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Thought leadership. How much should b2b marketers give away for free?

May 14th 2010

Stuart Crow

Stuart has been at Marketecture since day one, charming clients with his latest marketing obsession and unique sense of humour. One of the Directors of the agency and founding partners, Stuart can usually be found surfing the 'next big' wave, with a passion for digital, metrics and emerging marketing technologies. A true left-brain thinker, Stuart's primary focus is on finding new clients that we aspire to work with, and helping current clients to inspire new ways of thinking. Stuart's only achilles heel is admin (or rather, lack of).

Call it branded content. Call it content marketing. Even call it good old fashioned thought leadership.

The truth is the b2b marketing industry gives away a hell of a lot of ‘valuable’ content for free. B2b marketers in 2010 can perhaps be more accurately described as publishers rather than marketers.

Nurturing prospects with timely insights at key stages in the buying cycle is the proven model in b2b lead generation. As any marketing automation vendor or inbound marketing guru will tell you.

But where do you draw the line in the sand? How do you balance giving away precious proprietary knowledge V demonstrating enough genuine expertise to generate leads?

First task to consider is just how much of your knowledge and insights are actually proprietary. A jazzy process model in a brochure will not get your IP lawyers scouring for any copyright infringements. The truth for many b2b businesses is that proprietary knowledge is something pretty much given away in pre-sales activity anyway.

So, how much should you actually hold back? If any.

David Ogilvy and Gordon Ramsay offer interesting perspectives.

Take Gordon Ramsay, or indeed any celebrity chef. A ‘free’ TV show will tell you exactly which ingredients should be used, how to prepare the recipe and how to serve it.

With all this information provided free and up front, why would you then pay to eat in a Gordon Ramsay restaurant? You can now do it yourself.

The reason we still visit a Gordon Ramsay restaurant is because we know that a meal prepared by an expert with a lifetime’s specialist knowledge is a different proposition to a DIY meal.

Think of the knowledge you are giving away and then ask if prospects will really be in a position to take the DIY route. Overwhelm your prospects with your knowledge and insights and I suspect there will be two reactions:

“This stuff is a lot more complicated than I thought. I better get the experts in to help.”

“If they are giving all this stuff away for free, then how much knowledge are they actually holding back.”

Perhaps the final verdict on the question of ‘how much’ should be provided by David Ogilvy.

One of the key strategies in building up his global agency network was to actually publish the trade secrets behind Ogilvy’s print advertising. In full view of competitors he would take out full page ads to explain in great detail the mechanics behind effective adverts they had previously ran. All the copywriting and art direction tricks mapped out and analysed for all the world to see.

No hoops to jump through. No registration forms. No barriers.

What happened next?

Yes competitors gained a new level of competitive intelligence to help them write better ads. But the trade off was more than worth it. New clients were instantly beating down Ogilvy’s door to sign up and learn more.

Perhaps the real question is how much can you afford not to give away?