In this episode of the Nobel Podcast, we sat down with Penny Warnock, Content and Brand Lead at Contentoo and a Top 3 finalist for Marketer of the Year at this year’s SaaS Awards. She shared how her team drove a record year of inbound leads without ever making inbound the goal, why she measures success in comments rather than dashboards, and what she’d tell anyone starting out in B2B content.
Watch the video below:
Inbound isn’t the strategy, it’s the result
Contentoo had a record year for inbound leads, but Penny is clear that inbound was never the target. “The strategy isn’t to get inbound. It’s just to do good marketing, good work, good content,” she said. By demonstrating expertise and thought leadership and putting value out consistently, the leads came as a byproduct.
Measuring success beyond the dashboard
While Penny doesn’t dismiss forms or growth metrics, she puts far more weight on qualitative signals: a client comment, praise at a round table, someone recognizing the brand at a conference. Words from real people, she says, tell her more than numbers on a dashboard ever could, even if those numbers still get reported.
Freedom from rigid KPIs, not freedom from accountability
Contentoo’s content team sets OKRs each quarter and reviews them through retrospectives, but performance conversations go beyond output. Penny’s manager checks in on how she’s feeling about a campaign and whether work is landing well, not just whether a number was hit. That flexibility, she believes, is exactly what gives the team room to take creative risks. “If you’re operating with fear… you can never really be creative.”
Three pillars, one story
Contentoo’s content strategy rests on three core pillars tied to product, value, and the thought leadership they want to build. Tactics like humor come second, not because the brand decided to “be funny,” but because it makes content easier to consume. The team’s north star: be a brief, human pause from typical B2B marketing hype.
Thought leadership vs. employee advocacy
Penny draws a clear line between the two: employee advocacy is employees amplifying the brand by posting online, which is valuable but not the same as thought leadership. Thought leadership requires an earned, well-understood opinion. As she put it, “not every thought leader is an employee advocate, but not every employee advocate is a thought leader.”
Why AI will never replace the job
Penny uses AI regularly to speed up her workflow, but she’s confident it can’t replace storytelling, narrative, or the strategic work of connecting product value to a business story. “Everything that is good is created out of an emotion, and AI is emotionless.”
Her advice for founders and marketers building from scratch
For any founder or small team looking to build a marketing strategy, Penny’s advice is to talk to everyone in the company first: customer success, product, and sales all hold pieces of the story. Bringing those insights together, she says, is what turns scattered feedback into a real narrative, before ever looking outward to the market or the next AI tool.
Advice for anyone starting out in content
Penny’s biggest piece of advice for early-career marketers: don’t stay quiet. Share what you’re working on, explain its value, and make sure people across the company know what you do. “Unfortunately, no one is watching you. You have to tell them.”
