Thought leadership Archives - The Rubicon Agency

The Rubicon Agency In Insights, Miscellaneous, Our industry, The Message Elevator, Thought leadership

Thought leadership in the digital age: who’s leading who?

Opinion forming, visioning and crystal ball gazing is nothing new in the world of technology. Almost half a decade on, marketers are still waxing lyrical about tech mystic Steve Jobs and how he saw the role of computers in modern society.

It could be said that he has set the benchmark for many of today’s luminaries without the availability of social media, mobile technology or mainstream video. This begs the question, in today’s digital world are the visionaries of the 21st century actually that pioneering, or do they just have access to a bigger mouthpiece?

The dissemination of ideas

With the number of digital channels increasing exponentially, industry ambassadors have an embarrassment of riches when syndicating their opinions. If the quest is to elevate their personal brand, then measures of success are likely to include follower growth, engagement metrics, social shares and speaker opportunities. However, if their objectives are more aligned to business generation, how do you effectively attribute thought leadership notions with revenue? Do these ideas really resonate with potential buyers? Do they align with the company vision? Are these views likely to drive action?

Looking through this lens some of the vanity metrics mentioned earlier may seem a bit flaky. Can an idea that’s ‘gone viral’ really influence the sale of a six-figure purchase?

This really is the crux of the question, are the opportunities to see the content/notion diluting the actual value of the content itself?

It’s an interesting thought, are we subliminally being spoon fed these concepts that, if challenged, are reconstituted from someone else or are flimsy at best?

Beware of false idols

Today, the number of people with role adjectives such as luminary, visionary, pioneer or champion in their social profiles are commonplace. With so much digital noise out there, how do we sift through the real thought leaders from the pretenders to the throne?

Below are some telltale signs of what to look for.

Expertise and knowledge: Search for individuals who have deep expertise in their field that have been recognised by their peers and are frequent sharers of valuable and unique content.
Authenticity: Genuine thought leaders are transparent and unique, many replicate but true thought leaders share personal content, including failures, that make it feel real and relatable. Comfort with the good, bad and ugly shows humanity and real depth.
Strong points of view: The usual background check of credentials, past work and endorsements from peers can help validate industry luminaries – but how they project insightful, visionary and sometimes unconventional thinking is they key ask
Engagement: I’m not just talking about likes and shares, real thought leaders engage with their networks about their views and visions.
Consistency: Thought leadership isn’t just a hit and run exercise, being able to consistently produce high-quality content that provides value and is one step ahead.

The last point on this list is very important – consistent, sustained content is vital to establishing your business or personal brand and to make sure your content is taken seriously. But it’s also worth noting that using the plethora digital channels available to you also creates its own challenges. Lazy copy and paste posturing can create white noise, with followers becoming turned off by a cookie cutter approach. Different channels are frequented by different audiences so treat them as such. This continued requirement of content can be an overwhelming task for many business leaders, but The Rubicon Agency can help.

We craft thought leadership content that commands an audience, drives engagement and opens doors. With over 25 years of B2B agency experience working within the tech sector we know what it takes to articulate a vision, a view or a notion that people will want to follow.

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The Rubicon Agency In Digital lead generation, Enterprise demand generation, Insights, Our industry, Strategic content, Thought leadership

AI visibility in B2B marketing is now a pipeline issue. Who owns it?

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AI visibility in B2B marketing has stopped being a fringe SEO conversation and started behaving like a pipeline one. That shift is easy to miss if you are still treating AI tools as a shiny add-on to search, rather than a place where buyers now define problems, compare vendors and form preferences before they ever land on your site. Resonance’s ‘The New Rules of Visibility 2026’ research says the click is no longer the first signal of intent, and Forrester is now talking openly about a visibility vacuum in answer-engine-led buying journeys.

That sounds dramatic. It is.

Because once ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity starts framing the category for your buyer, you are no longer just competing for traffic. You are competing for interpretation. And if your positioning is muddy, fragmented or absent, AI will not politely wait for your homepage to clarify things later. It will fill in the gaps with whatever signals it can find.

