of Lifecycle Marketing at Atlassian) and Laura Smith (Head of Revenue Marketing at Nagomi Security) to tackle one big question keeping demand gen teams up at night: Does content syndication work anymore? Moderated by Madelaine Oppert, our SVP of Global Marketing, the conversation didn’t just diagnose what’s broke, it gave listeners a roadmap for how to fix it.
Watch the full syndication discussion on-demand
Rethinking the buyer journey
When moderator Madelaine Oppert asked what’s changed in how enterprise teams evaluate content syndication today, the conversation immediately challenged conventional thinking. The focus, both speakers agreed, needs to shift away from whether buyers downloaded something and toward understanding whether their behavior aligns with how they’re buying.
Ashley introduced a powerful reframe: stop thinking about the funnel. Think about it as a playground instead. Buyers don’t follow a linear path—they explore, they wander, and they leave when they’re done. Most importantly, they don’t want to fill out forms to do any of it. The problem, as Ashley explained, is that marketers have historically done a poor job of being explicit about the intent behind each asset. That needs to change.
Laura, despite coming from a completely different world in security shared similar observations. In cyber especially, you must earn trust before you can expect meaningful engagement. You can’t rely solely on your brand’s credibility—you need proof points, and building those takes time. “Content is king,” Laura emphasized, but the real key is that quality matters more than quantity. The education journey is what’s most important.
When intent doesn’t mean what you think it means
The conversation moved on, with Madelaine asking when a lead should be considered meaningful. Laura’s response cut straight to the heart of the problem: “intent ≠ a filled out form.” She called this old school thinking—a mindset that needs to be retired.
Instead, both speakers emphasized the importance of looking at layered signals. Are they in your ICP? Are multiple people from the same account showing engagement? Most critically: does their behavior match what you solve for? Laura pointed out that sometimes people engage simply because they’re interested in a topic—which isn’t necessarily good for you if they’re never going to be buyers.
Madelaine raised another common misconception: companies often assume that someone looking at pricing must be in the conversion stage. That’s not correct. More often than not, pricing is what disqualifies prospects. It’s a filter, not a buying signal. Company-wide interest doesn’t automatically equal intent either.
Laura reframed the entire question: instead of asking “are they interested in us?”, the focus should be on whether you can help solve their problem based on what they’re searching for. Frame everything around how you can help, not whether they’re ready to convert.
If you’re handing over every pricing page visitor or whitepaper download to sales as a “hot lead,” you’re likely eroding trust with your sales team. Not all engagement signals indicate buying intent—some signals represent learning, competitive research, or general interest that will never materialize into revenue.
The moment trust breaks
Ashley delivered perhaps the most memorable illustration of what’s going wrong in syndication today. Picture this: someone in your network clicks on what’s advertised as a “State of Agile” report, for example. They’re expecting industry insights. Instead, the first page hits them with a brand product pitch.
Trust breaks instantly.
It’s a lose-lose situation, Ashley explained. Your audience stops trusting the content you share, and they don’t get what they were looking for either. This pattern is exactly why so many syndication programs are delivering bad leads, as those leads likely came from assets being named untruthfully.
The solution starts with understanding the difference between buy intent actions and learn intent actions, which is what Ashley described as explicit versus implicit intent.
“If you say learn more and then the next thing you do is pitch them, they’re not learning. You’ve now sent them down a buy-into-it path.”
Ashley said. She was emphatic about this: “It’s not our jobs as marketers to trick anyone to buy anything.” Just because someone has a title and a work email doesn’t mean they’re a lead.
If you’re struggling to rebuild trust with sales after delivering poor quality leads, start by auditing your asset naming and content alignment. Are your “educational” resources genuinely educational, or are they product pitches in disguise? This misalignment is probably the root cause of your quality issues—not your syndication vendor’s performance.
What makes a lead “hot”?
So how do you know when someone is truly ready to talk to sales?
For Ashley, the answer is straightforward: hot leads are the ones who click “contact us.” That’s explicit buying intent. Everything else requires deeper context. A state-of-industry report download is part of the buyer journey, but it simply shows interest in the topic, not necessarily readiness to purchase.
She gave a concrete example of how intent signals can get mixed up: if someone high up in an organization is searching for content about generative AI, they’re probably researching the topic for their own knowledge—not evaluating your solution. Differentiation is crucial here. You need to know your ICP intimately to make these calls correctly.
Laura took a slightly different but complementary approach. She challenged the fundamental question: what makes a lead “bad”? Sometimes, she argued, sales teams might be dismissing a contact who could serve as a pathway to the right stakeholder within an account. “We know they are probably not the buyer, but let’s use this to get to the buyer,” Laura suggested.
