Here are 5 reasons why B2B companies *need* to build a content engine in-house
- Deep customer knowledge & subject matter expertise are required to win today.
You aren’t just competing against your B2B “competitors”. You are competing with EVERYONE – the Olympics, and sports, and live music, and coca cola, and every other B2B & B2C brand for consumer ATTENTION. If you aren’t providing immense & unique value, you are at a massive disadvantage. - Ongoing market research & consumer insights.
I have a deep pulse on the market because we’ve built a stream of ongoing insights that fuels our company/product strategy. We get tons of real-life questions from buyers at our live events, 100 DMs/emails per week & hundreds of comments every day on LinkedIn. Producing & distributing content allows you to LISTEN to the market. - Competitive advantage & Long-term upside
Do you think my LinkedIn content & our podcast would work if we outsourced it to someone else? It definitely wouldn’t.
We’ve built a massive competitive advantage through content that has delivered exponentially growing *revenue* results consistently over the past 8 fiscal quarters (aka stacking growth). This opportunity is available to any B2B business. It doesn’t require a lot of money – it just requires effort, talent & commitment to the strategy. - Content volume & consistency really matter
One of the main reasons the Refine Labs strategy is working is because we prioritize quality AND quantity. You do not achieve quantity at the expense of “quality”. This is an outdated belief. Outsourcing to an agency will be prohibitively expensive & too slow to maintain this type of volume for a sustained period of time. - Rapid messaging testing & iteration
You can rapidly test new concepts and messaging in your content & collect real-time feedback from the market. Gather insights. Understand objections. Rapidly shape your messaging. - Relationships
We’re in the word-of-mouth era of B2B. Creating content in-house is one of the best ways to build meaningful relationships with customers, prospects, and influential people by demonstrating expertise & credibility.
The winning formula today is building a “media company” for your business. AKA creating a content engine that your buyers love.
Where they seek out your content on LinkedIn every morning at 9am.
Where they can’t wait to listen to your new podcast episode on Saturday morning while they walk the dog.
Where they show up to your events every week because they get so much value from them.
There is so much upside in this strategy, it’s wild.
And the only way you’ll really get there is by building it in-house.
p.s. You can outsource the *post-production* but you can’t outsource the thoughts. Example: we outsource the editing of our podcast.
p.p.s. The best space I see for outsourcing content is for an agency to *repackage* your existing content/thoughts for effective distribution.
Why Thought Leadership is the single most advantageous position for a startup.
When you are building your startup, or scaling it, demand becomes critical. But ot demand as many see it.
Not the demand that we are being sold to 25X a day on LinkedIn.
LikedIn because thee is NO other atkleyelave where IN (yes, itforleads and the promise of $100,000’s in new sales.
eads and creating demand, you are evangelizing the category and therefore seen as the category leader.
So when buyers move into buying cycles, they see you as the category leader and you are the preferred vendor.
And when more people that see you as the preferred vendor move into buying cycles, you win more deals. It’s not complicated.
There are two primary factors in controlling demand:
- The % of your target market that sees you as the leader and/or you are their preferred brand
Because once buyers move into a buying cycle, the preferred vendor has a massive advantage. The company that created the demand is much more likely to win that business. This also plays into the “word-of-mouth” era where it’s obvious the number 1 source B2B buyers trust is recommendations from peers.
More people that see you as the preferred vendor (even if they don’t use your product) = More people that will recommend you to others that are moving into buying cycles
This impacts the % of opportunities that you win. - The magnitude of the flow of demand moving into buying cycles over a period of time
By evangelizing the category, you can CREATE DEMAND & increase the amount of buyers that move into buying cycles during a defined period of time.
Example: Toothpaste
There was a time when nobody knew they needed to use toothpaste.
And then a company went out to all of these people who were unaware of the problems & didn’t know there was a solution, and they EDUCATED the market:
Toothpaste can help prevent cavities.
Toothpaste makes your teeth stronger.
Toothpaste keeps your teeth white.
And all of a sudden, there was a lot of demand for toothpaste.
This impacts the current/future size of the market & the amount of opportunities you create.
I’m fascinated by how few companies consider either of these two metrics or think about this concept at all.
