The Content Marketing Delusion

Why Content Marketing Must Embrace the Latter

Creating and publishing content for marketing purposes is not new.

Benjamin Franklin did it to promote his printing business.

But ever since content marketing became an industry and was declared “the only marketing left,” soon after, there’s been a delusion at the heart of it.

As widely practiced and preached, content marketing has never been a strategic marketing activity.

It’s just been an activity.

One that makes us and our marketing superiors feel good, while delivering little tangible benefit.

A prime example of what Jake Sanders brilliantly calls “the performance of marketing.”

Our industry has tried to achieve more than this.

We’ve tried to be useful.

But even today, with so much expected of us, we’re swinging wildly, delivering glancing blows at best.

Our impact is limited because we’re a practice without theory.

There are no universally recognized strategies, models, frameworks, or definitions in our profession.

There aren’t even competing schools of thought.

There is nothing.

Content marketing is the Wild West.

With nothing to connect what our industry does to a brand’s marketing strategy or other efforts, the ugly truth is we haven’t been living up to our name.

We haven’t been content marketers.

We’ve been content creators sponsored by marketing.

And we’ve largely been feeding the birds.

Of Prospects and Pigeons

Back in the “dunk in the dark” days, content marketing focused on the online spaces where our prospects hung out (mostly social media), tossing breadcrumbs at them as if they were pigeons, hoping they’d make a crowd and consume it, and return regularly to consume more (the engagement game).

Later, we focused on birdfeeders on our brand’s property, keeping them chock-full of blog content intended to attract prospects, who would consume it and leave a trail of digital footprints for more prospects to follow (the web traffic game).

There was never a viable plan for converting those fat little birds into customers; purchases were expected to happen more or less spontaneously if enough birds showed up.

Content marketing’s next phase will be even more delusional (if we don’t change things now).

Attention will be the new game (wherever it happens to be).

Which sounds good on paper (since we’re in the attention economy), but it assumes a purchase will happen after a pigeon merely sees your breadcrumbs instead of taking the time to consume them.

Which is magical thinking, but content marketing is built on it.

Content marketing’s OGs got famous preaching brand journalism and content for content’s sake.

Marketing was considered an intrusion on our glorious purpose of engaging prospects—a cramp in our style.

And I admit, I bought into this bullshit back when it was new.

The gods of marketing were telling us followers wanted to have a conversation with their brands, which was easy to believe back when organic reach for brands still existed.

Content marketing changed when the SEO junta came to power, but not how it needed to.

Instead of marketing to prospects as human beings, we treated them like lab animals, using content as bait to hijack whatever online journey they were on, expecting purchases to happen through the pigeon equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome.

And like with all bait, our content’s substance was deemed unimportant—it only needed the right stink.

We did nothing to make the brands we served attractive, persuasive, or memorable, while offering no meaningful education to make them seem useful, authoritative, or distinctive.

This shit I never believed in, but that didn’t matter much.

Those in power believed it.

The SEO junta had data on their side.

But their regime is now ending.

The data generated by content marketing fooled our marketing superiors into thinking something meaningful was happening for a long time, but that well is drying up.

Our online marketing channels are on life support.

And AI has slipped a pillow over the head of general knowledge search traffic.

Attention (measured in impressions) can still be brute-forced through frequent content activity, but that puts us in yet another race with our digital landlords, which we’ll end up regretting.

A race to the bottom that can only be run using AI-produced and curated garbage, rendering any impressions you squeeze from the algorithm pretty much worthless.

The more you publish, the more your content’s quality and relevance will suffer, causing prospects to tune you out.

Even if that doesn’t happen, content marketing focused on any single metric is inherently flawed.

Because single-metric marketing isn’t marketing—it’s gaming.

Games are for children.

And digital marketing metrics are ridiculously easy to game.

While producing an incomplete picture that leaves far too much ignored.

Engagement matters. It means you’re not boring people. But a singular focus on it limits growth, leaves customers ignored in favor of fans and bots, and encourages valueless clickbait (wasting your brand equity).

