B2B Product Content Is Built for the Wrong Buyer

Most B2B product content is made for someone who is ready to buy. That person is the smallest fraction of your audience, generally under 5%.

Product videos tend to treat the purchase like an impulse buy. In B2B, it almost never is. Lead times of 6 to 18 months are common, and plenty of deals take longer.

So the person most likely to watch your product video this week won’t be signing anything for a while. But, most product videos make a sales pitch anyway.

This is for leaders whose B2B product content is mostly launch videos and demos. If your sales cycle closes in a week, the argument doesn’t apply to you.

Learn more by watching “The 6 Pillars of B2B Content” on the Content Wars Podcast.

The Cost of Product Content That Only Sells

When your product content is basically a sales pitch, it lacks the educational elements that allow those not yet in-market to learn the value and potentially why they should be consider buying. They don’t fully understand the problem your product solves or how it would fit into their operation. The result is that some would be buyers take longer to get ready and even when they do reach out, your reps will spend expensive meetings on education that content should have handled months earlier.

The alternative is to educate buyers before they actually start buying. Every useful piece softens the ground for sales. By the time a prospect raises their hand, they already have the background, and your reps get to consult instead of explain.

That matters more as buyers do 70-80% of their research alone and bring vendors in later. If your content answers the questions that usually come up during a sales process before you’re involved in it, the content becomes part of the buying process. Your product content should shape how buyers make up their minds, long before your sales team knows they exist.

The Broken Thinking: One Promotional Product Video and Done

The default workflow is familiar. A product launches, marketing produces a hero video, maybe adds a demo, posts both on the product page, and moves on.

To be fair, that instinct isn’t crazy. Product content should eventually help close deals. The mistake is assuming the viewer is ready to be closed.

The habit fails twice. The content is promotional, written for someone presumed ready to buy. And there’s only one piece of it, as though a single video could carry a product’s whole story.

A promotional video answers one question: why should I buy this? A buyer who is 14 months out is still working out whether their problem is something that can and should be solved, and IF they were to go down that road, what might it look like. A sales pitch doesn't add a ton a value here.

How to Build B2B Product Content for Future Buyers

Start by sitting in the buyer’s chair at a different point in time. Picture the buyer who may need your product in a year, to solve a problem they’re only beginning to name.

From that seat, one video is obviously not enough. The product needs to be shown in as many lights as possible. The demo is one light. An interview with the people who built it, about how and why they built it, is another. So is a piece about the problem in the market that made the product necessary in the first place. A plain explanation of features and benefits rounds it out. Each answers something a different buyer, at a different stage, needs to know.

The reasoning is blunt. If your audience doesn’t understand what you sell, they won’t buy it. Buyers need the full story of what the thing is and what it solves for them before they’ll think of you when that problem shows up.

What Changes in Practice

Start with your sales team. Every question a rep answers on a first call is product content you haven’t made. Collect those questions and treat the list as a production plan.

Plan product content as a library that grows over time, instead of a single launch moment. A future buyer works through a library during their long research phase.

Then judge it on the right timeline. This content works by trickling out over months, steadily teaching future buyers who you are and what you offer. That won’t produce a lead spike this quarter, and a skeptical CFO will notice. It isn’t meant to. Its return shows up later, in shorter and better first conversations with buyers who already understand the product. Measure it against this quarter’s pipeline and you’ll cancel it right before it starts paying off.

Your Next Customer Is Researching You Today

Somewhere in your market, a buyer who will sign a contract a year from now is watching product videos this week. If yours only work on someone ready to buy, that buyer will learn from a competitor that invested the time and resources to speak to them where they are.

The product content you make this month is for the customer you’ll meet next year. Build it and help them show up ready to buy.