B2B Growth
Why Most B2B Thought Leadership Is Worthless (And the Alternative)
The recycling problem
Most B2B pieces rehash a survey or a LinkedIn thread. Nothing new. The author's name is the only differentiator, and most authors have no name equity to carry the piece.
The alternative: primary research
Run real surveys. Publish real data. Interview real customers. Anything that creates new knowledge is 10x more citable than synthesizing existing knowledge.
The flywheel
Primary research gets cited → citations drive traffic → traffic produces data → data becomes the next piece of research. The flywheel takes 12 months to start spinning.
Minimum viable research
60 customer interviews, 100 survey responses, or a proprietary data set from your product. Anything smaller reads as marketing; anything larger is a research project.