Is there more to online B2B marketing than educational content?
A B2B Marketer's Existential Crisis
WARNING: What you’re about to read are my personal opinions, observations, and biases based on my limited experience. Take everything you read with a grain of salt. I’m no thought leader, I don’t have all the answers. A lot of stuff that I’m about to say might be so wrong, you’d think it’s satire. That’s the price I’m willing to pay for thinking out loud, so hopefully, we can figure things out together.
In the summer of 2018, Aubrey Graham, better known as Drake, released an album called Scorpion. One of my favorite songs on that album is called “Is There More?”. Throughout “Is There More,” Drake is questioning whether there’s more to life than the rapper’s life of wealth, riches, and partying that artists (including himself) talk about.
Now, 5 years later, I find myself doing a similar thing. Even though I can’t relate to the riches Drake raps about, I can relate to the question “Is There More?” when it comes to creating demand through online marketing. It seems like everything I hear about online B2B marketing comes back to educating your buyers and sharing information.
And I get it. I’m not here to vilify educational content because I understand how crucial it is. After all, I would be a hypocrite to attack educational content, because this article itself is a form of educational material. I’m not suggesting that we should stop educating our buyers. I’m just challenging myself and you to think is there more to creating demand than just educating our prospects and sharing information through digital comms such as blogs, social posts, podcasts, webinars, whitepapers, etc.? Because if there isn’t, then that’s pretty depressing.
I’ll explain why I think educational content isn’t always the way to go. Before we can even explore what “more” is, it helps to first understand what I think is wrong with the current thing.
Counterpoint 1: Most prospects don’t want to be educated unless they're in buying mode.
Let’s use cloud computing as an example of educational content topics. I don’t know about you, but I’m an average Joe. I don’t want to be educated about cloud computing unless I absolutely have to. If I’m on the internet, I’d rather spend that time browsing the internet casually, laughing at some funny B2B marketing memes in Dave Gerhardt’s Facebook group, and maybe chatting with my friends. When it comes to educational content about cloud computing, I only care about it when I'm actually in the market for it. In other words, there's a short window of time in which educational content about this topic is relevant to me. I need this content to help me pick the right vendor, or understand what a good product in this category looks like. But research feels like a chore. And as soon as my company makes the final buying decision, I couldn’t care less about cloud computing anymore. If any kind of educational content about cloud computing reaches me after that, I’ll just ignore it because it’s no longer relevant.
I bet many B2B prospects you’re reaching are average Joes too. This type of educational content is reaching a minority of people who are already researching the topic. This minority is the 5% from the 95-5 rule, which states 95% of your potential buyers aren't ready to buy today. If you’re reaching that 5%, that means you’re not creating demand, because demand is already there. These people obviously “demand” this enough to be doing research. This is why the idea of "we must educate the masses" doesn't make sense to me. The masses don’t want to be educated. So much reach potential is wasted because companies are trying to educate people who aren't ready to buy. That’s why most marketing simply gets ignored. When your (content) marketing only talks about your product or a problem your prospects are facing that gets them in the market, you’re pigeonholing yourself into only being relevant to a small number of people, for a short time period. I don’t have a problem with educational content itself, but I do I have a problem when educational content is treated as some marketing god, a swiss army knife that you use for everything: it’s your advertising tool, your customer engagement tool, your retention tool, it’s your top funnel tool, it’s your mid-funnel tool, your everything. I think that’s wrong.
Instead of trying to educate everyone, consider being distinctive, engaging, and memorable so that your company is remembered when a prospect is ready to buy. Remember that, just because your target buyers tend to have a need for your products now or sometime in the future, it isn’t the only thing that defines them. Yes, your target contacts at enterprise accounts work in IT departments and are tech-savvy people who could be interested in content around cloud computing. But they might also be fathers, mothers, golfers, skiers, paragliders, watchmaking enthusiasts, or whatever else. There’s more than one topic that could connect with them. More importantly, make your (content) marketing a regular part of the prospect's everyday conversations, not just a research tool they use to prepare themselves for a buying decision. What does it mean to make your content a part of your prospects’ everyday conversations? I don’t have any B2B examples, but I have an example of a consumer brand called Axe. For those who don’t know, Axe sells men’s deodorants and shampoos. Their target market is teenagers and “not that young anymore” adults (like myself). It goes without saying, Axe sure knows how to insert its brand into its buyers’ daily conversations. If they were in Axe’s shoes, many B2B brands would post painfully boring problem-awareness content like “Top 10 reasons why smelling bad repels women from you”. Axe doesn’t do that. Instead, Axe aligns its content with topics its buyers talk about in their day-to-day online life: rap music, anime, memes, and similar.
