What If Buyers Are Over Your Content?
A new client yelled when I suggested they stop throwing massive content into the digital divide.
Six months later, their engagement increased 500%.
What shifted?
They were doing everything "right." Five blogs a week. Monthly whitepapers. Daily social posts. Weekly email blasts.
“Right” meaning if we were still in 2010.
Engagement was dying. Revenue flat.
I said: "Your customers don’t want your content. They want evidence and ROI.”
Leadership pushed back hard. "Our customers want to know about us. We just need MORE visibility."
Here's what they missed, thanks to the way they’d always done it.
Until the internet, vendors controlled the narrative. You created content, established authority, told buyers what mattered.And they believed.
Digital made it even easier. Plaster the website. Flood social. Email constantly.
Made it easier for buyers too. They no longer needed or wanted all that chest thumping content.
Today? Buyers don’t trust vendors anymore. Not after the onslaught of digital lies.
84% ignore those analyst reports you paid for. 75% actively avoid your sales team.
They trust peers. They trust valid evidence.
Why haven’t vendors adapted?
Our minds default to familiar. Create another whitepaper? Known. Comfortable.
Gather valid evidence customers? That’s a more difficult path, and your mind knows it.
That's neuroscience. Not a character flaw.
Buyer power shifted dramatically thanks to our digital world.
They don’t need vendors anymore. In fact, they are 85% through their buying cycle before they reach out.
They no longer want to hear the hype.
Yet we continue with the content calendars, whitepaper de jour, blog posts and rah rahs- measuring clicks vs true impact.
Patting ourselves on the back for all those followers who never spend a dime with us.
That 500% increase?
* We spent more time listening, understanding, focusing on the customer value instead of the case study.
* We stopped the content avalanche
* We learned what mattered to our buyers, not ourselves.
That shift changed everything.