Both women agreed on the bigger principle: marketing shouldn’t hand over leads when buyers aren’t ready. There are plenty of touchpoints on your website where buyers can demonstrate intent. The role of marketing is to let them chart their own path, not force them down one.
The metrics that matter
If MQLs aren’t the right measure of success, what should marketing teams be tracking?
Laura shared that she doesn’t pay much attention to MQLs anymore. Instead, her focus is on revenue and meetings sourced that converted into opportunities.
Her specific approach centers on middle-funnel metrics that serve as indicators you’re heading in the right direction.
- Did you get more than one person from the account engaging with your content?
- Did you see continued engagement after the first touch?
These signals matter more than the initial download or form fill. For big enterprise deals, this journey can take 18 months or longer.
Content syndication is fundamentally a long game.
Laura also made an important point about evaluation. Content itself shouldn’t be graded in isolation. What happened after the initial engagement is far more important. You can’t look at intent or channels in isolation either. This approach also helps you evaluate vendors more effectively—if a program isn’t working, the issue might be with your asset rather than your vendor.
Ashley reinforced the need to reset stakeholder expectations: “Quit thinking of it ‘in this quarter’—there isn’t a quick fix.” You need to expand your time horizon to match your actual sales cycle. For enterprise, that could mean 18-20 months between first touch and closed deal.
Her tactical advice: evaluate your assets honestly. Which ones are driving meaningful engagement? Which aren’t? Be willing to make small but effective changes based on what the data tells you.
Stop interrupting the learning experience
One of the more spirited exchanges came when Madelaine asked about the best time to trigger calls-to-action on thought leadership content.
Ashley’s response was NEVER.
“If it’s true thought leadership–if it’s to build trust, or to help people learn, a pop up automatically does neither of those things. It breaks the trust, and interrupts the learning.”
Ashley explained.
Laura agreed completely. Thought leadership exists to generate interest, not to immediately capture and sell. Marketing needs to move away from heavy pop-up tactics and stop trying to sell immediately. CTAs should come from your sales team when buyers show genuine readiness, not from automated interruptions.
The case for losing the gates
Both Laura and Ashley had remarkably aligned views on content gating—or rather, the lack thereof.
Laura operates with a no-gate rule. The only time you’ll see gates on her content is for webinar registrations, contact us forms, or when the content is sponsored.
“Lose the gates, it’s not generating quality,” Laura said plainly. Instead, let buyers learn and follow their signals naturally.
Ashley framed the philosophy through the lens of being helpful rather than extractive. Think about how you use calendar invites in your everyday life: you send them to remind people of an event, to be helpful, not to “capture” them or force attendance. You do this naturally in your personal life, like sending save-the-dates for weddings. The same mindset should apply to marketing. It’s not about having an “aha” moment where you’ve captured someone and can now sell to them.
If your pipeline is broken this quarter
Madelaine posed a final question: what if stakeholders are demanding immediate pipeline fixes?
Laura’s practical advice started with mindset. Stop treating syndication like lead delivery. Make sure you have clearly defined personas and audiences as your vendors need to understand these things to be effective.
She also highlighted an often-overlooked advantage. Third-party content helps you build trust because buyers know those sources aren’t actively selling to them. Use that dynamic strategically.
Ashley’s take was even more direct about managing expectations: there isn’t a quick fix. Period. Expand your time horizon to match your actual sales cycle, evaluate which assets are truly driving engagement, and be honest with yourself about what needs to change.
The path forward: transparency equals trust
Throughout the conversation, one theme emerged repeatedly: the path forward requires radical transparency.
As Madelaine summarized during the session: explicit CTAs and paths = transparency = trust.
Despite operating in completely different industries, Ashley and Laura independently arrived at identical conclusions. The old playbook of gated content, form-fill obsession, and MQL volume targets isn’t working anymore.
Buyers have evolved. They’re more sophisticated, more skeptical, and less willing to exchange personal information for content they’re not certain they need.
Buyers have changed, and it’s time marketing catches up.
Your next steps:
- Audit your content naming and intent alignment. Are your “educational” assets genuinely educational, or are they sales pitches in disguise?
- Review your gating strategy. What could you ungate as a test? Start with your best thought leadership content.
- Redefine “ready” with your sales team. Get aligned on what signals indicate buying intent versus learning intent.
- Shift your metrics. Start tracking middle-funnel engagement patterns and multi-touch account activity instead of MQL volume.
- Reset time horizon expectations. Stop promising quarterly wins from programs that realistically require 12–18-month cycles.
Watch the complete syndication discussion on-demand to hear the full conversation, including live Q&A where Ashley and Laura tackled questions directly from the audience.
