Critiques of Conventional Content Marketing Strategies

Key Insight

Traditional content marketing advice, encompassing 'Look Smart,' 'Be Useful,' and 'Be Present,' frequently fails to effectively teach customers or shift their direction, especially for 'Mobilizers.' These approaches are problematic because they do not adequately challenge existing customer mental models, referred to as breaking down the 'A' state before building up the 'B' state. Suppliers often focus on demonstrating expertise or providing information about their differentiators without offering a compelling reason for customers to alter their current behavior, a strategy that CEB research indicates is insufficient for driving fundamental change.

'Be Useful' content aims to address customer pain points they already recognize and actively search for. While this may capture attention in a noisy marketplace, leading to blog clicks, it often falls short of generating meaningful sales activity because it does not introduce 'Mobilizers' to problems they are unaware of. Similarly, 'Be Present' content emphasizes broad coverage, which quickly leads to an overwhelming volume of content production. A conservative estimate suggests that creating content for 4 personas across 5 touchpoints with 4 pieces per month per 4 business units results in 320 pieces of content monthly, totaling nearly 4000 annually. This drives marketers into a 'feed the content beast' cycle, where the sheer quantity of content compromises its quality. It is estimated that over 85 percent of marketing organizations are in some form of this 'coverage rut.'

The 'Look Smart' approach primarily focuses on highlighting a supplier's 'B' state, illustrating the benefits of their solutions, but neglects to dismantle the customer's current 'A' state, thus failing to provide a strong impetus for change. An example illustrating this is if Xerox had pursued a classic thought leadership strategy, producing content like '5 Things You Didn’t Know about Document Security,' which focuses on cutting-edge aspects without prompting customers to critically re-evaluate their current situation. The energy and resources dedicated to 'look smart, be useful, be present' content incur a significant opportunity cost, diverting efforts from creating 'surprising content' that can truly demonstrate that the 'pain of same is greater than pain of change' and effectively redirect customer behavior. This scattered approach fails to build consistent messaging or help customers think differently about their own business.