Brewing Success with Lee Densmer: Simplifying Content Strategy Without Sacrificing Impact

Many content marketing teams often view complexity in their programs simply as maturity. But what if the very systems built to scale your strategy is the reason it’s disjointed and underperforming?

On this episode of Pipeline Brew, Matt is joined by content strategist and Founder of Globia Content Marketing, Lee Densmer. Having literally written the book on the most common B2B marketing mistakes enterprises make today, Lee shares her experience auditing over 20 established content programs to figure out where businesses go wrong. 

From bloated editorial systems to outdated processes to surface-level research and misaligned messaging, Matt and Lee unpack why overcomplexity eats away at ROI and team morale. You’ll also hear why the term “thought leadership” is overused, how to actually provide content of value versus spicy takes, and ways in which your organization can scale your content programs with simplicity without losing nuance. 

If you’re a content leader navigating AI, personalization pressure, and increasing executive scrutiny, this episode offers a practical framework for simplifying your strategy, strengthening your foundation, and driving clearer business impact.

Lee Densmer is a content marketing strategist who helps B2B teams fix the costly content breakdowns that stall revenue growth. After digging into more than 20 established content programs, she identified the 40 recurring issues that consistently sabotage performance—and (literally) wrote the book that shows teams exactly how to solve them.

With 20 years in B2B marketing, Lee created an efficient 3×5 Content Strategy to simplify content marketing so busy teams can do more with less and finally see results. Known for her straight talk and clarity-first approach, she gives marketing leaders the tools to cut through complexity, reduce stress, and build content engines that drive growth.

“The other thing that I find in established content programs is that they’ve become overly complicated over time. So in other words, somebody painted the car over and over again without removing the previous layer of paint. You’ve just got these layers, somewhere it got over complicated with legacy junk. And the right foundations aren’t in place.”

“Thought leadership is grossly misunderstood and overused as a way to describe content. Not all content is thought leadership. A bottom of the funnel pricing piece is not thought leadership. A middle of the funnel how to piece is not thought leadership. It is identifying who in your organization has done some deep thinking about customer problems and has unique and interesting ideas about it. Thought leadership also involves taking a risk.”

Quality content, in its most simple form, answers buyer questions in a clear, easy to understand way. [But] there’s more to it than that because you can have a clear piece that doesn’t answer a buyer question or that doesn’t have any purpose. Back to the client who had the quality problem, I was reading the pieces and they were clearly written, but they didn’t answer buyer questions and they didn’t have a strong path for the reader to follow, for the buyer to follow.”

00:00 Episode start

02:00 Lee’s background and entrepreneurial journey

06:35 What’s broken in modern content programs?

08:55 Tackling legacy systems and outdated processes

12:05 Identifying strong buyer personas

15:00 Volume vs. value 

21:00 Balancing demand content with thought leadership

27:05 Managing complexity across products and personas

31:00 Advice for content marketers in 2026

32:30 Getting content a seat at the executive table

34:20 What’s on tap for Lee Densmer

[00:00:00] Matt Hummel: Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Pipeline Brew, the podcast that meets at the intersection of people and pipeline. We’re bringing you fun yet insightful conversations where you’ll not only hear from marketing experts, but also get to know them as well.

[00:00:22] Matt Hummel: Hey everyone. Today I am super excited to be joined by Lee Ginsberg. Lee brings more than 20 years of experience in B two E marketing to us today, and has literally written the book on the most common marketing mistakes organizations make and how they should be tackled. It’s called content simplified, and it’s available on Amazon.

[00:00:39] Matt Hummel: And I can tell you, having read the book, it’s well worth the read in our conversation today, we’re gonna focus on what Lee has learned from digging into over 20 established content programs, why complexity does not equal maturity, and how modern BD marketing leaders can simplify their programs without sacrificing their overall [00:01:00] strateg.

[00:01:00] Matt Hummel: With that, Lee, welcome to the show. How are you?

[00:01:03] Lee Densmer: Thank you so much. Good. Today I am looking at a whiteout outside. It’s been snowing all day.

[00:01:08] Matt Hummel: Oh, and remind me, where are you based?

[00:01:10] Lee Densmer: Idaho. Mountains of Idaho.

[00:01:12] Matt Hummel: That’s right. Well send some of that snow down to Colorado. We are dry, dry, dry here. Lee, as you know, we like to kick off each episode with a little icebreaker to get the ball rolling.

[00:01:22] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:22] Matt Hummel: So with that, what is your go-to beverage when you need a little Pick me up.

[00:01:26] Lee Densmer: Easy answer. Coffee. In fact, I have seven different ways of making coffee at my house, and so it kind of depends on what my whim is for the day.

[00:01:35] Matt Hummel: Well. Quickly walk us through the seven methods of coffee in the Densmore household.

[00:01:41] Matt Hummel: Pour over, pour over,

[00:01:42] Lee Densmer: pour over French press Kig. Nespresso, this fancy little za thing. A percolator. That’s six. What am I missing? Yeah. Oh, instant. Can you I, I can’t count that.

[00:01:54] Matt Hummel: No, that disqualifies from real coffee. So when you wake up, do you just know today’s the [00:02:00] French Press day? Or is it, do you just rotate them?

[00:02:02] Matt Hummel: What’s your, what’s your method? Yeah.

[00:02:03] Lee Densmer: It depends on how much time I have. Right now I’m really into this little machine that makes double shots out of my own grounds.

[00:02:09] Matt Hummel: Oh, nice. Yeah. And where do you get your coffee from?

[00:02:11] Lee Densmer: Various places. Local roasteries. I’m working off of a pack of a three pack of Costa Rican coffee that I got in Costa Rica, so I’m reliving that vacation.

[00:02:20] Lee Densmer: Through the coffee.

[00:02:21] Matt Hummel: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, coffee is a great way to just, you know, appreciate all the different great places you’ve traveled or you know, want to go to, so that’s awesome. Well, good. Lee, before we talk about what you’re up to today, I’d love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, your passions and your background.

