Marketing Insights
Simply put, the content kingdom is under threat in 2025 from an onslaught of mediocre content, and soon “only output matters” will change to “does this content actually drive results?”
Content has been King for many years. Though in the digital age of scaling through AI, manipulating search results via SEO and churning out endless blogposts you have to wonder whether the scope of “King” has changed somewhat.
Simply put, the kingdom is under threat in 2025 from an onslaught of mediocre content, and soon “only output matters” will change to “does this content actually drive results?”.
Here’s how young B2B companies can measure those results at every stage (and some opinionated ramblings and context).
Customer testimonial videos take an awfully long time. Scripting, traveling to location, doing the interview, reviewing and editing the footage. Hours of time invested by multiple team members just to achieve a 40% completion rate by 100 of your least-interesting prospects.
Now to be clear I hear your sarcastic voice warming up. “You can’t measure the full value only over the short term, this is evergreen and will deliver prospects to us for months, if not years!” Yes, that’s likely true, but do you know it’s true? And do you know your precious time in November 2024 should be spent on that instead of running more meme-based brand ads that do little more than keep your name and tagline top of mind?
70% gut feel is good enough in the beginning, but what happens when your team is under-water and you can’t seem to move the performance needle no matter how many extra hours you put in? What happens when your executives get tired of hearing about how busy you are, and lose confidence in your argument that an extra 50% budget next year will solve all of your problems?
Or rather let me phrase it differently. If your salary was directly tied to the performance of your content, would you walk aimlessly in the forest, or would you ride brand-building ads into the 120% bonus sunset?
Understanding the link between the vanity metrics marketers are typically comfortable with (CTR, Impressions, Reach, Completion Time) and the business results of their actions (Pipeline, ARR, TCV, Number of New Customers) is the quickest way to abandon low quality content (such as blogposts that drive tons of organic traffic but show zero uplift in leads/customers) in favor of something that better serves your business.
The market is the grand arbiter of whether your content is good or not, just so we’re all on the same page. Not your CEO or their neighbour; neither Google nor LinkedIn. Your website traffic, followers and media mentions mean nothing if they don’t improve salience or inspire action. They are, at best (Google), indications you’re on the right track. At worst (your CEO’s neighbour), distractions.
However, since Google’s business is based on ad revenue, you can bet every cent on them wanting to match relevant content with the right audience. But is the content you’re creating relevant to the people willing to pay you money?
Google doesn’t care. As long as there’s a core of “Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness” (EEAT) to your content it will escape the void (also known as page 2 of Google Search Results) and be seen by real people (or LLM search engines, but that’s a topic for a different blog). Yes, even if AI helped create the content. But are those people your customers?
Perhaps it’s better to visit the 75 dentists around Amsterdam in person - people who will pay for your platform - than to create 6 blogposts and a video talking about how loyalty programs increase repeat business by 7%.
If your content isn’t boosting awareness or driving intent you’re not a marketer, you’re an artist. Creative expression without commercial intent has its place - and that place is far away from B2B marketing.
Let’s break this down by funnel stage:
If a B2B SaaS launches and no one is aware, did it even create shareholder value? You should have an idea of your target ICP, make sure to reach as many people in that ICP as possible (a bit more if you can manage it) with multiple touches across multiple channels. This phase is entirely awareness-focussed, though performance ads can have a (small) knock-on impact of informing the market.
At this stage your goal is increasing salience among the 95% of the market that isn’t in buying mode, while attempting to convert the 5% that is. Salience is best served by running brand ads, where number of touchpoints, time on page and comments/shares are early indicators of success. Conversion is likely a result of your demand generation campaigns, where conversion rate and lead score mean infinitely more than CTR, Engagement Rate or CPC.
Great, people want to work with you, now you need to make sure they have no reason to consider alternative options, including the Status Quo. [Shoutout to the Boomers that remembered the epic rock band, and the Millennials that have Nic Cage in National Treasure floating through their heads right now] Your sales team is likely measuring Pipeline Velocity and Roadblocks; steal those metrics and understand how your content (sales decks, brochures, how-to videos, ISO certificates, RFI/RFP template answers, etc.) improves those. And yes, sales team happiness with marketing content is an entirely valid metric to measure.
At this point, clients are likely looking for any reason not to sign even though they really want to. While marketing content support here is limited, you still have the chance to help the sales team keep non-purchasing stakeholders in IT, Implementation, Information Security and Legal happy. While you’ll likely get more bespoke at this stage (and might offload this to the Product Marketer), it’s still content that has measurable impact.
You’ve got them, now how do you keep them, increase stickiness, and turn users into evangelists? Engagement is the name of the game, whether that’s newsletter open rates, attendance at company events, or even new feature adoption following marketing communications. After Engagement comes external perception, whether that’s public reviews or participation in your affiliate/referral programs.
Holiday season is here, which means after the BFCM hangover subsides many marketers will pretend to work until their official vacation kicks off. Instead of aimlessly scrolling through LinkedIn or clearing out that Trello board for January, consider the following:
Use these results to clear the fluff out of your 2025 content strategy, you’ll be surprised at how much free time you have to experiment on new ideas.