AI visibility is changing where B2B intent begins

For years, B2B marketers were trained to think about early-stage intent in fragments: short queries, category searches, basic education, light-touch comparison. That model still exists, but it is losing its monopoly. Buyers are now asking answer engines to do the synthesis for them, collapsing what used to be a multi-step research process into one loaded question. Forrester describes this as richer, more contextual research happening off-site, often without the behavioural signals marketers used to rely on.

What is AI visibility in B2B marketing?

AI visibility in B2B marketing is the extent to which your brand is surfaced, cited and described accurately in AI-generated answers during buyer research. It is not just about appearing in results, it is about being framed correctly when buyers ask category, comparison and recommendation questions.

The difference is not cosmetic. A prompt like ‘Which cloud security platforms are best for regulated enterprises and why?’ is doing far more work than ‘cloud security platform’. It defines the problem, narrows the field and applies buying criteria in one move. By the time the buyer clicks anything, a shortlist may already exist.

That is why this is bigger than a new acronym. Call it AI visibility, AI search visibility, answer engine optimisation or GEO if you like. The terminology is still wobbling around like a shopping trolley with one bad wheel. The underlying issue is much clearer: discovery has moved upstream and outward.

The real problem is not awareness, it’s invisible influence

Resonance found that 81% of B2B marketing leaders see AI visibility as a blind spot, while only 10% can connect it to revenue. That tracks with what many teams are experiencing: they know something has shifted, but the evidence shows up late. It appears in deal velocity, shortlist quality, category fit and the strange sensation that prospects already know what you are before your sales team has said a word.

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Marketers like channels they can count. AI-led discovery is messier. It often influences preference without sending a click, and it can reinforce the wrong narrative at scale if your market signals are inconsistent.

That second risk matters more than many teams realise. Poor visibility is one problem. Mispositioned visibility is worse. If AI repeatedly places you in the wrong peer group, describes your category inaccurately or pulls outdated proof points into current answers, it does not just reduce awareness. It actively distorts demand.

How is AI changing the B2B buyer journey?

AI is changing the B2B buyer journey by compressing research stages that used to happen separately. Buyers now ask answer engines to define the problem, compare options and suggest likely fits in one step, which means preference can form before website visits, form fills or measurable search clicks occur.

This is exactly why Rubicon’s own capability pages around digital services and enterprise demand generation are relevant here. If discovery is now shaped before the visit, then digital visibility and demand quality are no longer sequential disciplines. They are entangled.

Why AI visibility is hard to measure, and easy to misread

Some of the industry response to this shift has been predictable. New tools, new dashboards, new promises, and of course a fresh crop of tactical folklore. The risk is that teams mistake monitorability for control. Tracking mentions across answer engines is useful, but it is not the same as understanding commercial influence.

Forrester’s argument is sharper than that. The problem is not merely falling traffic, it is the loss of visibility into buyer questions, behaviour and intent. When buyers do arrive, they may actually be better qualified, because AI has already done part of the sorting. That sounds positive, and in some ways it is, but it also means your old attribution habits can understate what shaped the opportunity in the first place.

Why is AI visibility hard to measure?

AI visibility is hard to measure because much of its influence happens off-site, before a visit, click or tracked conversion. It tends to show up downstream in higher-intent sessions, better shortlist alignment or faster sales conversations, which makes direct attribution patchy and easy to underestimate.

That is why a pure search lens is too narrow. AI visibility touches traffic, yes, but also proposition clarity, thought leadership, third-party authority, comparison content and the operational handoff between marketing and revenue teams.

AI visibility cannot live inside SEO alone

This is the part many organisations are avoiding. AI visibility sits awkwardly between SEO, content, PR, brand, demand gen and RevOps, which means it often sits nowhere with any real authority. Everyone can see a piece of it. Very few teams own the whole problem.

That is a governance failure, not a tooling one.