[00:02:38] Lee Densmer: So myself, let’s see. I own a content marketing business. The main thing that I do is I go in and help B two Bs of all sizes, 10 million to a hundred million fix and uplevel and get better results out of their content programs. My background is in marketing, so product marketing, content marketing.

[00:02:59] Lee Densmer: [00:03:00] Teaching, have a teaching background, and I have a writing background. I’ve been a writer all my life. I have a writing degree, and right now one of my main passions is seeing the world and, uh, that for my husband and me and means, you know, going abroad as often as we can. Both of us are business owners, so we’ve been able to take some pretty major trips in the past few years and just love that.

[00:03:20] Lee Densmer: Love being able to do that.

[00:03:22] Matt Hummel: That’s awesome. Well, I, I appreciate a couple things. One, you’ve got a writing background, a writing degree. I don’t hear that a lot, you know, and I think that’s some lost art, so I appreciate that. And I love that you’ve got product marketing background too, because I, I’ve not really found folks who understand.

[00:03:38] Matt Hummel: How to write from a product marketing standpoint or think about positioning a narrative and then be able to translate that into effective actual, you know, B2B content. So, very cool duo there. So one of the things I’d love to hear about when I meet new guests like yourself is, you know, along your journey, if you look back, were there any aha moments along the way that kind of help shape you into who you are [00:04:00] today?

[00:04:00] Lee Densmer: Good question. Probably for me and where I am today, the biggest learning was that becoming an entrepreneur. Supercharges your learning. And in corporate it’s sometimes hard to learn. And level up, but outside of corporate, it’s all you. It’s on you. And I had no idea how much I’d be forced to learn and how quickly.

[00:04:22] Matt Hummel: Hmm, that’s interesting. Any examples of, you know, things that you didn’t think you’d ever have to learn and now that you are running your own business, you have to

[00:04:29] Lee Densmer: Well, there’s all the business side of running a business. Yeah. Like taxes and books. But in the content side, I, I am not an SEO, I don’t have that background.

[00:04:36] Lee Densmer: So if you’re going to say you’re a content marketer, you need to know a little bit about search. Two years ago, just Google search and now it’s of course AI mentions an AI search. So that is an area where I had to take myself to school pretty quickly so I could be articulated on that topic.

[00:04:51] Matt Hummel: Well, that’s probably just a good takeaway for the audience in general.

[00:04:54] Matt Hummel: Just, you know, force yourself to learn because it’s very easy to get comfortable with what [00:05:00] you’re doing in your role. But you’re right, I mean, you mentioned AI search and I’ve seen it recently called Discovery, which I think is a great term that sort of encompasses A-E-O-S-E-O-G-E-O, which up until last week I didn’t realize a EO and GEO are different.

[00:05:15] Matt Hummel: I’m still figuring all that out. But yeah. That’s really cool. So when did you realize that you needed to start your own thing and what, what kind of led you to that?

[00:05:24] Lee Densmer: Well, I think I have a typical story, which was a layoff in it. And I had applied for, after, after a layoff and a severance, I applied for 242 jobs.

[00:05:35] Lee Densmer: Wow. ’cause I, I’m Gen X, we work, we work for somebody else, and that’s kind of what our generation does, but. The experience of applying for 242 jobs and interviewing at like 10 places, getting to the final round, doing a test project. Somebody made me do an IQ test, which I declined to do, and that experience just killed me.

[00:05:55] Lee Densmer: And I ended up taking a job and it ended up not being a great job. And after [00:06:00] that experience ended, I decided I was gonna. Give it a go. I was gonna try to do what I do in a consulting capacity.

[00:06:06] Matt Hummel: Well, good for you. Well, it seems like it was a great career moment decision for you, as I know you found a lot of success and passion, frankly, in what you’re doing too, which is awesome.

[00:06:15] Matt Hummel: Yeah.

[00:06:15] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm. And they go together, don’t they?

[00:06:17] Matt Hummel: They do indeed. So, you know, as I teased out a few minutes ago, you reviewed over 20 established content programs. Can you talk about exactly what that means at a high level and what you may have expected before you started?

[00:06:30] Lee Densmer: That’s a good question. So when I get the chance to review a content program, it’s because someone, the CEO or the CMO think that there are problems.

[00:06:39] Lee Densmer: Like there’s not good ROI, people are frustrated, there’s struggle somewhere. So I go in. Start looking at the foundations of a content program. What I always find is two things. I always find that there’s some foundational things that are just not there. They never bothered to do buyer personas, for example, or they’re really not clear on their position in the market [00:07:00] foundations.

[00:07:01] Lee Densmer: Then the other thing that I find in established content programs almost all the time, every time, is that they’ve become overly complicated over time. So in other words, somebody painted the car over and over again without removing. The previous layer of paint.

[00:07:15] Matt Hummel: Hmm.

[00:07:15] Lee Densmer: You’ve just got these layers, those two things.

[00:07:18] Lee Densmer: Always some, somewhere it got over complicated with legacy stuff, junk and the right pillars. Foundations aren’t in place.

[00:07:25] Matt Hummel: Well, this is your product marketing and your content marketing background. I feel like merging because the foundational issues, what you really described are. You could argue certainly in bigger organizations, those are product marketing things that are typically at the root.

[00:07:40] Matt Hummel: And so I think what the takeaway can be is, you know, make sure as content marketers you are working with your product marketer. And vice versa because there’s so much insight I found in many organizations. Product marketing is often misunderstood, but also underutilized significantly when it comes to, you know, things like what you mentioned, so [00:08:00] makes a lot of sense,

[00:08:01] Lee Densmer: right?

[00:08:01] Lee Densmer: When I walk into an org, there’s a product marketer, I rejoice and like set up a meeting. I wanna meet the guy or girl. And if there’s not a product marketer, then the content marketer. Usually steps into that role with the product engineers, but messaging, positioning. Differentiation should be a collaboration between your product and your content people.

