When you speak to 20 senior B2B marketing leaders and ask them how they run their teams, you uncover a goldmine of insights.
That’s exactly what we did on our B2B Content Strategist podcast. Across an entire season, we spoke to leaders at some of the world’s most innovative companies about their team structures, roles, cross-functional collaboration, and what they keep in-house versus outsource.
We learned so much that we dedicated an episode of The Content 10x Podcast to unpack the key themes, hosted by our founder, Amy Woods, and our Head of Content Strategy and Marketing, Hayley Evans.
Listen to the episode below, or read on for the highlights.
Team Structure & Roles: Lean and Agile Wins
One theme came up frequently - most B2B marketing teams are lean and agile.
Small, nimble teams are the rule, not the exception.
Whilst that’s an approach that most marketing leaders agreed on, it was really interesting to hear different examples of team structure, cross functional collaboration and hiring.
Here’s some highlights...
From Ticket-Takers to Strategic Partners at Cloudflare
Amy Higgins, Director of Content Strategy at Cloudflare, shared how she transformed her content team from “ticket takers” into strategically aligned pods.
The pod structure has given her team deeper ownership and greater agility.
You may think that a pod structure is only possible when you have a large marketing team, but Amy explained that her team consists of 8 people. and it really has been transformative.
Could a pod model work for your marketing team?
An Innovation Role at Intellum
Shannon Howard, Director of Customer & Content Marketing at Intellum spotlighted a new and exciting role: Director of Innovation Automation (we want this!).
One role dedicated to freeing the team for creative work.
This role freed the rest of the team to focus on creative and strategic work.
Shannon went onto say that it’s difficult for people to do their day-to-day role and focus on continuous improvement, so having someone who can dedicate their role to doing exactly that works perfectly.
Hiring for AI Skills vs AI Interest
AI is changing the way teams are built. Jason Widup, SVP of Marketing at Pixis explained why his first hire was someone fluent in AI tools
When you’re setting up a marketing function from scratch, AI-native hires make sense.
Kosta Zachoudanis, Dir. Marketing at Ultimate Group, took a different approach. He said that as long as strong AI processes and prompt libraries are in place, he only looks for interest in AI. Curiosity can be enough if the infrastructure is already there.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Breaking Down Silos
B2B leaders also emphasised the importance of teams working across functions.
Luba Czyrsky summed it up perfectly:
Without close collaboration, content may not hit the mark.
Amy Higgins, Director of Content Strategy at Cloudflare, shared a cautionary tale from her time at Concur, where her team built a sophisticated vertical marketing playbook, but the sales team barely used it because it was too complex.
The result? A big spend and little impact, until they simplified the materials and trained sales on how to use them.
Amy’s example was a firm reminder that collaboration early often makes all the difference.
Outsourcing in B2B Marketing: Deciding What to Keep In-House
As well as marketing teams being lean and agile, another universal theme was a balanced team structure and hybrid model. Most leaders keep a lean core team and extend capacity with freelancers and agencies.
Megan Eales Monroe Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Foxen shared views on considering internal team opportunities, when deciding what to outsource:
Camille Trent, Content Marketing Lead at Auror shared that she assesses the maturity of the program – “once you get into a rhythm, it should be easier to hand off”
She also discussed the need to consider the time and cost of the learning curve vs. outsourcing efficiency – a point well made!
But she doesn’t want to outsource innovation:
Outsourcing isn’t just about saving time (although that certainly helps!). It’s about:
- Flexibility to scale
- Access to specialist skills
- Fresh perspective from outside voices
What B2B Marketing Leaders Outsource
From our 20 conversations, the most reported work for outsourcing are:
- “Big” pieces of content – reports, eBooks, white papers
- SEO & paid social
- Video editing & podcast production
- Design & creative
- Launching new content types, e.g. podcast, webinar
Content that requires a fresh perspective
- Deep subject matter or product expertise
- Fast review iterations and turnarounds – working with internal teams like sales and product
- Understanding of regulation and compliance aspects, usually in highly regulated industries where the content is compliance-sensitive
Jason Widup (Pixis) mentioned that he’d never outsource leadership roles or operations and analytics.
The Power of the Brief
Outsourcing only works if the brief is strong. We met universal agreement on that.
Nevile Vyas talked about the power of the brief.
A strong brief gives your team/partners:
- Clear direction
- Context & purpose
- Less wasted time
- Better results, faster
Katie Morley added a practical tip:
“Create a gold-standard asset internally first. Use it as the template when you outsource.”
Without a clear, detailed, context-rich brief, even the best partners can’t deliver on expectations.
Quick Tips for Better Briefs
- Be clear on the goal – everyone needs to know what and why, and what the end result should be
- Include audience insights
- Share examples (good & bad)
- Align stakeholders early
- Leave NO room for guesswork (not even a teeny weeny one!)
To Wrap Up
From team structure to cross-functional collaboration, outsourcing decisions, and the power of a strong brief - the lessons from these 20 B2B marketing leaders show how modern marketing teams thrive.
Go check out all episode of B2B Content Strategist on our website, YouTube, or any of the main podcast apps.
In case you missed it, we did exactly the same on the topic of AI in our last episode – check out AI in B2B Marketing: What’s Working, What’s Failing, and What’s Next. Hayley and Amy explored what marketing team really using AI for, what their concerned about, and what guardrails they are putting in place.
If you’re considering outsourcing content – from reports and white papers to a podcast to webinars and thought leadership interviews, please do get in touch. We’d love to help.
Thanks for reading. We hope you found this helpful, let us know on LinkedIn.
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