Generating Content Topics Using Customer Feedback and Sales Data

Here's a real AI workflow you can do in 30 mins that will be the difference between content that gets published and content that drives pipeline: Once a week, book 30 minutes in your calendar to feed 5 call transcripts into your AI chat of choice. Alternate weeks—prospect calls one week, customer calls the next. Use this prompt framework (adjust as you see fit): Persona: You are a director of content strategy. Your job is to mine customer and prospect conversations for insights that can be turned into sharp, revenue-driving content. Task: Analyze the following call transcript and extract useful details about the customer’s challenges, hesitations, and blockers. Present the findings in a clear, structured format that directly informs content strategy. Constraints: – Do not summarize the whole transcript. – Focus only on insights relevant to content marketing and GTM strategy. – Use crisp, direct phrasing—no fluff. Step-by-Step: – Identify pain points (what problems or frustrations they described). – Capture objections (reasons they hesitated, pushed back, or weren’t convinced). – Note internal blockers (process, politics, resources, or approvals slowing them down). – List content opportunities (what topics, proof points, or stories could help overcome the above). – Flag memorable quotes or phrases that could be reused verbatim in content. --- Save the results to a master doc. Then, once a quarter when you're revising your content strategy, use this doc to prove/disprove your strategy. Instead of making educated guesses, you'll show up with real customer intelligence. The result? Your blog posts start reading like you're inside your prospects' heads. Your newsletters address the exact objections your sales team faces daily. You're not creating content based on what you think customers care about. You're creating content based on what they actually talked about for 20 minutes last Tuesday. That's the difference between content that gets published and content that drives pipeline.

Here's how I'd build endless content ideas from customer interactions (the easy way): First, I'd stop doing guess work. Instead, look for these signals: • Pain points — What’s frustrating them? • Curiosity — What questions or objections? • Momentum — What wins (or losses)? Then, you can turn this into a system. Here's how: 1. After every sales call, send prospect a form. 2. Record and transcribe your sales calls. 3. Categorize your customers into categories. 4. Turn prospect patterns into posts. If someone in your target audience asks a question, others are asking the same thing. If someone shares a problem they are facing, others are facing the same problems. If someone shares a win, make it known. Others are seeking the same thing. Next, simplify your writing process with plug-and-play formats: • "What to know before solving [pain]" • "How [Customer] fixed [pain] in 3 steps" • "Struggling with [pain]? You’re not alone" • "The fix for [pain] you’re missing" • "Why [belief] is hurting [ICP] results" Templates = speed. Signals = accuracy. Then, automate the intake. Make it effortless. • Log all chats, DMs, and emails in one place • Grab quotes from calls for hooks and posts • Use AI to turn convos into content ideas • Spend 30 mins Friday mining for content Call it your “idea harvest.” One session a week can fuel a month of posts. Finally — let your audience do half the work. If you want better ideas, ask better questions. End posts with: “What’s your biggest challenge with [topic] right now?” DM new followers: “What’s one thing you’re working through lately?” Send out a 2-minute quarterly survey titled: “Help me write better content for you” The more signals you collect, the less content feels like a chore — and the more it becomes a mirror of your customers. If 80% of your content isn’t coming from your customer ideas, you're building for nothing. Listen, study, and post 100x faster. Your next content ideas are literally right in front of you. Get going.

In a world where AI recommends solutions based on detailed user prompts, it’s more important than ever to map your content to real pain points. So instead of starting with a keyword tool, we start with customer pain points. We ask: 👉 What problems are people actively trying to solve? 👉 What do they say on sales calls? 👉 What objections come up before buying? We dig through: transcripts, support emails, call notes and extract the real language people use when they’re stuck. Then, we reverse-engineer keywords from there. Not by guessing. By mapping real pain points to search queries. We avoid broad, high-level terms like: ❌ “content marketing” ❌ “inbound marketing” ❌ “SEO strategy” Instead, we look for high-intent keywords that address specific pain points, such as: ✅ “how to get leads from content marketing” ✅ “how to measure conversions from SEO” ✅ “how to write content for advanced audiences” These kind of topics are more representative of challenges our clients are trying to solve. When prospects are searching for how to solve these kind of problems, we’re the ones sharing how to solve them. They read our content, then reach out to us. Many businesses focus on high-level topics instead of focusing on the specifics of the problems their customers are trying to solve. The approach we take is what separates content that drives leads from content that only drives page views. 🔗 Read the full article to learn how to apply this strategy step by step — link in the comments.