[00:08:23] Matt Hummel: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Totally agree.

[00:08:25] Lee Densmer: Often not.

[00:08:26] Matt Hummel: Yep. Talk to me about when you first go into an organization. You know, you mentioned the second challenge that you often find is this over complication, and I love your metaphor around, it’s like. Painting over and over and over without removing the previous layers.

[00:08:39] Lee Densmer: Right.

[00:08:39] Matt Hummel: What’s your first signal that over complication is set in? Is it, you know, is it glaringly obvious or is it often misconstrued as something else?

[00:08:47] Lee Densmer: I think the latter. Let me tell one, maybe two stories. So I walked into a hundred million dollars organization and I started talking to the stakeholders.

[00:08:54] Lee Densmer: So getting to know people and collecting information is one of the first things. It was the social [00:09:00] media manager and she showed me that she was managing. Three social media handles in an Excel file and that Excel file had 17 tabs and six years of content in it.

[00:09:11] Matt Hummel: Oh,

[00:09:12] Lee Densmer: oh. And she was, she was ready to quit.

[00:09:15] Lee Densmer: When I talked to her, she was in an extreme state of frustration and she showed me this file and I was like, here’s the problem right here. This is unmanageable. How much time do you spend in the file? Perfect example of just always doing it the way that you used to it and really can’t see the forest for the trees.

[00:09:32] Lee Densmer: So we wiped out that system. We just got rid of it. The over complication shows up in the way people feel about their work. It shows up in the systems they’re using. Like too many tools. Too many systems. Yeah. It shows up in like infighting. Nobody knows who’s doing what. People are pointing fingers if things go wrong, you know?

[00:09:54] Matt Hummel: Yeah, well you’re speaking, you know, to really content operations, which is, I feel like also all lost art [00:10:00] in today’s world, especially with the proliferation of ai. Now you can just, you just crank out content and, you know, do more with less. And this idea of having to have somebody focused on operations to support content.

[00:10:12] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:13] Matt Hummel: When you say it out loud, it sounds very outdated. And yet, you know, the point that I feel like you’re making is a lot of these challenges are operational in nature,

[00:10:20] Lee Densmer: so. Yes, and part of what I do is I, nobody wants to just buy or do strategy. Nobody wants that. Everybody wants the results, the output, right?

[00:10:29] Lee Densmer: Yeah. You have to do the strategy to get there, but there are two parts to what I do. I do the strategy, I do the foundations, and I move into execution. I would hate an engagement where you give ’em a strategy document and then you’re out. I think that the job of a content marketer is way more than that, or the job of a head of content.

[00:10:47] Lee Densmer: It’s the strategy and the execution.

[00:10:50] Matt Hummel: Totally agree. So when you’re, you know, when you’re going in and, well, even when you’re brought in, are CEO of CMOs, are they typically seeing the issues in the [00:11:00] content itself, the content performance? Does it feel more subjective or are they getting feedback from the team?

[00:11:05] Matt Hummel: Like,

[00:11:05] Lee Densmer: right.

[00:11:06] Matt Hummel: What signals would suggest we have a problem?

[00:11:09] Lee Densmer: A big, big client engaged me a couple months ago and the things that she kept on saying to me was, our CMO doesn’t like our content. And that’s really squishy, right?

[00:11:17] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:18] Lee Densmer: I’m digging. Why doesn’t she like the content? What does she think is wrong with the content?

[00:11:22] Lee Densmer: It started to be revealed, you know, um, it’s not, there’s no traffic. Um, she thinks it’s badly written, all these things. So, I mean, we really had to dig in there. Is there really a quality problem? Is there a subject matter expertise problem? Is there a buyer alignment problem to figure out why it was it, she was focused on the quality.

[00:11:44] Lee Densmer: And I would read the pieces and I would be like, that’s pretty well written, like. That reads well.

[00:11:49] Matt Hummel: Yeah,

[00:11:49] Lee Densmer: so I, I couldn’t see what she was talking about, but as we dug, they didn’t have their buyer personas dialed in. They weren’t getting any traffic ’cause they didn’t have clear calls to actions. There [00:12:00] was really a lot to it.

[00:12:01] Matt Hummel: That makes sense.

[00:12:02] Lee Densmer: But it surface a quality problem. Yeah.

[00:12:04] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Outside of the examples you gave, when you think about complexity within content marketing.

[00:12:10] Lee Densmer: What

[00:12:10] Matt Hummel: else can that show up as? Is it just too much content? Is it, you know, we talk about how you need to personalize go persona based, industry based, but is do you get to a point where it just becomes so complicated and complex that you kind of lose, you know, lose sight of the forest amongst the trees?

[00:12:26] Lee Densmer: Absolutely. So the areas where complexity can occur. Too many buyer personas. You’re writing for 15 people, too many content types. You’ve got a team who can capably handle a blog. A newsletter, and social, but they’re also trying to do infographics and eBooks and on and on. Too many channels. You’re trying to do all the social media channels and you know, and, and, and,

[00:12:49] Matt Hummel: yeah.

[00:12:50] Lee Densmer: So there are many places where over complexity can occur. Like I said, too many tools, way too many tools. Random use of ai, like you haven’t made things better. You’ve [00:13:00] made things. Complicated.

[00:13:02] Matt Hummel: Do you think most teams, you know, and maybe this is not a one size fits all answer, and frankly it could be whether it’s bifurcated between the CMO and content marketers themselves, but do you think they recognize complexity and they see it as a bad thing, or do you think they view it as we have a really mature content organization?

[00:13:23] Lee Densmer: They might all say they have a long standing content operation, but like I said, they come to me because something may often something kind of vague is wrong.

[00:13:32] Matt Hummel: Yeah.

