Buyers Don’t Want Your Content
- 13th November 2012
Something struck me the other night as I was creating some new content for an upcoming event I’m facilitating. So, I’m building content, and actually thinking about content itself as a topic area we have been thinking and talking about a lot lately as a research team. And here’s what struck me:
Buyers don’t want content. Buyers want information.
Content is a vehicle for information, and until we start thinking about it and treating it in this way, it will fall flat. Organizations of all sizes are struggling to make internal changes so they can meet the “content requirements” of today’s buyers. But buyers don’t want more content! They actually want less content, and more information.
Content is something a buyer has to weed through in order to get the information he or she needs. Nobody opens a Web browser looking for content. We open our browsers looking for information. As an information seeker, the last thing I want is something that has been conceived as a piece of content but doesn’t provide the information I need. I’m looking for trustworthy information to clarify, validate, inform.
Thinking about content as a vehicle for information shifts the focus of the conversation from who owns content strategy or content marketing, or content creation vs. content curation, to considering the journey of information from within the organization to outside audiences. While content strategy is important, it needs to be based on information that buyers are actually looking for, instead of thinking about content as an end in itself.
About the Author
Erin Estep is Service Director, Strategic Communications Management, at SiriusDecisions. She has more than 10 years of experience in brand strategy, including positioning, identity, public relations, digital strategy, copywriting and account management. Follow Erin on Twitter @eeestep.
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4 Comments
Adam, 13th November 2012 at 11:12 pm
Great article… It supports my internal mantra…
Conversations turn into leads, leads turn in opportunities, opportunities turn into REVENUE…
People want to learn, not be told.
Erin Estep, 14th November 2012 at 8:11 am
that’s a great way of putting it. not only do they not want to be told, but at the beginning phases, they are going to be put off by marketing materials and are truly seeking only information. Certainly marketing content at some point needs to become laser-focused on the product offering for late-stage decision-making, but with all the talk of content and content strategy, it seems many organizations are losing sight of the fact that the purpose of the content strategy is to create an information architecture that ensures access points to key information at each stage in the buying process. thanks for your comment!
Jon Lien, 16th November 2012 at 2:17 am
Now, I don’t mean to be a hater, but you’ve completely missed the mark here. What you’re basically saying is that a car buyer is not looking for a car, but looking for transportation. It completely misses the mark. You can have good and bad content using the same exact information.
Erin Estep, 16th November 2012 at 8:06 am
hi jon – thanks for reading and for your feedback. i totally agree that you can have good and bad content using the same information. i also agree that in essence, a car buyer is looking for transportation (surrounded by an ecosystem of other tangential needs, both psychological and logistical). i don’t see those two points being contradictory. perhaps i didn’t do the best job making my case here, but my larger point is that we’re watching b2b marketers become caught up in thinking about content and it’s easy to forget that people aren’t out there looking for marketing content – our data very clearly shows that they are looking for information on pain points, challenges, business issues, and initiatives. to tweak your analogy just slightly, what i’m really getting at is that car buyers aren’t seeking out marketing content when they do their online research. they’re seeking information to help them with that purchasing decision, so if your content contains the information they are seeking and is findable, usable, and digestible…you win.