If your proposition is weak, no prompt tactic will save it. If your category story is scattered across pages, decks and thought leadership with no shared spine, answer engines will surface that confusion back to the market. AI does not invent your narrative from scratch. It industrialises the one you have already left lying around.

Who should own AI visibility inside a B2B organisation?

AI visibility should have a clear strategic owner, but not a siloed one. In practice, the strongest model is a shared commercial KPI led by senior marketing leadership, with execution spanning SEO, content, proposition, brand, PR and RevOps so accuracy, authority and measurement stay aligned.

Not everyone agrees. Some will argue this is simply SEO with a fashionable haircut. That is too reductive. SEO still matters, obviously, but AI visibility is also shaped by how well your brand is understood, how consistently your claims are evidenced and whether your market position can survive summarisation. That is a broader strategic brief.

The smart response is not prompt hacks, it’s operational discipline

There will be no shortage of vendors selling magic beans here. Some already are. The Verge recently reported on increasingly aggressive attempts to influence AI responses through engineered content and biased listicles. That should tell you two things. First, the market knows this shift is real. Second, low-grade manipulation will become the fastest way to poison trust in the channel.

The better response is less glamorous and more useful. Get clear on what you want to be known for. Make sure your category, comparisons and proof points are consistent across your site and external footprint. Build strategic content that helps answer engines understand not just what you sell, but where you fit and why that fit matters. Then measure AI visibility against downstream commercial indicators, not vanity screenshots.

In Rubicon terms, this is closer to a strategic content and market-shaping challenge than a technical parlour trick.

The teams that win will treat AI visibility as a commercial capability

The obvious temptation is to treat AI visibility as another channel to optimise. That framing is too small. What is actually emerging is a new discovery layer, one that shapes market understanding before the first measurable hand-raise.

The teams that move fastest will not be the ones chasing the newest prompt superstition. They will be the ones that sort out ownership, tighten narrative control and connect visibility to pipeline with grown-up discipline. Everyone else risks letting answer engines quietly rewrite how they are bought.

That would be an expensive thing to discover after the quarter closes.

By The Rubicon Agency

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The Rubicon Agency In Enterprise demand generation, Insights, Our industry, Strategic content, Thought leadership

Does AI content rank? Yes. But that is no longer the point

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Last week, MarTech covered Semrush’s new study on whether AI content ranks well in search, and the headline was about as surprising as rain in Manchester: yes, it can. Google is not automatically punishing AI-written content, and content quality still determines outcomes. Useful, clear, relevant pages can perform whether a human drafted every line or not.

That should calm one debate and intensify another.

Because if AI content can rank, then ‘can it get on the page?’ is no longer the interesting question. The more uncomfortable one is what happens when everyone can produce search-competent material at scale, with decent grammar, clean structure and just enough surface-level usefulness to pass as good.

The answer is not hard to see. More output. Less distinction. More polish. Less real conviction. Search fills up with content that reads perfectly well and leaves almost no mark. It ranks, it nods politely at intent, then it vanishes into the wallpaper.

Does AI content rank, and why the answer is too easy

SEMrush analysed 42,000 blog posts and found that AI content is not inherently blocked from ranking. MarTech’s summary of the study landed on the right conclusion: search engines are evaluating AI-assisted pages the same way they evaluate any other page, by usefulness, relevance and clarity.

Does AI content rank on Google?

Yes, AI content can rank on Google if it is useful, relevant and clear. The method of production is not the deciding factor. The stronger question is whether the content adds enough original value to compete once many other brands can now publish similarly competent material at speed.

That distinction matters. Ranking has always been a means, not an outcome. Yet AI has made it temptingly easy to confuse technical eligibility with commercial effectiveness. A page that lands on page one but says what fifty other pages already say has achieved something, certainly. It just may not have achieved anything you can take to a revenue meeting with a straight face.

Google does not care who wrote it, it cares whether it helps

Google’s own guidance has been consistent on this point. Generative AI can help with research and structure, but content created primarily to manipulate rankings or mass-produce low-value pages risks falling into scaled content abuse. Google’s ranking systems prioritise helpful, reliable, people-first content, not content that exists merely because a workflow made it cheap to generate.