[00:13:33] Lee Densmer: So then when I start digging and talking to them, they realize that, like I said, it’s got the layers of paint or it’s got the legacy systems or you know, you ask somebody why they do it that way and they say, well, we always have.

[00:13:46] Lee Densmer: We always have, you know, it’s like you paid somebody to write the blog. Nobody wants to archive it or delete it because you paid for it. So there’s just, yeah, there’s a lot of inertia and being stuck because you’ve just always done it [00:14:00] that way. Often with established content programs, there’s just a great deal of content.

[00:14:05] Lee Densmer: I worked for an org when I was a full-time in-house head of content. They had. 1,752 pieces of content and they were still producing content.

[00:14:13] Matt Hummel: Wow.

[00:14:14] Lee Densmer: Yeah. And they had that on hard drives and in some sales system and on SharePoint. So part of what we did was. Get rid of a lot of that content.

[00:14:23] Matt Hummel: It’s so smart. I feel like what you’re describing is, in essence, a content audit and content audit doesn’t mean just kill old content.

[00:14:30] Matt Hummel: Obviously you know this, and especially as you’ve gotten more into SEO, but just the value of consolidating and repurposing and refining and Revit all the things right. You may realize we have enough content, we have more than enough content. We don’t need more contents. You don’t need more content. It’s funny, you know, I used to work at Deloitte and talk about a thought leadership house.

[00:14:51] Matt Hummel: This was 15 years ago. But I mean, we were cranking out great content. Left and right all throughout the organization. And finally [00:15:00] there was this content Center of Excellence team that got involved and said enough, every piece of content that Deloitte 300,000 employee organization said every piece of content that is published with the Deloitte brand has to be approved and released through the COE.

[00:15:16] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:17] Matt Hummel: It was very eye-opening for me, you know, a little bit then, but especially as I’ve, you know, grown in my career since then, realizing. I think a lot of companies view their content issues as they don’t have enough content, and so what does good content look like?

[00:15:31] Lee Densmer: More,

[00:15:31] Matt Hummel: a lot of content. More, more, more.

[00:15:33] Lee Densmer: We got that message 10 years ago that the, the algorithm wants velocity. That signals that you’re worth serving up in searches. So that was accurate. 10 years ago. Vol velocity and volume was. Paramount and now absolutely not. Absolutely. The opposite is true.

[00:15:50] Matt Hummel: Oh, a hundred percent. I had a buddy reach out to me a couple years ago, and I remember he said, Matt, if you’re not cranking out 200 pieces of content today, you’re behind.

[00:15:58] Matt Hummel: And I’m thinking, first of [00:16:00] all, that doesn’t sound right. Mm-hmm. But second, that would not fly today.

[00:16:03] Lee Densmer: No, and it’s, it’s absolutely the wrong approach, but I think a lot of longstanding content programs are maybe a little stuck in that mentality and have a very hard time letting go of the two posts a week mentality.

[00:16:15] Matt Hummel: Agree. Agree. Well, we’ve laid out the problems. We’ve talked about what it can actually cause organizations just in terms of really, it could be anything from employee morale. It could be you’re overcomplicating the message that’s getting out to market and you’re putting too much strain on internal organizations.

[00:16:32] Matt Hummel: And I think the thing that also gets lost in it too is. You are really sending mixed signals to the market. Absolutely. Especially with companies that have multiple products.

[00:16:41] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:42] Matt Hummel: What does this company do? What do they want me to focus on? You know, that we’re, we’re vying for people’s attention and if you’re sending 20 different signals out

[00:16:50] Lee Densmer: mm-hmm.

[00:16:50] Matt Hummel: You’re not sending enough of the right one and it just becomes, I think you’re diluting your efforts. So that said, you know, are there often foundational elements that teams will [00:17:00] skip as they scale out their content strategies? And what would you say is. Like what does ideal look like for a well-built content foundation?

[00:17:06] Lee Densmer: So ideal looks like a very clear understanding of your top value buyers. So not all of your buyers, the ones that bring in the most revenue to your organization, and a really deep dive into why they buy, what they care about, what they struggle with, their goals and responsibilities. Where they hang out for information.

[00:17:24] Lee Densmer: Most of the buyer personas I look at are really surface deep.

[00:17:27] Matt Hummel: How do you get that information?

[00:17:28] Lee Densmer: Yeah.

[00:17:29] Matt Hummel: How do you get it in ways that aren’t surface deep?

[00:17:31] Lee Densmer: It’s tricky. So there are some tools like Spark Toro is one that people talk about and maybe your audience knows, but you get this data from interviewing account teams, sales teams, anybody who’s customer facing desk research, and then you interview customers too.

[00:17:48] Lee Densmer: That’s the part that people skip. People love to just throw a question into chat, GPT and say, profile this buyer profile, this job title. So equating a buyer persona with one job title [00:18:00] is probably a mistake, but it is a fair amount of work, but it’s a foundation that impacts absolutely everything from the product you’re developing to the content you’re writing to where you’re putting that content to the sales process.

[00:18:13] Lee Densmer: It impacts everything. So if you have lane buyer personas. You’ve shot yourself in the foot right out of the start.

[00:18:19] Matt Hummel: So put the work in is what I’m hearing you say. You’ve gotta put the work in to build the foundation. And again, you know, you referenced chatt. It is, no, it’s the easy button and it’s, look, it adds so much value, but only, you know, if you guide it and direct it, it can synthesize all of the conversations you’re having with sales and account teams and your customers.

[00:18:39] Lee Densmer: Right.

[00:18:40] Matt Hummel: But if you’re relying on that. Good luck.

[00:18:42] Lee Densmer: Yeah, so buyer personas is one. Another one is decisions about channels, content formats, even decisions about the goals, like what are the real goals of your content? What’s your content mission statement? Because people just publish kind of [00:19:00] unthinkingly, what do we really wanna get outta this content?

