One of the great elements of having a diverse portfolio of clients is recognizing the emerging trends that impact organizations, regardless of their size, sector, or digital maturity.
A doozie I’ve noticed lately is a persistent feeling of busyness. Everyone feels swamped! Yet many of them report that lead generation has declined.
If your growth team feels busier than ever but your sales results are sliding, you are not imagining things. You’re probably stuck on the content treadmill. And for many teams, it’s quietly draining time, energy, and focus without delivering meaningful returns.
The Content Treadmill Is Real
Fueled by AI (more on that later), growth teams are producing more content than at any point in recent memory. Blogs. Social posts. Videos. Thought leadership. Newsletters. Sales decks. The calendar is chock-full, and the workload is burdensome. And yet, the impact often feels empty.
The expectation for publishing content is simple: more! Weekly blogs. Daily social. Monthly campaigns. The logic is simple: more content creates more opportunities to be seen.
And with AI propelling your generation, you have no excuse for volume. But in practice, the treadmill keeps moving regardless of the content’s performance.
How to solve it:
Pause volume-driven publishing and audit what actually gets used by sales or referenced by buyers. If content is not influencing conversations or decisions, it does not need to exist
Why Publishing More Stopped Working
Despite what self-absorbed “leaders” lusting after engagement on LinkedIn may suggest, content itself is not dead. The problem is not that content no longer matters.
It’s that the formula for organic performance has become increasingly muddled, shaped by shifting algorithms, fragmented distribution, AI-driven discoverability, and a volume of content that makes it harder for any single message to stand out in a meaningful way.
The signals that once helped teams understand what was working are no longer as dependable as they once were. Algorithms change frequently, platforms reward different behaviors, and what performs well in a feed does not always align with what actually influences a buying decision. As a result, visibility has become less predictable, and consistency alone is no longer a reliable indicator of relevance.
At the same time, the sheer volume of content competing for attention has grown dramatically, even as attention spans have declined.
Nearly every competitor is publishing at a similar pace, often addressing the same topics with similar language and framing – especially if they’re all generating content using these same repetitive tools. In that environment, producing more content does not necessarily create differentiation. In many cases, it simply increases the likelihood of blending in.
How to solve it:
Shift your content strategy from distribution-first to decision-first. Build fewer assets that map directly to buyer questions, objections, and moments of hesitation rather than chasing algorithmic performance.
The Quiet Erosion of Vanity Metrics
For years, metrics such as impressions, engagement, and page views served as proxies for progress. They were easy to track and presented beautifully on reports. Up and to the right!
In 2026, those metrics have lost much of their meaning.
Leaders no longer perk up when they hear about an increase in website traffic. They want to know about leads and net-new growth.
The problem with vanity metrics is that they measure activity rather than impact.
The result is a dangerous illusion of momentum. Teams feel productive, but sales conversations do not get easier. Buyers do not move faster, and decisions still stall. As you chase the vanity metrics, you’re just running in place on the content treadmill.
How to solve it:
Redefine success around the outcomes sales can feel. Measure content by usage, influence, and deal acceleration, not by how often it is viewed or liked.
The AI Flood and the Trust Problem
If you haven’t noticed from the four previous mentions, AI is a major contributor to content treadmill exhaustion. Artificial intelligence has dramatically increased the volume of content in the market while simultaneously decreasing content quality.
AI-generated content is fine and polished and fast but is it good?
No. It all reads the same. Down to over-indulgence of em dashes.
Buyers are getting better at recognizing generic language and surface-level insights. Content that feels automated, abstract, or interchangeable is easier than ever to ignore. The problem is not accuracy. It is credibility.
The consensus amongst many of my marketing peers is that AI has lowered the bar for content. But I disagree. AI slop has raised the bar. In a sea of AI-generated content, trust and authenticity are becoming precious commodities.
And they have always been what actually influences buying decisions.
How to solve it:
Use AI to accelerate production, not to replace perspective. Anchor content in real experiences, real examples, and real points of view that only your team can provide.
Why Authenticity Is, and Always Has Been, a Competitive Advantage
An adage I’ve heard literally hundreds of times throughout my career in marketing, is that ‘content is king’. But that’s not true. Authentic content is king.
Buyers trust specificity. They respond to real experience and anecdotes, not theoretical best practices. They don’t want to know what you’ve done, they want to know how you’ve done it, and what the measurable impact was.
Content rooted in actual sales conversations, real objections, and lived expertise carries weight in ways generic thought leadership does not.
The most effective content in 2026 will not try to sound impressive. It will aim to be useful. It will reflect how sales teams actually talk. It will address the real trade-offs buyers are wrestling with.
How to solve it:
Build content alongside sales, not in isolation. Let real conversations, objections, and deal dynamics shape what you publish and how you say it.
We’ll Help You Off the Treadmill
The answer to content exhaustion is not to stop creating. It is to stop creating content that exists only to satisfy a cadence.
Getting off the treadmill starts with a shift in your intent. Away from publishing for visibility and toward creating for usefulness for your buyers. Away from content designed to perform in feeds and toward content designed to support real buying moments. Away from measuring success by how much is produced and toward measuring whether the work actually helps someone make a decision.
That often means fewer assets, built with more care, grounded in real conversations, and aligned tightly with how sales teams engage buyers day to day. It means choosing clarity over volume and confidence over reach.
In a market saturated with noise, the teams that win will not be the ones who publish the most. They will be the ones who say something real, say it consistently, and say it in a way that actually helps.
And for exhausted teams feeling stuck on the content treadmill, that shift can feel less like doing more and more like finally getting their footing back.
Need support? Get in touch with us to schedule a time to discuss your current growth approach, and we can talk through how my team can help.