Axe is one of the most beloved names in the rap/hip-hop community on Twitter. That says a lot because most corporate accounts trying to act like human beings on social media are frowned upon. Instead, Axe is engaging their audiences by including themselves in conversations about rap music, as well as starting conversations themselves. That’s why they have 150k followers. If they posted about deodorants, nobody would care. Their tweets about deodorants consistently get significantly weaker engagement than their posts about general, everyday topics of their buyers. With all this in mind, am I saying that Axe getting a lot of love on hip-hop Twitter makes these people get up and go buy an Axe deodorant? No, but I’m sure it influences which brand they buy next time they go shopping for a deodorant. And by consistently being a part of their buyers’ daily discussions, the brand keeps itself on the top of mind. That’s doing a lot for content marketing on a single channel. Whoever the Axe social media person is, they deserve a raise.
Counterpoint 2: Educational content builds subject matter credibility, but credibility doesn’t always translate to created demand.
Now you might be thinking, what if your target buyers are an exception? What if cloud computing is their evergreen interest, instead of being a topic they only care about when they’re in-market for it? If that’s true, that content would connect with them and build rapport with your company based on common interests. This is the advice we hear all the time: “To create demand, you must position your company as a subject matter expert by sharing educational content!” - to which I ask: is this really creating demand, though? I blame consultants for this advice becoming so popular. Subject matter expertise equals demand for consultants because their knowledge IS the product. Being a consultant thought leader is a living proof that you know what you’re talking about, therefore your product is good. But I’m not sure if this works for other B2B categories like SaaS.
Just because I’m into cloud computing, and your company happens to share a lot of thought leadership content about cloud computing that I engage with, doesn’t mean I’m more likely to buy your product, or even find your product remotely interesting. It means I find you to be a credible source of subject matter information, but I’m not sure if that translates to created demand for your PRODUCTS. That’s a massive difference. In some cases, these two things might not even have any correlation at all. If you need evidence, look no further than thought leaders on LinkedIn who get more engagement than some multibillion-dollar global brands, yet these thought leaders still barely make any money. They have great content that resonates with their audience, provides value, and builds trust… but for what?
Maybe the answer is “it depends”. If the products you sell are completely disconnected from the content your audience loves, it ends with “I like you, but so what?”. But if your educational content is aligned with the products you sell, AND your audience’s evergreen interests, there might be more to it. I would say that even that is just a starting point for creating demand. Congratulations, you have a lot of people who know you and trust you as a subject matter expert. But there’s still a long way to go before you create demand for your products. It’s like hard work and getting rich. Hard work alone won’t make you rich, but hard work is the essential ingredient in most success stories. The same goes for trust and demand. Don’t confuse necessary factors for deterministic factors.
And don’t get me wrong, there’s value in building trust with your prospects through educational content. But expecting someone to create demand for your products just because they enjoy your content feels a bit entitled. It’s like the guy in high school who feels the girl is obligated to go on a date with him just because he helped her cheat on a math test.
Counterpoint 3: How can you educate if you aren’t getting noticed?
“A lot of advertising is optimized for persuasion instead of mental availability. Persuasion is about assuming you’re in the room and you’re arguing your point, whereas mental availability is about getting you into the room by getting noticed.“ - Jenni Romaniuk, Research Professor and Associate Director (International) of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
Jenni said “advertising”, but I think the same applies to all kinds of marketing comms, even the educational content we create. And so that’s the big problem: most companies are failing to get into the room, but they’re spending all their money on arguing as if they’re already there. Prospects don’t even notice most companies, let alone carefully consume their educational content. Get the foundations right. Do what it takes to get noticed before you can even think of educating prospects.
