How to Build a GTM-Aligned Content Pillar System From the Ground Up
The best content pillars don’t describe what you do. They reinforce why it matters.
Most content pillar strategies are built around search terms, services, or brand categories. That might work for SEO, but it rarely drives business outcomes in B2B. I’ll break down how we’re evolving Delve’s content system, replacing scattered service-based themes with a future-facing pillar framework designed to drive GTM outcomes.
Most pillar frameworks are built for SEO or content hygiene, not strategic growth.
True GTM-aligned pillars are organized around value propositions, not services.
Effective pillars serve as campaign engines: each supports a key message, audience, and funnel stage.
A pillar system becomes the content operating system for your team, guiding prioritization, reuse, and alignment across teams.
The Problem With Traditional Pillars
Too often, content pillars are framed like this:
“We do industrial design → let’s make that a pillar.”
“We want to rank for ‘design thinking’ → let’s build a pillar around that.”
“Let’s group all our work into UX / engineering / strategy buckets.”
These approaches might help with website organization or SEO targeting. But they fall short where it matters most: aligning content to how your business actually grows.
When your content strategy is disconnected from GTM, you end up with:
Articles that don’t support sales conversations
Thought leadership that attracts the wrong audience
Downloads that don’t qualify leads
Campaigns that feel one-off or scattershot
We needed a different approach—one that anchored content in strategic buyer goals, funnel progression, and business intent.
Reframing Pillars Around GTM Strategy
To guide our GTM content roadmap, we began by asking:
What is the business trying to grow next?
Who are we trying to reach—and what do they need to understand to take action?
What do our best-fit prospects need to believe about Delve?
We then proposed a new pillar framework intentionally mapped to strategic buyer goals, market shifts, and GTM focus areas.
Instead of organizing around services, we organized around high-impact value propositions—each structured to serve as a campaign engine.
The three pillars we’ve defined for 2025 are:
Beyond Shipping Fast: Build Smart → Speaks to early-stage medtech startups navigating capital scarcity, regulatory complexity, and compressed timelines
Disruption-Proof Innovation Systems → Addresses how product and engineering teams can build resilience into their pipelines amid regulatory instability and supply chain volatility
Safe, Scalable Home Healthcare → Targets medtech and digital health companies designing systems for unsupervised use in at-home care environments
Each pillar supports a different buyer segment, message strategy, and funnel stage—forming the foundation for a more cohesive, GTM-aligned content system.
Note: Pillar system currently in rollout. These themes will serve as campaign engines across content formats starting in 2025.
The services didn’t go away—they’re now expressed through stories about value, outcomes, and strategic differentiation.
Why This Structure Matters
With GTM-aligned pillars defined—and content planning now structured around them, every asset can serve a clearer purpose. That shift is already influencing how we prioritize and shape new content.
Each asset type is being mapped to a specific job:
Blog articles reinforce belief statements tied to buyer needs and funnel stages
White papers address high-intent, GTM-relevant challenges
LinkedIn posts advance pillar themes—not just share content
Sales enablement assets mirror those same messages—creating consistency across teams
This pillar structure is becoming our content operating system, helping teams prioritize, sequence, and repurpose content around what the business actually needs to grow.
That consistency is the real value of this system. It doesn’t just organize content. it aligns execution across marketing, sales, and leadership.
What Content Leaders Should Take From This
Pillars must reflect how your business grows, not just how your website is organized. The services you offer are important, but they rarely differentiate you. Organizing content around strategic value props makes your messaging stronger and more cohesive.
Every asset should support a clear outcome. When content is mapped to buyer-aligned pillars, it gains strategic traction across formats. Blog posts reinforce beliefs, white papers address high-intent challenges, and LinkedIn posts extend your reach—with a clear purpose behind each.
GTM-aligned pillars create internal clarity. When your content team, sales team, and leadership are all referencing the same messaging themes, you move faster and scale more effectively.
This structure makes campaigns easier to plan. You’re no longer starting from scratch each time—you’re building from a system designed to drive growth.
Don’t let SEO define your strategy. Pillars can still support search—but they should start with what your business needs to say to win.
See This Strategy in Action
We’ve started piloting this framework through select content efforts:
Reframed blog: How to Align Content Strategy With Your GTM Strategy
White paper strategy aligned to the “Build Smart” and “Home Healthcare” pillars
About Me
I lead content strategy for B2B brands that need structure, not just output. That means building content ecosystems that reflect how your business actually sells—starting with pillar frameworks that tie everything together. This blog is part of a series exploring what it takes to create GTM-aligned content in-house. The example in this post draws from ongoing work at Delve, where we’re replacing scattered service-based themes with strategic narrative pillars built to drive momentum.
