content-marketing – Practical Strategies for B2B Technology Companies

In this third installment, let’s review how the game has fundamentally changed and how we as demand gen practitioners need to potentially veer from what has worked in the past. That’s because the way people buy has changed fundamentally and forever – so our programs and processes must adapt.

Here are the shifts reshaping everything we thought we knew about demand generation.

Buyers Now Own the Process

All the data that used to require a conversation is now online. Buyers complete up to 85% of their decision process before ever engaging with sales. By the time they fill out a form, they’ve already made a short list.

“We used to generate demand. Now we need to make sure we’re discoverable when the buyer interest develops.”

Trust Has Moved to the Network

Prospects now rely on peers, communities, and review sites more than company messaging.
A customer’s voice carries 10x the credibility of the brand itself. This shift has turned advocacy and social proof into the new marketing currency.

“Your customers are your marketing department — whether you plan for it or not.”

Product-Led Growth Has Changed the Sales Cycle

Buyers expect to see and interact with the product, not just hear about it. Trials, freemium models, and self-serve experiences are now core parts of the funnel. If you don’t have some process by which customers can easily ‘experience’ your product, possibly it’s just too hard to use.

“A free trial or product experience used to be a sales event. Now it’s an expected prospect experience before engaging with sales.”

Remote Work Has Changed Reachability

The era of predictable access — phone calls, events, in-person meetings — is over.
Buyers are dispersed, mobile, and selective about what they engage with. So it takes much more effort now to connect live with prospects – and even more effort to make that connection a positive experience.

“When you can’t reach buyers, you have to attract them.”

Digital Filtering Has Rewired Attention

People have systems to filter out ads and email as well as have trained themselves to ignore irrelevant outreach. Spam filters, ad blockers, and notification fatigue make the traditional outbound machine less effective every year. Look to create value-driven, human content that breaks through.

“Attention is no longer bought. It’s earned.”

AI Has Changed Search

Any savvy buyer will use some version of AI to assist their discovery process. Showing up on non-branded keywords has been dropping in value and will continue to do so going forward. How AI presents your product and company will be key to making the short list. How do we do this? It’s evolving quickly now and we are all trying to figure this out.

“Sponsored results have a hard time competing with AI summaries.”

What the Future Looks Like

The answer for every company and product will be different – that is for sure. However, the next evolution of demand generation will look less like a funnel and more like an ecosystem. Companies are beginning to:

Ungate their content to maximize reach and trust
Invest in customer proof via review sites and community engagement
Enhance PLG trials so buyers experience value faster
Create authentic, educational content that earns credibility
Capture intent, not force it — focusing on “request a demo” moments rather than MQL volume

“The goal isn’t to chase buyers. It’s to be the company they find when they’re ready.”

The Takeaway

After 25 years, I’ve come to see demand generation differently.
It’s not a pipeline factory — it’s an ecosystem of trust, proof, and discoverability.

“The most effective marketing today doesn’t push. It proves.”

That’s not the end of demand generation. It’s the beginning of its next chapter.

Before I begin, let me start by saying do as I say, not as I do. This post is, in many ways, aspirational and something I am trying to bring to my own practice.

For more than a decade, gated content has been a central component of B2B demand generation. We built prospect databases, tracked downloads, and passed MQLs to SDRs and sales teams on a weekly cycle. It worked—for us. But here’s the reality: our prospective customers never thanked us for the follow-up calls and nurture sequences tied to that whitepaper download. Instead, they felt trapped. Buyers today are fatigued, flooded with options, and increasingly resistant to being treated like entries in a spreadsheet.

The shift we’re facing is bigger than campaign mechanics—it’s about trust. Prospects don’t want to be harvested; they want to be understood. Authentic relationships, not lead traps, are becoming the real differentiator. Content should work as a trust-building asset, not a transaction. That means rethinking how we approach community, conversation, and transparency. Instead of forms, personalization can come from relevance, empathy, and credibility. Think open libraries, ungated research, and community-led events that create value without demanding an email address first.

Are you part of a marketing group currently measured by flow of MQLs and Opps? For the past 20 years, this has been the case for me.

So where to start? Ungating all content overnight isn’t realistic—or even smart. I believe this is a longer-term evolution that requires balance. A practical first step is to selectively remove forms for high-value pieces: a webinar, a guide, or a playbook. Double down on quality so that what you publish truly resonates. Then, shift some of the dollars once tied up in form-fill campaigns toward community-building: podcasts, YouTube channels, niche events, or targeted amplification that actually meets buyers where they are. Keep the gates where intent is clear—demos, contact requests, or bottom-of-funnel brand searches.

The tradeoffs are real. You’ll likely see fewer raw leads and slower list growth in the short term. But the upside is far more powerful: deeper trust, stronger engagement, and a pipeline driven by buyers who want to hear from you, not avoid you. It also means rethinking metrics—moving from counting MQLs to measuring engagement, influence, and revenue contribution. These are the numbers that reflect how buyers actually buy today.

Looking forward, the winners in B2B marketing won’t be the brands that cling to gated PDFs. They’ll be the ones that invest in authentic, long-term relationships—brands that buyers see as trusted advisors instead of gatekeepers. Authenticity becomes the moat, and trust becomes the growth engine.

Gated content isn’t dead today, but its dominance is fading. The challenge for marketers is to experiment with ungating, to start small, and to learn what it unlocks. So here’s the question: what’s one piece of content you’d ungate today to begin building more trust with your audience?

Marketing Advisor

Larry Stein at TechMarketingStrategies

For the last 20 years, I have led demand generation teams supporting high growth technology companies. Now working as an independent consultant, my responsibility is to apply best practices in the creation of these programs. My goal is to enable marketing teams to become self sufficient with a data driven culture of KPI's, test and measurement in service of achieving company revenue targets. My approach is to work with senior management identifying objectives and wildly important goals. With these in mind, we work together to build programs, processes and systems that will reach these goals along with the measurement KPI's to evaluate progress. Along the way we will enable the team to manage and maintain these systems so achieving these goals becomes a natural cadence of the marketing organization.

Tag: content-marketing

Why Everything About Demand Generation Is Being Rewritten