Web traffic matters. It’s a proxy for brand health. It’s hard to win customers without it. But chasing this metric alone is an arms race, one that won’t pay your bills.

Attention matters. You won’t be remembered without it. It asks less of prospects than engagement. But it’s not sufficient for your brand to be remembered, while also encouraging arm waving (in every sense).

Content marketing’s single-metric scorekeeping has stunted our industry’s effectiveness and growth since the get-go.

Some individual content marketers have been exceptions, but kids’ stuff has been the rule in our industry.

The time has come for content marketing to put aside childish things and grow up.

Be capitalists who create.

Start pulling our weight in the marketing funnel.

We need more content marketing metrics—a lot more.

Enough to ensure accountability and effectiveness across the entire funnel (or whatever model you use).

In short, content marketers must be marketers, not just makers and distributors of birdseed.

We must be content people who market, with one foot in each discipline - a definition from yours truly which the Content Marketing Institute was kind enough to share.

And we can’t half-ass either or both—we must be great at both.

There’s a whole ocean of outrage and opium our content is competing with.

And success requires two things:

1. Standout quality and creativity so our content wins attention, engagement, consumption, and conversion.

2. Alignment with marketing strategy so the attention, engagement, consumption, and conversion that standout content wins does useful work.

Time is short on this happening and odds are long.

More businesses and individuals are embracing the attention game each day.

Posting, posting, posting—a ceaseless dripfeed of strategically-bankrupt slop.

And none of it worth clicking on.

All because of a mistaken belief that saying nothing repeatedly magically adds up to something.

Can the content marketing industry bring strategic rigor to what we do?

I’m confident we can, but I don’t know if we will.

I’m connected to thousands of content people on LinkedIn.

The vast majority who speak there regularly talk about down-in-the-weeds shit.

Things like the active voice, -em dashes, calls to action (all things AI will eventually master).

I can count content marketing connections demonstrating brand, marketing, or strategic sense with my hands.

That needs to change.

Those who pay us must believe content marketers have more to offer than what we’ve been offering.

Because AI can now mimic it.

And none of us are safe.

It doesn’t matter if you as a content marketer know what you’re doing in terms of marketing.

The world must believe that we as a profession know what we’re doing.

Or we’ll all be feeding birds in the park (this time as an unpaid time killer).

Don’t expect our industry leaders to lead this charge or make the case for us, either. It’s too easy for those already famous to make a living off platitudes and pixie dust, or pivot to another industry.

This must be a grassroots effort.

Hard work, I know, but a marketing-focused reboot would be a content marketing renaissance—an emergence from the dark ages.

Content marketing has done its job with one hand tied behind its back so far.

And still we’ve managed to change the world.

Just imagine what our industry can do when we start marketing.

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P.S. If you’re wondering why I haven’t gone deeper into what strategic content marketing would look like, it’s because there can be no one ring to rule them all.

Content marketers must determine what’s best for their brand based on its circumstances.

Different businesses, different industries, at different stages of development, can have very different marketing strategies and needs.

And if you think that’s a copout, let me straighten you the fuck out.

A “birds in the park” approach can work for B2B market leaders with steady pipeline that rely on sales enablement for most of what marketing does.

A “birdfeeder” approach can work when purchases are made online, prices are modest, and products are undistinguished (think e-commerce or SaaS for freelancers).

Attention can work wonders when you’re a household name selling something any idiot can understand (think McDonald’s or Netflix).

You’ll still need a nuanced perspective and a comprehensive set of metrics, but each approach still has merit.

Or maybe you’ll need more than one.

Or maybe you’ll need something else entirely.

Budget, brand positioning, market position, marketing strategy, growth expectations, and leadership inclinations should all factor into how you do content marketing.

You can’t just do what everyone else is doing, or repeat what you did in your last job, and expect it to work.

Content marketing exists to support marketing.

When it’s the other way around, it’s only the performance of marketing.