Will ChatGPT kill the content marketing star? The topic of multiple articles, original and generated, since its explosion in December last year. Merry Christmas Google. 

The natural and necessary debates that ballooned in this period centred largely around what AI and ChatGPT would replace, disrupt or downgrade. With the dust having  settled, the conversations currently in play are the ones that matter even more. Here’s why.

Google becomes our primary intelligence source

Google has been the prevalent gateway drug to information addiction for as long as most of us can remember. Whilst originally we sought out a quick hit, seeking sneaky real-time factual answers to specific questions, our search consumption quickly matured. As humans, we are inherently insatiable. We then sought out answers on mental health, complex professional theory, parenting guidance and everything in between. An entire global “How to” population. How to run a business. How to run a family. How to run a marathon without dying.  

Content Marketing becomes a major acquisition channel

With the advancements in human search behaviour, so the era of content marketing reigned supreme. Rightly so. Every company worth its salt had a decent SEO & content strategy in place, ensuring searchers found its ranked, carefully curated marketing content and made their merry way to its site. This is especially true for B2B companies. Not because it is less true for B2C but because B2B tends to have higher dependency on search traffic as a dominant lead generation channel. Search has been the starting point for user enquiries and custom journeys for years, resulting in most B2B’s acquiring leads through company generated content loops. 

Content gets automated at scale

Enter ChatGPT. Now it gets interesting. If an individual or company can generate their own answers using ChatGPT, it is argued that in time they may have less use for Google. In that ChatGPT does not link a user out to other sites, nor does it give creator credit, this has significant implications for content-rich company sites who rely on search traffic for qualified leads. 

Let’s use an example of a B2B SaaS Network Security company. A nice example linking back to our information addiction and the need to ensure the safety of our online interactions and transactions. This business has been using content marketing successfully for the past 8 years, building up pleasing SEO ranking results and subsequent traffic volume. When searching for “the best cyber security solutions” or “effective ways to secure my network”, they are a dominant player.  They now need to consider, how will their content be better than the answer one would get from ChatGPT?

Company generated content is not enough

Highly relevant, ranking content is no longer enough. White papers, blogs, articles have all been disrupted. What does this mean? It means businesses cannot afford to rely on company generated content as a pure acquisition lever anymore. Don’t get me wrong, it remains important and let’s be honest, Google isn’t going anywhere. The point is more to say, what an incredible opportunity to refocus on protecting long-term investments. Like your brand.

I won’t bore anyone with lessons on what a brand is and is not. (That is a lie. It’s one of my favourite topics and I’m pretty much always available for this conversation). I will instead stick to our example to illustrate my point.

Whilst content generated leads will remain important, there is a high likelihood that they will be disrupted due to large language models such as ChatGPT, so the company needs to deliberately focus on other acquisition channels.

Key Growth Levers to invest in

Sales generated leads as a product of key strategic partnerships would be a natural growth motion to double down on. Another area hugely under leveraged in the B2B space is the effective use of user-generated content. Yes, most B2B companies have testimonials on their site. Think about where in the consideration journey that potential customer is though. They are already on your site. Consider pushing proactive user-generated content upfront;  highlighting customers actual experience in using your network security tool, how easy it was to deploy, what major customer privacy breaches they avoided because of your software. Third party validation based on product usage is powerful as an acquisition driver.

As content proliferation rises through the speed and duplicity of AI, so does a lack of differentiation. When it’s all vanilla, you have the opportunity to be pistachio. Really consider your leadership angle and voice and commit to it.  Leverage every opportunity to reinforce it. Cleverly lean in with key opinion pieces when major security breaches happen (tying these back to the security business in our example). Not a new tactic by any stretch of the imagination. But do it in a way that is unapologetically true to your business, your style. All this gives your business recency, tonality and leadership credibility. Three things ChatGPT can’t do. In good old fashioned terms, it builds your brand.

Brand Investment will drive return

In B2C, the age old principle remains. In times of too much choice and without the luxury of making the wrong one, we always look for the same thing. A name we trust. The same holds true for B2B. Humanity and technology will and must continue to innovate, to disrupt, to reform. Whilst we adapt and learn new growth tactics, it is critical that we protect our long term investments. 

Available for that brand chat anytime.