This is why a lot of “ABM” programs are failing right now IMO. Because they aren’t meaningfully moving either of these numbers. Because they are doing Sales to a small list of accounts, not creating DEMAND across the entire market.
And if you aren’t controlling the demand flow, you have no control over your growth. You will grow at the rate of the category or slower.
Instead, companies sit there at the bottom of the funnel waiting for people that are looking for something like them – fighting over the small amount of people that are actively buying where the people moving into buying cycles don’t see them as the preferred vendor, and they’re going to lose most of those opportunities.
Look around – all the companies that are winning are CREATING DEMAND.
Controlling the flow of demand is the most advantageous position to be in as a business.
Because when you are creating demand, you are evangelizing the category and therefore seen as the category leader.
So when buyers move into buying cycles, they see you as the category leader and you are the preferred vendor.
And when more people that see you as the preferred vendor move into buying cycles, you win more deals. It’s not complicated.
There are two primary factors in controlling demand:
- The % of your target market that sees you as the leader and/or you are their preferred brand
Because once buyers move into a buying cycle, the preferred vendor has a massive advantage. The company that created the demand is much more likely to win that business. This also plays into the “word-of-mouth” era where it’s obvious the number 1 source B2B buyers trust is recommendations from peers.
More people that see you as the preferred vendor (even if they don’t use your product) = More people that will recommend you to others that are moving into buying cycles
This impacts the % of opportunities that you win. - The magnitude of the flow of demand moving into buying cycles over a period of time
By evangelizing the category, you can CREATE DEMAND & increase the amount of buyers that move into buying cycles during a defined period of time.
Example: Toothpaste
There was a time when nobody knew they needed to use toothpaste.
And then a company went out to all of these people who were unaware of the problems & didn’t know there was a solution, and they EDUCATED the market:
Toothpaste can help prevent cavities.
Toothpaste makes your teeth stronger.
Toothpaste keeps your teeth white.
And all of a sudden, there was a lot of demand for toothpaste.
This impacts the current/future size of the market & the amount of opportunities you create.
I’m fascinated by how few companies consider either of these two metrics or think about this concept at all.
This is why a lot of “ABM” programs are failing right now IMO. Because they aren’t meaningfully moving either of these numbers. Because they are doing Sales to a small list of accounts, not creating DEMAND across the entire market.
And if you aren’t controlling the demand flow, you have no control over your growth. You will grow at the rate of the category or slower.
Instead, companies sit there at the bottom of the funnel waiting for people that are looking for something like them – fighting over the small amount of people that are actively buying where the people moving into buying cycles don’t see them as the preferred vendor, and they’re going to lose most of those opportunities.
Look around – all the companies that are winning are CREATING DEMAND.
Everyone is talking about the “blurred line” between Sales & Marketing.
But to me the line is super clear.
It’s not about what job title you have or what department you report into.
It’s not about what channel you’re using.
It’s about the MINDSET you bring which drives your activities and your goals.
So here’s the definition:
Sales = I’m trying to CONVERT someone now.
Marketing = I’m trying to educate someone to build affinity & build brand.
The line is ULTRA clear.
Most Salespeople spend some portion of their time doing Marketing. And that’s great.
And most Marketers spend some portion of their time doing Sales. And that’s great.
But it may be challenging for some people to adopt these definitions because they’re not tangible. You don’t have something easy like job title or channel to point to – the only way is looking inwards at your mindset.
Lots of marketers don’t have the awareness & discipline to recognize where they are operating.
Based on that definition:
- Most marketers actually mainly execute Sales (lead gen & supporting sales).
- Some of the best Salespeople are actually just great at marketing.
- Performance “marketing” is actually Sales.
- Direct response “marketing” is actually Sales.
To be clear, it’s not a bad thing for Marketers to execute Sales.
What’s important as a marketer is that you recognize the percentage of your time and effort and budget that’s allocated to these definitions of Marketing vs. Sales.
When people have intent, I’m trying to convert them too (Sales).
But I recognize that a far majority of your available market does NOT have intent (>99%). And for that segment, the best option is to execute MARKETING.
So I allocate my time and effort and budget accordingly – heavily weighted to actual Marketing (non conversion-based education & affinity).
Lots of people will struggle with these definitions, I get it.
But if you can really internalize it, this is a serious superpower.
I started operating this way in 2016 and my career trajectory changed forever.