[00:19:02] Lee Densmer: Only when you have clear goals, can you map metrics to those goals. It’s another area of complication is trying to measure everything. Throwing data at the CEO who just like, there’s no clarity about what you’ve, what you’ve gone for and what your results have been.

[00:19:17] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Use the word clarity and, and you just talked about a CEO too.

[00:19:21] Matt Hummel: Mm-hmm. You know, I have my own thoughts on this that may not, that may not align with your think, but I’d love to hear, you know, when you, when you think about the role that content is supposed to play, do you believe a large part of that is just frankly around creating clarity?

[00:19:36] Lee Densmer: You’re asking about what quality content looks and feels like, and I think it’s in its most simple form.

[00:19:45] Lee Densmer: Good content answers, buyer questions in a clear, easy to understand way. So yes, clarity is there. There’s more to it than that because you can have a clear piece that doesn’t answer a buyer question or that doesn’t have any purpose. [00:20:00] It’s back to the client who had the quality problem. I was reading the pieces and they were clearly written, but they didn’t answer buyer questions and they didn’t have a strong path for the reader to follow, for the buyer to follow.

[00:20:12] Lee Densmer: I think that’s how I wanna pin it down. So clarity, as far as you’ve answered and understood the buyer question.

[00:20:18] Matt Hummel: Yeah, that makes sense. And then, you know, I want to talk thought leadership because I think,

[00:20:21] Lee Densmer: yeah,

[00:20:22] Matt Hummel: thought leadership often. Again, you’ve done this a lot of times at different organizations.

[00:20:27] Matt Hummel: Thought leadership often gets viewed as your content strategy or your content output. Mm-hmm. What you’re describing clarity in answering the buyer’s questions, I would not describe that as, as thought leadership typically. Right. You’re, you’re getting more into demand oriented content.

[00:20:43] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:43] Matt Hummel: That’s not to say it’s bad content or that it’s content that should not be well written.

[00:20:48] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:48] Matt Hummel: Where do you see challenges in organizations? And how they think about thought leadership and you know, what I’ll call demand content differently, or, or if not at all, if they think [00:21:00] about it sort of as, as all one and the same.

[00:21:02] Lee Densmer: I love the distinction. It’s an important one. Thought leadership is grossly misunderstood and overused as a way to describe content.

[00:21:11] Lee Densmer: Not all content is thought leadership. A bottom of the funnel pricing piece is not thought leadership. A middle of the funnel how to piece is not thought leadership. Every company should be running a thought leadership program, and it’s a little bit different from the content program that we’ve been talking about so far.

[00:21:29] Lee Densmer: What it isn’t is your CEO posting on social media, his spicy thought for the day. That is not thought leadership. It is identifying who in your organization has done some deep thinking about customer problems and has unique and interesting ideas about it. Thought leadership also involves taking a risk.

[00:21:50] Lee Densmer: I see a lot of content that people say is thought leadership. I’m like, there’s a strong opinion there, but it’s not risky, it’s not new. It doesn’t generate conversation. [00:22:00] Might be a little sassy. So yeah, thought leadership, ha I, if somebody doesn’t disagree with you, then it wasn’t thought leadership. It is a different class of content and it is important for brands to think about how, when and where they would put that out.

[00:22:16] Lee Densmer: And who it is absolutely associated with a person, not a brand, a person who works for the brand.

[00:22:22] Matt Hummel: Yeah. That’s really interesting way to think about thought leadership to personify it, if you will. You know, what role do you think thought leadership should play at organizations?

[00:22:33] Lee Densmer: Yeah. The thought leader that you identify within your organization needs to partner with the content team, and the content team needs to help that thought leader build their brand.

[00:22:43] Lee Densmer: Build their online brand by helping them create and publish content. There’s a partnership there. I think the program is the responsibility of the marketing team, but the thought leader has to be fully participant. No ghost writing. It’s not that you’re, you know, your thought leader, you’re your senior level product [00:23:00] marketer, perhaps who goes to conferences and does a lot of research.

[00:23:03] Lee Densmer: He doesn’t need to be a writer. He needs to have those leading thoughts and share them with the writer who can write the blog post or the ebook or, or whatever you, whatever the team decides.

[00:23:14] Matt Hummel: And then, do you think that thought leadership, and maybe this is, you know, an obvious answer, but is really you’re leveraging or harnessing the power or insights and knowledge of an individual or individuals.

[00:23:25] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:26] Matt Hummel: But is it really to help shape, you know, I go back to that word clarity. Is it really to provide clarity around. That organization’s position, or do you feel that’s more gets into the product marketing world? So, you know, if you were to say, man, that company has great thought leadership

[00:23:40] Lee Densmer: mm-hmm.

[00:23:40] Matt Hummel: Apart from just the, the tactics, the structure, the provocative nature of it. If you were to have some quantitative way to say, you know, quantitatively speaking, this company is doing great thought leadership because mm-hmm. How would you answer that?

[00:23:55] Lee Densmer: Yeah. When I think thought leadership is successful, you are able to [00:24:00] associate a person, a thinker, a leader with that brand and that person’s content is carefully crafted to answer questions about customer problems and to represent the brand.

[00:24:12] Lee Densmer: So that’s why I say it’s got to be a partnership between the content marketing team ’cause they hold the strategy and the messaging and the goals and the thought leader who’s providing, you know, the, the leading thoughts, so to speak. So. You can’t decouple those. You shouldn’t decouple those. Or you might have some person, frankly, posting random things you know about their workday on their handle.

[00:24:35] Lee Densmer: Yeah. It’s a very careful play and that’s where I think so many brands go wrong. They just tell the CEO to post more, and that’s absolutely not what we’re talking about here.

[00:24:43] Matt Hummel: It’s so true. I feel like thought leadership has been now masked as you know, just. Loud mouth CEOs just posting their hot takes on LinkedIn.

