If creating “good” content is your marketing strategy, you’re already losing the game. Good content is quickly becoming invisible content. Why? Because we live in a world where creating good content has never been easier. AI-powered tools and streamlined workflows allow us to produce in minutes what would have taken hours (or even days) a few years ago. Everyone can create good content, so audiences not only expect it but they consider it table stakes. They want something more. They want truly great content that really stands out.
Are you giving it to them?
Content: The Key to a Winning Brand
Brands have been generating a steady stream of content for years, but with the advent of AI, that stream has become a tsunami. A lot of it is bad, but more and more of it is actually good. It’s comprehensive. It’s easy to understand. It’s perfectly decent.
But the truth is if it doesn’t stop scrolls or turn heads, it’s just white noise.
Remember: Brand is the last remaining competitive advantage. Your content is often your audience’s first introduction to your brand, helping inform their perception of you. So it’s your content that directly influences whether they trust you, rely on you, or feel confident spending their money with you.
Yes, your product/service matters. But your customer experience matters more. And that is directly affected by your content. If that content doesn’t strike them as unique, interesting, or valuable, it won’t stand out and—unfortunately—your brand will be entirely forgettable.
Why Marketers Fall into the Good Content Trap
In this landscape, the savvy brands—those with adequate resources, the right partners, and the space and support to do truly great work—are going to thrive. But too many marketers are hampered by a range of problems that make it hard to break out of the “good enough” content rut.
The most common we’ve observed in our clients:
- Resource constraints: According to the Content Marketing Institute, 49% of B2B marketers expect their budget to stay the same or decrease. Marketing teams that were once specialists are being forced to become generalists, spinning plates, racing deadlines, and struggling to do more with less. As a result, they often don’t have the resources or time to put in the work to create best-in-class content.
- A checklist mentality: A lot of organizations view content as a tedious marketing task, a commodity to be produced, or just another box to check. This mindset makes it incredibly hard to create an enduring brand that wins. They just continue pushing unoriginal content out the door and hoping it’ll move the needle. (In all likelihood, it leaves them fighting for scraps in a crushingly competitive market.)
- Organizational challenges: In some organizations, it can be difficult to get buy-in from senior leadership who are either deeply risk averse or simply don’t understand the true value of content. (Or, worse, they think that AI-generated content is the simple solve.) This is one of the most significant challenges to overcome, especially when these people are the budget gatekeepers.
No matter what the immediate barriers are, it doesn’t change the fact that content is the most important tool you have to engage your audience. And it is more important than ever, especially as B2B buyer behavior has shifted. These buyers are far more independent. They want more self-serve options (which means more content). And they’re incredibly close to making up their mind by the time they even reach out.
According to The APAC B2B Buyer Journey Research Report, 73% of the buyer’s journey has occurred before prospects engage with sellers.
That means B2B buyers have already done 73% of the work on their own—researching, reading, comparing, etc. And guess what? A simple Google search isn’t the only way they’re going to find or assess you. Critical business decisions now happen in private Slack groups, on LinkedIn, and through AI chat tools. You need to think about how your content shows up across these channels—and how it compares to your competition.
Luckily, there is one thing that will actually make your content better and help you outshine everybody.
The Secret to Make Good Content Marketing Great
If you want to make the shift from good to great, add one thing to your content: experience.
Anyone can create expert content (especially with AI). You can spit out lengthy guides about any topic all day long. But these pieces of thought leadership are rarely unique. They tend to sound like the same recycled piece that everyone else is publishing. There’s one thing that AI and your competitors can’t imitate, though, and that’s your experience.
People are desperate to hear from real people’s experience (especially in a world of AI-generated fluff), so the more you can couple your expertise with your personal experience, the more people will trust you.
There are so many ways that you can infuse this into your content, including:
- Personal lessons (wins and failures)
- Insider tips and insights
- Employee/expert spotlights
- Behind-the-scenes content
- Experiments/results
- Frameworks/processes
- Case studies and examples
- Client testimonials
- Proprietary data
- Polls (ask others to share their personal experiences)
And remember that experience can come from multiple individuals/teams in your company. There are probably plenty of in-house experts whose insights might be interesting to your audience; you just need to tap them for those gems. (To do this, see our tips to turn those coworkers into great content creators.)
Yes, sourcing this expert insight can be more time-consuming. But it is well worth it.
On that note, it’s also worthwhile to reassess your entire content strategy and hone in on what’s working and what’s not. Some key questions to ask:
- Does your content strategy align with your brand’s larger goals? If you don’t have a clear throughline, it doesn’t matter how great your content is. It won’t get you any closer to your larger goals. (Find out more about how to align your brand and content strategy.)
- Are you focusing on quantity over quality? You should focus exclusively on what moves the needle. That means you might need to do less—but better. Create a stringent system to vet ideas and make sure they’ll resonate with your audience. When you’re ideating new content ideas, this means saying no more often than yes. But that’s OK. That’s how you raise the bar and make your content stand out. (Find out more about why we’ve been encouraging brands to make less content.)
- Are you investing the right resources in content creation? You may be underinvesting or overinvesting, depending on the type of content you’re creating. This is why it’s important to be critical about the things you’re creating. For example, we once sunk a lot of resources into a fancy, lengthy interactive e-book, but we soon realized our audience preferred a simple, easy-to-reference downloadable PDF. We ended up translating the content into that preferred format, but we could have saved ourselves a lot of time and energy if we thought more about our audience’s needs vs. our own desires.
- Do you have the right team and tools in place? Yes, AI tools can help increase your productivity and eliminate pesky tasks, but you still need human oversight—especially in content creation. Make sure you have the right infrastructure to effectively ideate and produce high-quality content.
- Are you measuring what matters, not just what’s easy to track? It’s easy to fill your reports with vanity metrics that look great and tell you nothing. Focus on meaningful measurement that gives you genuine insights to shape your strategy.
- Is your content truly differentiated, or just following the crowd? It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to marketing content. But just because you’re used to creating a particular type of content, or using a particular format, doesn’t mean it’s best for your audience. Try new things and track how they perform. You might be surprised to see what actually resonates. (You can also use our free template to conduct a proper content audit, which will help you spot gaps and opportunities to create more effective content.)
You might not be able to makeover your content strategy overnight, but thoughtful, incremental changes will help you drastically improve the quality over time—and that is the most significant thing you can do to position your brand successfully.
If there’s anything you take away from this, remember: Creating exceptional content isn’t just about standing out; it’s about survival. Yes, platforms come and go. Algorithms evolve. Workflows adjust. But the fundamental principle remains the same. The brands that win are the ones that can create undeniable content—content that earns attention naturally, builds genuine trust, and makes the brand the obvious choice.
