No more spinoffs: why lead generation content needs to evolve

The Hollywood formula: nostalgia, remakes, and the risk of over-familiarity

Go to the cinema these days and it’s easy to feel like you’ve seen it all before. Everything is a remake of a remake, a reboot of an existing franchise, or a spinoff.

Hollywood is dining out on nostalgia and tapping into existing audiences more aggressively than ever. And although, as box office data may show, it’s currently working, it’s conditioning the industry to take a narrow focus on what ‘sells’, and what audiences are willing to give their attention to in the future.

Are brands falling into the same trap with content?

Some B2B brands approach content in the same way. They engage in content production with an isolated view of its overall impact. Thinking only about the immediate outcome of driving leads, they churn out a library of ebooks, reports, whitepapers, and webinars to capture as many eyeballs as possible based on what’s worked in the past, without considering the bigger picture.

This unwavering focus on the outcome — i.e., lead generation at the sake of all else — has shaped content production in a negative way. Content today is expected to pull in as many leads as possible, as quickly as possible. This typically results in grand promises in the headline that never get delivered in the body copy, similar to when the latest film in a franchise fails to live up to the hype.

It’s a bait and switch that achieves a limited version of success with the immediate goal (lead generation) without much consideration for what happens next.

The B2B buyer journey has evolved, and so should your content

This hurts everyone, but especially marketing teams. Not least because marketing performance at high ticket B2B service providers is increasingly being measured on not just how many prospects they get through the door, but how many they help get to proposal stage.

Making the situation more difficult, it’s thought only 20% of B2B buyers are in market throughout the course of the year, or about 5% per quarter. That leaves companies and their competitors fighting over a small slice of the overall market, armed with content that often amounts to little more than a thinly veiled sales pitch.

When you then factor in that sales teams are repeatedly hitting prospects over the head with chaser emails, on the back of mediocre lead magnet content, it’s no surprise a lot of what’s put out there is going unanswered, or unread.

All this is to say that the goalposts have moved. Quantity of leads is important, but so too is quality, which means content must do something more than it currently does. It must add real value. It must help answer the big questions keeping the industry up at night. It must not be created purely to deliver a short-term lead generation outcome at the sake of all else.

This is why ‘me too’ content, built on the content roadmap of the past, will never drive the impact businesses expect. It’s just adding to the flood of information already out there — and that’s getting worse all the time.

So, how do we fix it?

Reframing content goals

The first step is to move away from content for content’s sake, and to reframe how we think about outcomes. If you’re only focused on the 5% who are in market, you’ll miss a chance to shape the world view, and build trust, with the other 95%. Think less “how will this asset generate leads?” and more “how will this help move the industry conversation forward?”

Both are important, of course. But as the B2B buyer journey continues to shift, one should not take priority over the other. In other words, all content must help build brand and trust — especially lead generation content.

At Isoline, we think about lead magnets as a pyramid with several layers:

• Industry research: the baseline for any content creation.
• Platform data points: helping to uncover relevant trends and insights.
• Original data: surveying prospects (and end users) to round out the narrative.
• Executive commentary: true thought leadership from company execs.
• Third party views: polling the thoughts of customers to shape the overall perspective.

We find this layered approach creates content that sparks conversations. It fuels PR efforts, in several cases generating wall-to-wall coverage. And, because it’s adding value, the quality leads our clients are looking for come through as a matter of course.

If we’re going to spend our time adding to the deluge of content that’s already out there, we’d rather be working on stuff that’s worth reading. Fortunately, our clients think so too.

Want to see what we could do for you? Get in touch at hello@isolinecomms.com