Looking at most B2B marketing, the answer is clearly “no, you don’t.” You do not trust your content to tell your story, grow your audience or sell your solutions. Instead, you put your trust in your outbound marketing and sales process.

Don’t trumpet your content as your communication king, as the key way you connect with your audience, if the real way you connect with your audience comes after they fill out a registration form.

Your content is like the teen that still needs a chaperone, you aren’t willing to send it out on its own yet. And that is ok!

If you don’t trust your content to sell your services or speak for your brand on its own, recognize that and take the time to identify the role you need your content to play.

Potential Goals for Your Content

Take a step back and determine the real purpose of each piece of content. Here are just a few of the potential purposes you may have for a given piece of content.

1. Introduce your solution
2. Provide a comparison with competitive solutions
3. Illustrate your understanding of your prospect’s industry
4. Present your perspective on key industry trends
5. Address a common misperception about your solution or industry
6. Share one of your success stories
7. Get feedback or perspective for your audience
8. Drive social sharing of your content
9. Increase the number of inbound links
10. Capture leads

Pick Just One

Every piece of content should have just one primary purpose. Sure, it can (and will) accomplish multiple things but it will be best at one, and only one, thing.

If the real goal for a piece of content, the one thing it must do in order to be considered successful, is capture leads, embrace that goal. Allow it to guide every aspect of the creation and promotion of your content. All other purposes are secondary.

In Summary

You don’t really trust your content to deliver your message. So embrace its real goal (capturing a lead) and focus your creation and promotion your objective. Leave the primary communication to your followup marketing and sales efforts.

If, on the other hand, you are the rare marketer that does trust your content to deliver your message, recognize that your registration form is a handicap. As long as the form is there, your content cannot accomplish what it is capable of.

Whatever you do, don’t claim you are counting on your content to deliver your key message and then hide it behind a registration form.

Your Turn

Will you embrace the real goal of your content or will you continue to give your content a key communication goal and limit its distribution? Share your view in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).

Image Credit: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net