Most complex brands don’t have a content problem. They have a marketing problem. Their best thinking gets made and then never travels. In a market where buyers get their answers from machines and their trust from people, making more of the same changes nothing. 

By Martin MacConnol, Founder, Wardour 

Why does so much good B2B thinking never leave the building? 

Way back in 2013, research from SiriusDecisions (now part of Forrester) showed that 60 to 70% of the content B2B organisations produce is never used at all. Sadly, despite the passing of a decade the position hasn’t improved: in 2025 65% of organisations still see between a quarter and three-quarters of their content go to waste. And just 29% of B2B marketers rate their content strategy as “very effective”.

Serious organisations are full of clever people who have many valuable things to say. And yet, so much of that bright, interesting thinking never gets to the right audiences who can turn it into real value. From the deck presented once, to the report that got published and was never looked at again, the good thinking everyone nodded at and promptly forgot all about; this isn’t the occasional waste. It’s a familiar story in B2B content: brilliant thinking, expensively made, that never travels. Why should this be so? 

Content marketing is two words that have equal weighting 

At Wardour, we have a clear view on this. “Content marketing” describes two jobs, not one: making the right thing (content), and making it travel (marketing).

However, more often than not, it’s read and understood as being a single discipline. And in our experience many brands really only get serious about the making part – it’s the fun, creative bit. They assume that great ideas will just travel as if by magic. 

What then happens is that if great content doesn’t find its audience, there’s an inclination to blame the quality of the content itself. But more often, it’s that the second job, the part that makes an idea move, was never done properly. 

And this way of looking at content marketing creates another problem. When a brand wants more impact, the instinct can be to just make more content – hoping that will travel better this time around. But, as we all know, the market is already saturated, and adding to the content pile moves nothing, and can even dilute previous great thinking that was never marketed properly. 

So, the lever for success has always been the second word: marketing. Yes, of course, you have to start with something creatively inspiring, amazing content. But to reap the benefits of great creativity you have to be serious about how you market it. So how do you go about that in an AI-mediated, zero-click world? 

Where are B2B decisions actually made now? 

Gartner found that B2B buyers give just 17% of their buying time to meeting potential suppliers at all, and as little as 5% to any one of them. Most of the decision happens where the brand can’t see it.

Buyers are always researching independently, through their searches, feeds and contact books. 6Sense research states that B2B buyers select a favoured vendor before initiating conversations, and that pre-contact favourite wins the deal around 80% of the time. 

The right content, that projects expertise, meets audiences where they are, and is carried by trusted people, can play an extremely significant role in making a business that favoured vendor before the conversations happen. It creates familiarity and confidence, and puts a business front of mind before and after the direct conversations take place. 

By the time your people enter the conversation, your content should already have done much of the talking – it should have given you authority, reached audiences where they hang out and been humanly personable. How do you get this right? 

What does authority mean when a machine answers the question? 

89% of B2B buyers now use generative AI to research their decisions. Buyers can ask a question and get a clear, synthesised answer without ever going through to the original source.

The way brands establish authority has changed significantly. Many buyers now ask a question and get a summary without making a click. In the past, authority meant publishing interesting, impressive flagship content to project a viewpoint, an approach and demonstrable expertise. 

That remains true, but now is only half the battle. Today, authority also means being the source that answers a buyer’s question. If an answer engine can’t read your thinking, it can’t cite it, and your buyer may never find it.   

Being found has gone from technical afterthought to a cornerstone of any content strategy. It’s the difference between thinking that travels and thinking that, as far as the market is concerned, doesn’t exist. 

And when the decision is finally made, who’s trusted? 

AI is increasingly shaping how and what buyers find, but people remain the strongest source for earning trust. Gartner has found that 69% of B2B buyers turn to sales representatives to validate insights generated by AI. With it, 86% of B2B buyers say seller expertise drives trust.

The most considered B2B decisions are still made in conversations between people. The pathway is clear: buyers start with AI, then turn to experts and peers to validate what it tells them and make their own final judgement. The machine is the starting point, and the human is the validation. And what earns that trust is expertise, not job title. 

In this context, the ‘human’ takes many forms. It can be a leader whose thinking is respected, an expert whose word carries weight, a colleague who shares something that landed, or a quiet word in a room a brand isn’t in. An idea carried by trusted human voices, reaching the right people, is what truly makes that idea leave the building. The challenge is how you bring all this together. 

The content system: authority, distribution and human 

Our answer is the Wardour Content System. Built on three layers — authority, distribution and human — designed together from the start, so a single idea is built to be found, built to travel, and carried by the people others trust. 

Authority: the definitive content, built so search tools and AI can read and cite it. That gives your expertise the best chance of becoming part of the answers your buyers find. 

Distribution: the same idea rebuilt to live natively where audiences are already spending their time and attention, delivering its value in the feed and the inbox without demanding a click. 

Human: that idea carried by the leaders, experts and employees who are already trusted figures, connecting with audiences a brand can’t reach on its own. 

The system is one connected entity, not three workstreams that can be considered separately. That’s what makes it a system rather than a pile of assets, and that’s what makes it robust from the initial plans right through to results. 

What this means for serious brands 

The job has changed. Better marketing, not more content. The idea still has to be made brilliantly — creative, relevant, worth someone’s attention — and that craft is something we’ve never compromised, and never will. What’s new is everything built around it to get it out of the building: one sharp idea, made to be found, made to travel, carried by the people others trust. 

A story no one sees isn’t a quieter version of a good story. It’s a missed one. Made well, and made to travel — that’s the job now. 

Wardour. Strategic storytellers for serious brands.