Your customers are telling you what to write about. Are you listening? We can spend hours staring at a blank screen, trying to dream up "thought leadership" ideas for LinkedIn. But the best content is sitting in your inbox and call recordings. Your customers are literally telling you what to write about every time they ask a question. Yet most firms overlook this treasure trove. Other prospects are searching for answers to those questions too; especially the ones that get asked over and over. When I review client sales calls, I listen for repeated questions and how the provider responds. This signals solid gold content opportunities that can: • Address pain points your audience actually has • Use language your customers naturally speak • Position you as the guide who understands their needs • Create instant "aha!" moments ("That's exactly what I've been wondering!") For example, we noticed that a Microsoft partner was repeatedly asked about automating invoice reviews. We created a few LinkedIn posts addressing this specific concern, using the exact language from their calls. The post generated DMs from qualified prospects. Two conversations moved directly to sales calls. Then we turned that into a blog post for their website and an article for a 3rd party site so customers can easily find it. Why did it work? Because it came directly from customer questions. This approach works consistently. Answering customer questions builds trust. It shifts you from being a vendor to becoming a trusted advisor. Try this:   1. Review your last three sales calls. 2. What question came up every time? 3. That's relationship-building content waiting to happen. Have you tried this?

VP of Marketing: “How do we drive more qualified leads from our content?” Here’s how we used executive thought leadership to build a highly effective content engine: 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟭: 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 Before our collaboration, the marketing team relied on internal assumptions and outdated customer personas—a recipe for disaster. Great content starts with a deep understanding of your buyers. So we interviewed 10 customers and analyzed 15 sales call recordings to identify common pain points and objections. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟮: 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀 We developed relevant topics based on the data from the customer research. Each topic addressed a specific pain point, and we outlined the insights that would be valuable for the reader. This helped us prepare for the interviews we were about to conduct. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟯: 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘀 For each topic, we conducted a monthly 1-hour interview with the CEO and CTO. Despite their busy schedules, they were all in on this process because they realized that: 💡 ..people buy from people they know, like and trust—and they wanted their content strategy to reflect this. 💡 ..their expertise, insights and stories are what make them unique as a company. Our interview approach allowed us to capture their insights without them having to spend hours writing. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟰: 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Our interview approach allows us to create multiple content formats from a single recording. From a 1-hour interview, we typically produce: ➝ 1 long-form article ➝ 5 video clips ➝ 8 LinkedIn posts ➝ 1 newsletter 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟱: 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 You can't expect your content to drive results when you're just promoting it with a couple of LinkedIn posts. Content distribution isn’t an afterthought—it determines whether your content will be successful or not. Here's the strategy we used for our client: ✅ We published the LinkedIn posts and video clips on the company page, as well as the personal profiles of the CEO and CTO. ✅ After 2 months, we started running LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads to promote the CEO's and CTO's LinkedIn posts to their target accounts. ✅ Using LinkedIn ads data, we identified 250 highly engaged companies—giving the sales team a targeted list to start conversations and book calls. This strategy works exceptionally well because outreach is far more effective when there’s strong brand awareness. ✅ After 3 months, we launched an employee advocacy program to turn 10 other subject matter experts into a powerful organic marketing channel with massive reach. We reused the content we created in the previous steps to fuel this program. _____ 🎁 Want ideas & recommendations for your 2025 content strategy? Book a free content strategy audit: https://lnkd.in/eSEMsnb9

It's a new year, which means more of the same content! I'm returning to the $750M content marketing playbook I've used for the past decade and sharing all of it. The CREATE framework is pretty straightforward and just a long marketing-heavy acronym for Craft, Research, Execute, Amplify, Track, and Evolve. We started with the C in CREATE: Crafting the Story. This is all about defining your narrative, starting with your audience and focusing on their outcomes. Whether you explain how your product helps teams ship faster or give tips on managing a highly productive team, the goal is clarity and connection. We look at an overall STORY and the THEMES. See image for an example. Now it's all about the customer: Research with Customers. And we want to involve customers for two reasons: 1. They are the end consumers. They’ll relate if the story fits their experience. 2. We want their involvement in the final content. Making our customers the heroes of the story inspires them to promote it. ---- To validate relational and operational themes, identify at least ten customers or prospects for interviews. Here’s how to approach it: Identity Customers & Prospects Select 10+ individuals across industries and company sizes for diverse perspectives. Prioritize those with existing relationships for better engagement. Prepare a Stories Guide Develop a discussion guide with open-ended questions tailored to relational and operational aspects. Allow room for participants to surface unanticipated insights. Conduct the Interviews Use video calls or in-person meetings for depth, keeping sessions under 45 minutes. Record (with consent) and transcribe interviews for analysis. Organize Takeaways  Categorize feedback into relational and operational buckets. Note which themes resonate most and why. Use Data to Craft Stories Use GenAI tools like ChatGPT to synthesize data into digestible stories. ---- Let’s look at the Stories Guide. What questions should we ask during the interviews? Here are some I’ve used in past iterations of this framework. They are designed to explore experiences, priorities, and pain points, and relational and operational themes align with their day-to-day experiences. General Context What’s the most rewarding and challenging part of your role as a (persona)? When you think about leading your team, what keeps you up at night? Relational Themes How do you manage team dynamics, especially when there’s resistance to new ideas or initiatives? Operational Themes How do you measure success for initiatives like (operational theme 1) or (operational theme 2)? Theme Validation Do these themes—relational (human aspects of leadership) and operational (execution and measurement)—resonate with your experience as a (persona)? Storytelling If we were to tell a story about overcoming one of these challenges, what would make it compelling to you? More on Execution in this weekend's send of the Revenue Diaries, part 4.