Marketers urged to build topic-led content for fragmented discovery

As buyers move between AI-generated answers, private peer communities and brand websites, marketers can no longer rely on direct clicks to reveal every influential interaction. That challenge framed a session at the November 2026 MarTech Conference, where panelists discussed how to plan content across decentralized channels and assess its commercial influence beyond conventional referral data.

The discussion, titled “Content everywhere: Winning attention in a fragmented marketing ecosystem,” was moderated by Tamara Scott, chief content officer at overQualified LLC. Participants were Steve Bevilacqua, principal consultant at Cella by Randstad Digital; Nichole Kelly, CEO of True North Growth Labs; and Patrick Schofield, associate director of relevance engineering at iPullRank.

Build around buyer questions and topics

Kelly said effective content architectures begin with the specific questions prospects ask while evaluating solutions, including competitive comparisons and criteria that vary by buying stage. She advocated for “evidentiary marketing”: supporting important claims with original data, verified customer testimonials and authoritative citations. The approach gives prospective buyers evidence to assess and provides concrete support for a brand’s expertise.

Schofield argued that teams should move beyond optimizing individual URLs. AI-driven discovery can surface varied formats, including video snippets, charts and community discussions, alongside long-form articles. Instead of treating each asset as a separate destination, he recommended organizing work around a topic and developing complementary materials for it.

Under that model, a subject could be supported by an authoritative guide, a short walkthrough video, graphics for executives and useful contributions to relevant community conversations. The panel’s point was that distribution belongs in the planning process: teams can decide how a topic should appear in different environments before production is complete, rather than figuring out channel adaptations afterward.

Look beyond referral reports

Bevilacqua described niche practitioner communities as increasingly important places for candid recommendations. Those discussions can shape revenue decisions without creating the referral information that marketing analytics systems typically rely on. As a practical response, he recommended making qualitative, self-reported attribution a regular part of customer intake.

That information can be considered alongside automated category audits to identify visibility gaps that standard reporting may not capture. The panel also discussed querying popular AI tools with prompts related to a company’s product categories. Marketers can then examine which publishers, competitors and other sources are cited in responses.

Schofield called this measure “citation share”: tracking the domains and platforms that large language models cite for high-intent category prompts. The measure is intended to help teams see where AI-generated answers draw authority, rather than assuming that the channels already visible in referral analytics represent the full discovery landscape.

Assess influence across the buyer journey

Kelly encouraged marketers to evaluate engagement across the buyer journey instead of defaulting to first-touch or last-touch attribution. Scott described the broader objective as giving appropriate credit across marketing. The discussion linked that visibility to cross-team alignment: when organizations acknowledge contributions beyond direct conversions, teams can better understand how different activities participate in a buyer’s path.

Kelly also identified public relations and brand communications as strategic partners in this work. Third-party editorial mentions and contributed articles can serve as knowledge sources for AI systems and help establish brand authority, even when they do not send measurable referral traffic.

The session’s recommendations point to a measurement and planning problem, not simply a need to publish more. Teams must understand the questions buyers ask, prepare related content in formats suited to different discovery settings, and combine quantitative reporting with customer feedback. In a fragmented journey, the value of a touchpoint may be real even when a conventional click trail does not record it.