Educational content has sadly become table stakes. Everyone can create it, the cost of producing it has never been lower, and it doesn’t help that it has become a go-to tactic for any kind of online marketing B2B companies do. And let’s face it, many companies create and share educational content, not because they have something to say, but because educational content is the only tactic they know. It’s just something we B2B marketers do. We don’t ask why, we just do it. When in doubt, “Just create educational content, bro!” To make my point, think about your own experiences. You use social media. You read blogs. Maybe you also visit industry publications. There’s a sea of educational content out there. How many of these content pieces make you stop and pay attention? How many vendors make content so good, you subscribe to it, recommend to your peers, and actively seek out?
I’d assume very few.
So for all these companies, brands, and content creators, maybe the simple answer should be to produce better, more attention-worthy, distinctive content. And maybe the other, more nuanced answer would be to not put all their eggs in one basket. Instead of betting their growth on creating god-tier content (among the top 0.5% in terms of content quality, however you define content quality), try diversifying their long-term, demand-gen plays with more tactics and channels.
This brings me back to the main question of this article: diversify with what? What else is there, other than educational content?
Counterpoint 4: Educational content can only reach so many people.
How do big brands become even bigger? It comes down to being the most mentally and physically available vendor in your category. It means the masses know who you are, they remember you when they enter buying mode, and you’re also the easiest vendor to discover during the research journey. The key word here is the masses: the casuals, those who don’t care about your category too much, the ones who buy products in your category rarely, the ones who face a problem, buy a solution, and go back to their business. Reaching them is the key. Educational content goes against these principles, which is why content marketing alone will hardly ever build a brand as big as Nike, Coca-Cola, Apple, and all the other cult brands everyone knows and likes. Here’s why.
The casuals represent ~80% of your future buyers, and educational content mostly reaches only the other ~20% of enthusiasts (source). The bubble of enthusiasts will always be the minority in your TAM, whether they’re a minority based on how frequently they buy products in your category, how often they talk about topics related to your category, how much time they spend on channels where your marketing reaches them, etc. You might have picked up on that pattern yourself. On LinkedIn, it’s mostly social media marketers talking to other social media marketers who are also paid to spend 24/7 on LinkedIn. The actual buyers there are ghosts who rarely engage and log in for maybe 10 mins a day when they’re on a toilet break. In your target market’s Slack communities, even the biggest ones, you’ll also find enthusiasts who don’t even represent 0.05% of your potential buyer pool. Rinse and repeat for any digital channel.
The very nature of educational content attracts enthusiasts. That’s because consuming educational content comes pre-packaged with many kinds of effort and resistance that weeds out the casuals. Take this article as an example of that. First, I am banking on the fact that the people reading this article are passionate enough about marketing to care about me going down this rabbit hole. That alone eliminates a huge chunk of the market for this article. Second, they have to sit through 15+ minutes reading it. Third, I am banking on the fact that these readers are also B2B marketers who work mostly with digital channels. That’s another chunk of the market for this article eliminated. Fourth, my target audience has to be on LinkedIn, fifth, they have to be online on LinkedIn during the time when I distribute this article, and sixth, the algorithm gods have to distribute this article on their LinkedIn feed. There are many more factors obviously, but you get the point. Once you account for all the stars that have to align for this content piece to get consumed, a laughably small number of people will consume it, and even fewer people will come out of it having formed any kind of demand for Calvin Blanc’s Substack blog.
You could argue that not all educational content out there is as extreme as this article of mine. There’s a type of lightweight, easy-to-consume educational content out there that’s optimized for the masses, such as Top 5 listicles. That’s a valid point, but compared to advertising, it still has a lot more built-in effort and resistance to consumption. And that’s why, after they hit a certain growth plateau, big brands start investing in (non-digital) advertising. A billboard ad in NYC reaches far more people, it has guaranteed distribution, and it takes next to no effort on the prospect’s side to get consumed. The advertiser’s job is to communicate a message concise enough to be remembered, and an ad that is interesting enough to get noticed. Through consistent exposure to these ads, many people will learn something important about a brand, the brand has a bigger chance of being remembered in times of a buying need, and other benefits (e.g. I keep seeing your ads in NYC, so you must be a big player in your category. I’ll check out your website to learn more about you). Companies that predominantly grow through (educational) online content are big fishes in a small pond. Other companies like HubSpot, Salesforce, and ClickUp know this which is why they’ve been expanding outside of digital for a while. They know they have to reach more future buyers, and that educational online content can only reach so many of them.
