Let’s talk about the elephant in every marketing meeting: your content strategy isn’t working, and deep down, you know it.
How do I know? Because 58% of B2B marketers rate their content strategy as merely “moderately effective”.
But here’s what bothers me about this statistic: it’s not like content marketing is rocket science. The principles haven’t changed. Good content solves problems, bad content exists to fill editorial calendars. Yet most B2B companies keep producing bad content and wondering why it doesn’t work.
The Content Mediocrity Epidemic
“Moderately effective” is corporate speak for “barely working but we don’t want to admit failure.”
You know what moderately effective content looks like:
- Blog posts that get published and forgotten
- White papers that get downloaded but never read
- Webinars that attract attendees who never become customers
- Case studies that sound like everyone else’s case studies
It’s content that checks boxes instead of changing minds.
Only 22% of B2B marketers rate their content as extremely or very successful. Which means 78% of content teams are producing mediocre-to-terrible content while their competitors eat their lunch.
Why Your Content Strategy is Failing
Problem #1: You’re Creating Content for Content’s Sake
Here’s a question that will make you uncomfortable: If you stopped publishing content tomorrow, would anyone notice?
Most B2B content exists because someone decided you need to publish three blog posts per week, not because you have three valuable things to say each week.
45% of marketers lack a scalable model for content creation, but instead of fixing this fundamental problem, they just produce more inconsistent content faster.
Problem #2: You’re Optimizing for the Wrong Metrics
“Our blog traffic is up 40%!” “We published 200 pieces of content this quarter!” “Our email open rates are above industry average!”
So what? Are you making more money?
The biggest challenge cited by 55% of marketers is creating content that prompts a desired action. Most content educates but doesn’t convert because it’s not designed to convert.
Problem #3: You’re Trying to Serve Everyone (And Therefore No One)
Generic content gets generic results. When you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one.
Your buyer personas probably look like this:
- “Marketing Manager, 25-45 years old, values efficiency”
- “Sales Director, 30-50 years old, results-driven”
- “IT Decision Maker, 35-55 years old, security-focused”
These aren’t personas. These are horoscopes. They tell you nothing useful about what these people actually care about or how they make decisions.
The Content Strategy Lies We Keep Telling Ourselves
Lie #1: “We Just Need More Content”
No, you need better content. 38% of marketers say they have technology but aren’t using its potential. More tools won’t fix a strategy problem.
Quality beats quantity every single time. One piece of content that changes how your audience thinks about their problem is worth more than 100 pieces of forgettable fluff.
Lie #2: “Our Audience Wants Educational Content”
Your audience wants solutions to problems. Education is just one potential vehicle for solutions.
Sometimes they need inspiration. Sometimes they need validation. Sometimes they need proof that you understand their world better than your competitors do.
Stop defaulting to “educational” and start thinking about what your audience actually needs.
Lie #3: “Content Marketing Takes Time to Work”
This is usually code for “our content isn’t working but we don’t want to admit it.”
Good content works immediately. Maybe not at scale, but it works. If your content isn’t generating any measurable impact after 90 days, your strategy is probably wrong.
Lie #4: “We Need More Resources”
Maybe. Or maybe you need to stop wasting the resources you have on content that doesn’t matter.
The top-performing content marketers focus on understanding their audience (85%) and producing high-quality content (85%). They don’t necessarily have bigger budgets—they have better priorities.
What Actually Works
Truth #1: Less Content, More Impact
The best B2B content teams I know publish less content than their competitors but generate more revenue per piece.
They’d rather publish one incredible case study per month than four mediocre blog posts.
Truth #2: Specificity Beats Generality
Content that’s specifically relevant to a small audience will always outperform content that’s generally relevant to a large audience.
Write for your best customers, not your biggest potential market.
Truth #3: Sales-Aligned Content Actually Converts
The number of buyers involved in B2B purchases has grown from 3-5 decision makers to 6-10 stakeholders. Your content needs to serve different roles in the buying process, not just different stages of awareness.
Content that helps your sales team have better conversations with prospects will always win over content that exists to improve your SEO rankings.
The Content Strategy Reality Check
Week 1: The Brutal Audit
- Look at your last 20 pieces of content
- For each piece, identify the specific action you wanted readers to take
- Track how many people actually took that action
- If you can’t answer these questions, your content strategy is broken
Week 2: The Audience Honesty Test
- Interview five of your best customers about their content consumption habits
- Ask what type of content actually influences their buying decisions
- Compare their answers to what you’re currently producing
Week 3: The Sales Team Reality Check
- Ask your sales team which marketing content actually helps them close deals
- Ask which content prospects mention in sales conversations
- If the lists are short, you’re creating content for yourself, not your audience
Week 4: The ROI Reckoning
- Calculate the true cost of your content production (time, tools, promotion)
- Identify which pieces of content have directly contributed to pipeline
- Kill everything that can’t prove its value
The Hard Conversations You Need to Have
With Your CEO:
“Are we creating content to feel productive or to drive business results?”
With Your Sales Team:
“What would happen to our sales process if we stopped creating content tomorrow?”
With Yourself:
“Am I measuring content success by marketing metrics or business outcomes?”
The Bottom Line
Most B2B content strategies fail because they’re designed to serve the content team’s needs (consistent publishing, SEO rankings, thought leadership) instead of the audience’s needs (solutions to problems, help making decisions, confidence in their choices).
Your content either helps people make better decisions or it doesn’t. Everything else is just noise.
Stop creating noise.
Start creating decisions.
Marissa Homere 