[00:24:54] Matt Hummel: Mm-hmm. And you know, look, sometimes it drives conversations and that’s great, but it, [00:25:00] that feels like a different category. I don’t know what I would call that category.

[00:25:03] Lee Densmer: People call it founder led marketing, but, and I think, I honestly, I think it’s very millennial and I do think that there’s an audience for it and people wanna read it.

[00:25:13] Lee Densmer: Getting to know a founder and how he thinks and how he operates is appealing to some, but it’s not. Thought leadership. Yeah, I, I’m gonna put a pretty firm stake in the sand there about what thought leadership really is. It needs to be deep thinking, leading thoughts, unique opinions, you know, insights that haven’t been seen elsewhere.

[00:25:31] Lee Densmer: And that comes from really being active in your industry.

[00:25:35] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think another, you know, for organizations out there who maybe don’t have. I hate to say deep thinkers, but deep thinkers in this regard,

[00:25:44] Lee Densmer: right?

[00:25:44] Matt Hummel: Uh, to me, this is where, you know, using research can go a long way because with research, you are going to get unique thinking that you can, at least you’re gonna get the research that supports, you know, unique thinking as you get into it and understand what is this really saying?

[00:25:58] Matt Hummel: What, you know, how can I drive [00:26:00] conversations based on an outside-in view? That, you know, nobody else has, ’cause they have not conducted this same type of research.

[00:26:07] Lee Densmer: You’re talking about original research, right? So the, the, your brand, the company has created some original research around a topic that the customer cares about that can be thought leadership.

[00:26:18] Lee Densmer: And I always encourage a, an organization to put a name behind it. Yeah. It shouldn’t be, you know, it should be from so and so within X company.

[00:26:28] Matt Hummel: That makes sense.

[00:26:29] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:30] Matt Hummel: Well, we’ve touched a little bit on, you know, this throughout our conversation, but how can marketing teams balance simplification with nuance?

[00:26:37] Matt Hummel: Right. We talked about you start getting into every buyer persona, and I’ve seen this challenge too, where, you know, marketers will say, well, we have 15 buyer personas, or We have 20 people in the buying committee. How do I market to all of them? And those are real challenges that marketers are facing.

[00:26:50] Matt Hummel: ’cause all we hear is. Personalization. Personalization, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta make it super relevant, you know? Is it possible to simplify a content program without dumbing it [00:27:00] down?

[00:27:01] Lee Densmer: Yes and no. Just yesterday I had an email exchange with a content marketer who was struggling with this, and she said, we have 17 products in five industries.

[00:27:08] Lee Densmer: How do I build a content strategy for that matrix? And then multiple buyers, so you’ve got like an XY and a Z access industry. Products and buyers. You can build one content strategy that is, I don’t wanna use the word generic, but is general enough horizontal to apply to all of those categories, but you need to figure out how to do content that’s specific to the verticals.

[00:27:36] Lee Densmer: The buyers, and it is a complicated matrix. Ideally, you can write pieces that can just be tweaked. Mm-hmm. Often it’s just vocabulary changes. Right. If this piece is for procurement, how would you change it to be for a CEO buyer, or how would you change it to be for marketing buyer? Often, it’s just certainly when you jump from industry to industry who are buying the same product, it’s just vocabulary changes.

[00:27:58] Matt Hummel: That makes sense. Mm-hmm. [00:28:00] So invest your time and effort where it’s gonna get the biggest return.

[00:28:03] Lee Densmer: Yeah. And try to create pieces that can be reused with small tweaks. So you don’t wanna content strategy for every industry. Every buyer. That’s far too much work.

[00:28:14] Matt Hummel: Yeah. I’d love your take on this too. One thing I’ve advised customers on is, you know, if you have, I’ll just use the example.

[00:28:19] Matt Hummel: If you have 20 people that you’re trying to market to

[00:28:22] Lee Densmer: mm-hmm.

[00:28:23] Matt Hummel: Start by at least bucketing, what do they actually care about? What are they, what are their challenges or in, in the buying process? What are they trying to solve or what would they care about? ’cause what I’ve done that I’ve often found, now all of a sudden I’ve gone from 20 to.

[00:28:37] Matt Hummel: Six or seven or eight. Mm-hmm. And that’s a lot more manageable out of the gate to say, you know what? I, yes, I can now take, you know, I’m making this up, but I can take a demand market or a digital market or an a BM marketer. And they all care about the same thing. Mm-hmm. So even though they’re three separate quote personas, I can create a piece of content that I feel very confident will still resonate across the [00:29:00] board.

[00:29:00] Matt Hummel: And that way all of a sudden now you’ve got, you know, 40, 50% less work out of the gate. Would you agree generally with that sentiment?

[00:29:06] Lee Densmer: I do. I think that you can. Instead of looking at job titles, CMO, you can look at goals, grow the best

[00:29:13] Matt Hummel: goals. There you go.

[00:29:13] Lee Densmer: So like that would mean a Chief revenue officer and a chief growth officer and a CMO could all have the same goals.

[00:29:19] Lee Densmer: That’s not three buyers, that’s one.

[00:29:21] Matt Hummel: That’s one that,

[00:29:22] Lee Densmer: and if you end up doing a buyer for each of them, guess what? They’re gonna be real similar. And you’re gonna realize that you can collapse the category.

[00:29:29] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Let’s say you’re dealing with a customer who has, it’s a $10 million company. Mm-hmm. They have one, one content marketer.

[00:29:36] Matt Hummel: Maybe that’s the only marketer they have at the organization.

[00:29:39] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:39] Matt Hummel: So, you know, would you advise them, Hey, invest in that top layer, create a really compelling story.

[00:29:46] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:47] Matt Hummel: Is this where you see the use of AI to at least advance what you’ve already put together to then start to personalize it down into whether it’s vertical or persona where.

[00:29:57] Matt Hummel: It’s kind of, you’ve done the hard work and it’s doing, you [00:30:00] know, the last mile, if you will.

