Content-Led Growth: Are You Being Hoodwinked?

"Content-led growth" is a notion I see bouncing around LinkedIn from time to time. More so lately with economic desperation increasing among agencies and freelancers who are seeing the piecemeal work they once did now being done in house.

With personalized content positioned as the holy grail by our marketing overlords, with marketing busyness increasingly being valued in the absence of business, and with content people sometimes making the leap to overall marketing leadership (often at startups), it’s easy to be seduced by the idea.

I'm supposed to love it. I'm supposed to push it. I'm supposed to talk about it and nothing else.

But I’m too friggin’ honest for my own good.

And honestly, content-led growth is often sold to the wrong businesses.

I'm not saying content-led growth isn't possible. I'm just saying it's rare. Very rare.

And there are five big reasons why:

1. Lack of Competitive Advantage

For content to drive business growth, it must have a competitive advantage, convey a competitive advantage, or both.

With the former, this could mean the involvement of a rockstar founder or influencer, or it could mean standout creativity in the content itself (of the type I see Mats Georgson, Ph.D. or Haris Spahi? often achieving in their LinkedIn content).

With the latter, your business must have a competitive advantage that the market recognizes or would easily recognize, with your content helping to convey it.

This can happen, but it doesn't happen that often.

2.??Your Content Doesn’t Reach All Relevant Parties

LinkedIn classifies B2B buying group members as either target buyers or hidden buyers. Target buyers are geeks and nerds like the CTO who are experts in what is being bought. Hidden buyers are people like the CFO or head of procurement who are not.

As their name implies, target buyers are the ones who read your blogs, subscribe to your newsletter, and follow you on social media. While hidden buyers rarely consume your content or advertising (at least before the buyer’s journey) or not at all.

B2B vendors must create brand familiarity with both target and hidden buyers to make a sale, so they need to be utilizing other means besides content marketing to reach the latter.

3.??Inbound Is Not an Ideal Way To Grow

Content marketing (at least as practiced by most B2B companies) is largely an inbound tactic. And inbound-only often isn’t the best way to grow.

It misses hidden buyers. Out of market prospects often get ignored. A blog article (text-only) doesn’t create as much brand awareness as an equivalent social media visual (laid out in your brand colors with your logo) that conveys the same information. And there are other reasons.

I’m not saying inbound can’t drive growth. All I’m saying is that inbound often can't do it alone.

4.??Content Is Slow To Consume

Content is the slowest means in existence to create brand awareness.

A blog article that takes five minutes to read is five-to-ten times longer than most video ads, and maybe a hundred times longer or more to consume than the average banner or social media post ad.

Not that content isn’t useful for creating brand awareness. It’s just that your average B2B business is best served by providing a mix of fast and slow encounters with your brand, when engaging with the same prospect and when engaging different ones.

Some target buyers won't consume your content no matter what you do. Some won't think they need your education. Some won't think what you offer educational. Some will just prefer to get their education from sources they consider more impartial.

There are lots of reasons, and you must win the attention of these prospects other ways.

5.??Most Content Sucks

Content can be good quality without necessarily having a competitive advantage. And it can be consumed if you’ve got a captive audience of fans or subscribers.

But let’s face it, most content isn’t good quality. Most content is dull. Or keyword-laden garbage. Or vacuous nonsense. Or simply not relevant or useful to the target audience (even if well made).

And if business growth is your goal, the odds of sucky content driving it are not good.

However….

Content Can Drive Growth in Some Cases

There are few absolutes in this business. And there are instances and scenarios where content can drive growth.

I’m not going to list them all. Just enough to demonstrate my point.

One instance is when your business offers something both truly unique and truly interesting to the target audience. Because in this case, awareness of what you sell is very much up to you (though winning media coverage along with it will certainly help).

Another instance is when you’re a startup with a rockstar in the leadership, since the goal here is often pre-valuation buzz and not viable long-term business.

Another is any industry where SEO really does determine who wins. But this is mostly a B2C thing (e-commerce, hospitality, etc.).

In B2B, brand familiarity and perceived risk largely determine the winners.

So What About the Future?

I mentioned personalized content back at the start of the article. So you may be wondering if content-led growth use cases will grow as AI does.

Well, there have been a number of studies already on AI in content marketing. And I've seen next-to-no evidence that AI improves content effectiveness (benefits so far have largely been confined to cost and efficiency), with further adoption after the first wave surprisingly slow.

And what's more, no matter how sophisticated AI gets, personalization will only be as good as the data it depends on. And the data geeks I know say our data is shit.

So don’t let yourself get suckered into content-led growth marketing by an unscrupulous vendor. Talk to a professional who’s too friggin’ honest and therefore willing to tell you that it might not be what’s best for you.

Someone who offers content without the con.

You’ll never guess who I recommend.