Counterpoint 5+: Educational content consumption is chaotic and its effects are weak.
How do people learn new things? Think back to your college days. Remember all the books, papers, and reports you studied? By spending hours each day going over that specific set of materials, you were able to learn the topic at hand. That's because of the consistent exposure to the same information. The educational content you had was curated to frame your thinking in a very specific way.
Is this how you get educated about B2B companies, products, and categories? Probably not. Unless your boss already shortlisted Cognism, you’re probably not spending 3 hours a day camping on Cognism’s website, binge-consuming their educational content about Sales Intelligence. Even though every company has its regular daily or monthly web traffic, this is still a small number of people in the bigger scheme of things. This “camping” is what most “educational content” advice assumes. It assumes our prospects are well-behaved students sitting in a classroom, carefully consuming our educational content.
Order happens by design. In the everyday life, chaos is the default. Here’s how I imagine the chaotic, but realistic consumption of educational content to look like:
Prospects get conflicting information. Unlike in college, no one’s regulating what educational content your prospects get, and what they learn from it. Vendors educate prospects in different ways to push their own agendas.
Our educational content is a drop in the ocean. People use a plethora of channels to get educated on something; Google search here, YouTube video there, a podcast there, and a lot more. What are the odds of people discovering our content in this unpredictable journey? Unless our name is HubSpot,
our chances are slim. And even if they do discover our content, what’s our chance of having people consistently discover it, and consistently consume all of our content in their journey — not just a single content piece? Let’s not even go there.A single educational content piece doesn’t make an impression. I want to learn something, I find what I wanted, and I close the tab. The end. 15 minutes later, I don’t even remember where I got this information from, let alone form any kind of bond, trust, or demand for the vendor that provided this content.
Prospects get educated by many vendors. I said it before and I’ll say it again: unless they’re super-fans of our brand, or weirdos who have nothing better to do, few people are camping on our website, binge-consuming all our content.
Prospects are consuming content from many different sources, dedicating a fraction of their mental energy to each. A single content piece of ours they consume won’t have any effect. So how will we build trust, get remembered, or influence their thinking? Does this mean that, at this point, we’re relying on luck? I don’t know the answer, but as I’m writing this, I’m thinking maybe the goal should be to incentivize prospects to keep coming back for more of our educational content, in order to extend the exposure they have to us, and therefore, get the effects we wanted (trust, change of thinking, and memory of our brand).
POVs don’t persuade as much as the consensus does. People often accept new ideas because everyone else believes those things, not because the argument is so convincing. It's a shortcut our brains use to save energy. If you read 50 content pieces, and all of them say that grass is green, you think “Huh, if so many different sources say the grass is green, then it’s probably true". But if you find an outlier that claims the grass is purple, you think they’re full of shit. This is why movements and categories (that drive a consensus of information) are usually more influential than a single vendor trying to re-educate the market.
Unanswered Questions / Outro
I got sucked into a rabbit hole as I was writing this. I wanted to learn if there’s more to online B2B demand generation than educational content, but it ended up turning into an anti-content marketing post (which was NOT my intention). There are also some obvious takeaways, like content should be a part of your bigger promotional mix, which I didn’t want to talk about as I wanted to keep the article focused on the main question. So let’s run it back: is there more to creating demand in online B2B marketing than just educational content?
Here are some unanswered questions after I explored all of this:
If educational content is table stakes for marketing on digital channels, what the hell else can we do? Make some crazy digital events? Pull PR stunts?
How would you even have any organic presence on digital channels without (educational) content? Question asked by Drew Spencer Leahy on LinkedIn.
Are other GTM motions like product-led growth a direct answer to this question?
If education isn’t the only factor in how B2B buyers buy, what are those other things - and how does marketing create them, outside of educational material?
What do you think the answers are?
I’m Calvin Blanc. I ask weird B2B marketing questions that challenge the answers we thought were good enough.