[00:30:01] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm. That is how I use ai. If you were one lonely content marketer in a $10 million company, I would hope that you’ve got some contractors helping you create the content, right? Because it’s really hard for somebody to do strategy and all the content strategy is deep thinking, long-term work, and then writing content is, is a, happens a lot faster and there’s a lot more input all the time.

[00:30:24] Lee Densmer: Those are hard to wear both hats. Yes. They would build a horizontal content strategy and then use AI or a knowledgeable, you know, industry writer to make those tweaks that I’m talking about. It would be interesting to create custom gpt or projects that would be capable of like ingesting a buyer persona and the original piece and adapting it for that.

[00:30:48] Lee Densmer: Like I would love to see the output of that. I think that could, that sounds like something that could work.

[00:30:53] Matt Hummel: Yeah. So, you know, I want to kind of open the floor up to you a little bit. Mm-hmm. So you’ve, you’ve worked with a bunch of different [00:31:00] organizations, different sizes, different structures, different challenges.

[00:31:03] Lee Densmer: Yeah.

[00:31:04] Matt Hummel: When you go into an organization, what have you seen? That’s working. Where have you seen things where, you know, maybe content marketers need a rally cry or just a, to to shift their thinking a little bit? What kind of tangible or tactical advice would you give to our content marketing friends out there based on, you know, all the years of experience you’ve had working directly as a content marketer, but now really going in and helping solve these massive content marketing challenges?

[00:31:31] Matt Hummel: Right.

[00:31:33] Lee Densmer: I would say, we talked about this earlier, keep learning. It’s a very quickly changing industry. Keep learning, get command of the ai. You gotta learn how to use it before you can succeed with it. Network with other content marketers for sure. So you know, if you’re on LinkedIn, spend some time networking with other peers and join communities that are content marketing communities.

[00:31:56] Lee Densmer: Super Path is the premier community for content marketers. There’s a [00:32:00] lot of value there, and if you’re working alone in an organization, you simply need other touchpoints and people to run ideas by. So building your own little community could be of great value to you.

[00:32:10] Matt Hummel: Last question before we move on for CEOs out there,

[00:32:14] Lee Densmer: mm-hmm.

[00:32:15] Matt Hummel: You know, some get content, some certainly don’t. All of them have opinions though. How would you advise whether it’s a CMO or a content marketer? To guide their CEO’s thinking around content. So that with, with the hope that the content marketer just doesn’t become an order taker, you know, what, how do you, how do you help uplevel the role and value of content at the executive level?

[00:32:39] Lee Densmer: This is really hard actually, and I’ve had more than one experience where the CMO was the one giving the orders, like, I have got an idea for an ebook, or even worse, here’s an AI strategy that I want you to implement. This happens so. Content needs to be at the table in strategy discussions, and usually the marketing team is at the table.

[00:32:59] Lee Densmer: And in [00:33:00] 2026, I think marketing is content based. So content needs to be at the table for senior level discussions, and the CEO needs to be aware of what the content deem is doing and why. So, not that you wanna spam them with information and reports, but this is what we accomplished. This is what we’re doing, this is why it worked.

[00:33:20] Lee Densmer: This is where your money’s going, and this is the results. So more structured and clear communication with the CEO about what you’re doing and why it works. It can also be cool to involve the CEO in content in some ways, but you definitely don’t want that guy with the red pen.

[00:33:36] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:37] Lee Densmer: Like CEO should never be reviewing the blog posts, but.

[00:33:40] Lee Densmer: Interviews, you know, interviewing your CEO, involving that person in content in some ways, but a lot of education and awareness really helps when you’ve got a CEO, who’s maybe not really sure what that line item is, is doing for him, you know?

[00:33:55] Matt Hummel: Yeah, that makes sense. And I, I, I could not agree more. You know, the best organizations I’ve worked [00:34:00] for content has certainly a seat at the table when it comes to developing the marketing strategy.

[00:34:05] Matt Hummel: But, you know, content, you know, especially as you start to think about thought leadership plays such a pivotal role in the identity and positioning and clarity of an organization. So. Great perspective.

[00:34:17] Lee Densmer: Yeah.

[00:34:17] Matt Hummel: Well, tons of insight Lee. Thank you for that. I want to jump to our last segment, which we call what’s on tap.

[00:34:22] Matt Hummel: So what’s on tap for Lee? So at the top of the show we talked about your now six ways of making coffee. I wanna see if I can remember ’em. Fridge press

[00:34:32] Lee Densmer: right.

[00:34:32] Matt Hummel: Pour over Keurig.

[00:34:34] Lee Densmer: Hmm. Nespresso

[00:34:35] Matt Hummel: Percolator Nespresso. And your, your fancy,

[00:34:39] Lee Densmer: my fancy little thing that takes coffee beans and turns ’em into double shots.

[00:34:44] Lee Densmer: Yeah,

[00:34:44] Matt Hummel: double shots.

[00:34:45] Lee Densmer: I don’t know what you call it, but it’s a great machine.

[00:34:47] Matt Hummel: Now, I assume you grind all your beans yourself, correct?

[00:34:50] Lee Densmer: Not always. Sometimes I just, well, the Costa Rican beans came ground.

[00:34:54] Matt Hummel: Okay, let’s flip the question around. End of a long day, you just had to deal with a CMO like [00:35:00] myself, who, you know, had put together this AI generated content strategy you need.

[00:35:06] Matt Hummel: You need something to wind down. What are you going to,

[00:35:09] Lee Densmer: yeah, it’s too late to drink coffee after 3:00 PM ’cause I’m over 30. What would it be? I don’t, I don’t know. Usually by then I’m having cheese and crackers, so that’s maybe how I wind down with a nice little snack. There go. You go. A cheese person,

[00:35:23] Matt Hummel: oh, I was gonna say are, do you have six cheeses that you, you pull out for your crackers?

[00:35:27] Lee Densmer: Okay. Lemme tell you this. Best present ever. This is off topic, but it’s fun. Best present ever. So my mother-in-law has found a service that will send me three boxes, one a month. The first box is a selection of coffee from around the world. The second box is a selection of cheese. So I’ll get like five cheeses, one’s from France, one’s from just all over.

[00:35:46] Lee Densmer: They’re great. And then the third box is cookies. She gets me this every year, so yeah, so January, February, March, I get these fantastic boxes with all my favorite things.

[00:35:55] Matt Hummel: Well shout out to your mom. Feel free to add me to your mailing list in-law.

[00:35:59] Lee Densmer: Yeah.

[00:35:59] Matt Hummel: Oh, [00:36:00] mother in-law. Even better. Yeah.

[00:36:01] Lee Densmer: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:02] Matt Hummel: Even better.

[00:36:03] Matt Hummel: Well, good for her. What’s a personal hobby that you, that you love that’s really impacted your work?

[00:36:08] Lee Densmer: Oh, it’s gotta be the travel. So I was born in Peru and I’ve grown up speaking Spanish. I have a graduate, done graduate work in Spanish, and I’ve lived abroad a couple times. So I’ve got. Travel and culture in my blood.

[00:36:19] Lee Densmer: I know I look like just your typical American, but we’ve traveled extensively and speaking of foreign language and traveling gives me perspectives that I bring into my work in so many ways. So working with people of other cultures is an obvious place and understanding of, and a love of multiple cultures and what each culture has to offer.

[00:36:43] Lee Densmer: And then speaking another language has allowed me to play with words all my life. I’ll think like this is a much more elegant way of saying it, and it’s actually a way you would say it if you were speaking Spanish, but it’s better and thinking, kind of thinking in two languages helps you explore [00:37:00] different ways of saying things.

[00:37:01] Matt Hummel: That’s first of all. That’s so cool. I’m a ma. I’m, I speak very poor Spanish lu pto.

[00:37:07] Lee Densmer: We

[00:37:07] Matt Hummel: good. Um, but I see what you’re saying. ’cause I’ll have conversations with my kids. We were in Mexico earlier this year. We’re going to France here in a little bit, and we’ve been talking about language and they’ll say, well, how can we say something with six words?

[00:37:20] Matt Hummel: And they say it with three, like, why are they skipping three words? And I said, they’re. They’re not skipping words. They say it, they say it differently, and it only requires three words to get the, but then it’s even, you know, one word can have a meaning. It’s the same with English,

[00:37:35] Lee Densmer: right?

[00:37:35] Matt Hummel: You can say a word in, in English, and it can have 10 different meanings.

[00:37:39] Matt Hummel: Right? And so that’s, that’s, I, I love that perspective just to have. That and apply that to your writing. Because you know, I had an early mentor who taught me words are hard, but words really matter. Mm-hmm. And you unpack that and I, as I’ve done over my career, and I’m like, that’s a powerful statement. And the power of words is incredible.

[00:37:57] Matt Hummel: So I love that. You mentioned the word [00:38:00] education. What is your education and how has that really helped you throughout your career?

[00:38:03] Lee Densmer: Yeah, I am, I am overly educated. I have three degrees, so my first one’s a professional writing degree from a liberal art, art school. I loved it. I studied religion, history, philosophy, journalism, poetry, all of it.

[00:38:16] Lee Densmer: My second degree is a teaching certificate, so I, I’ve been a lifelong teacher. I’ve taught at all levels, and I love teaching. And teaching is another thing that helps you get a lot better at what you do. And my graduate degree is in romance language linguistics. So I have a master’s degree from Boulder in linguistics, Spanish, um, dialect ology.

[00:38:36] Lee Densmer: Fascinating, really hard to get a job with a degree in linguistics. What ended up happening was that I did a work for a number of years in the translation industry in different capacities. Translation industry is the $20 billion industry that nobody knows about really. We’re talking about like mm-hmm.

[00:38:55] Lee Densmer: Translate, uh, interpretation, like at the Olympics and the United Nation. And then the other half [00:39:00] is translating software or um, like face translating everything on Facebook. All their user agreements and legal stuff, translating everything for Adidas product manuals. Any business that does business worldwide has to translate stuff.

[00:39:14] Lee Densmer: So it’s a massive industry. And that’s how I got into marketing in that industry.

[00:39:19] Matt Hummel: Yeah. I love that. Mm-hmm. The only job I know people go into with linguistics is the FBI, at least according to the TV show.

[00:39:27] Lee Densmer: That would’ve been cool. Yeah.

[00:39:28] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Well, last question for you. What’s next for you? I know you, you’re passionate about what you do.

[00:39:36] Matt Hummel: Is this what you foresee yourself doing the rest of your career?

[00:39:39] Lee Densmer: That’s a great question. So I am building a class right now on the back of the book that I wrote last summer. And. I’m really energetic and enthused about that because I love to teach and that is gonna be really fun for me. So that’s on top of the consulting work that I do.

[00:39:55] Lee Densmer: I’m building this class that I’ll run probably three times over the course of the year, [00:40:00] and then it is my hope to just keep enjoying what I’m doing and doing good work for good people. For five or six more years and then see where I land.

[00:40:09] Matt Hummel: Oh, I love that. Well, what a cool idea to put the course together, kind of bringing together your passion for writing, but also combining it with your background and probably passion too with teaching, so.

[00:40:19] Matt Hummel: Very cool. Well, Lee, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you taking it and just all the wealth of information you’ve shared with our audience. So Lee, thank you again.

[00:40:30] Lee Densmer: Very fun. Thank you.

[00:40:34] Matt Hummel: Thanks again to Lee for joining us on today’s episode of The Pipeline Brew. I hope you all enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Please leave me a comment with your thoughts and make sure you subscribe to the show so you’ll never miss an episode. Once again, I’m Matt Hummel and I’ll see you next time.