Does Google penalise AI-generated content?

No, Google does not automatically penalise content just because AI helped create it. What it does warn against is scaled content abuse, where content is mass-produced mainly to manipulate rankings rather than help users. Quality, originality and value still do the heavy lifting.

That is the policy answer. It is also the easy answer.

The harder truth is that search quality and market quality are not always the same thing. A page can be good enough for Google’s systems and still be strategically forgettable. It can satisfy the machine’s threshold for usefulness while doing very little to make a buyer trust you, remember you or choose you.

The real problem is not ranking, it is resemblance

This is where the current AI content conversation remains oddly timid. Much of the trade coverage still circles the compliance question, as though the main issue were whether AI content is allowed into the building. It is. The more pressing issue is what it looks like once everybody gets inside.

AI is very good at improving grammar, smoothing structure and producing broadly acceptable answers. It is much less reliable at generating sharp judgement, first-hand experience or the sort of commercial tension that makes a reader stop and think, ‘Fine, these people actually have a point.’ Left alone, it tends to average things out.

Sensible. Balanced. Safe. Magnolia messaging, to apply a term coined by The Rubicon Agency. Safe enough to offend no one, and persuasive enough to move almost no one.

Why does AI content still fail even when it ranks?

AI content often fails after ranking because visibility is not the same as differentiation. Many AI-assisted pages are readable and technically relevant, but too generic to persuade, be remembered or shape preference. They meet the brief for search while missing the brief for actual market impact.

That is not a small problem. In B2B technology especially, where buyers face complicated choices and long sales cycles, content must do more than answer the query in front of it. It needs to signal judgement. It needs to show that someone behind the brand understands the category, the stakes and the trade-offs. Otherwise, you are just another competent voice in a queue of competent voices.

The Rubicon Agency is already on the record arguing against vague, vacuous content and in favour of more distinctive, proposition-led thinking. We’re not inventing a new belief here – it’s extending an existing one into the AI era.

In the ‘Sea of Sameness’, point of view becomes an advantage

There is a mild irony here. AI lowers the cost of producing decent content, which means decency itself becomes less valuable. The commodity becomes the baseline. What gets expensive again is not production, but perspective.

That does not mean every blog post needs to be a manifesto. Some queries deserve straightforward answers. Some pages should simply help. But even practical content benefits from specifics, original framing and evidence that a human mind has actually interrogated the material rather than merely rearranged it. Real examples. Clear trade-offs. A sentence or two that sounds like it could only have come from this company, not from any company that subscribed to the same model last Tuesday.

The Rubicon Agency already has a useful framing device for this in The Content Spectrum, which positions content according to buyer need, product maturity and sales stage rather than pretending every asset has the same job. That thinking becomes even more relevant now. AI may be good at generating a competent middle. It is much less dependable at deciding when a piece should provoke, reassure, reframe or sell.

How should brands use AI content without sounding the same as everyone else?

Brands should use AI for acceleration, not authorship by default. Let it help with research, structure and draft momentum, then add what models usually flatten out: clear judgement, first-hand insight, sharper examples, stronger voice and a point of view that reflects the brand rather than the average of the internet.

The commercial point is simple. Search performance still matters. So does efficiency. But if AI makes it easier for everyone to publish acceptable content, acceptable becomes a weak ambition. The brands that win will not be the ones producing the most polished neutrality. They will be the ones that decide what they actually want to say, then say it clearly enough that a buyer remembers who said it.

The winners will use AI for speed, then spend the saved time on judgement

AI content can rank. That debate is settling. Good.

Now for the more useful one.

If production gets faster, where does the saved effort go? Into more volume, more templates and more faintly competent pages that all smell the same? Or into better judgement, tougher editing and stronger ideas that are actually worth surfacing in search? Google’s guidance gives you the minimum standard. The market will demand more than that.

That is where the opportunity sits. Use AI to remove drudgery. Then spend the reclaimed time on the bits that still resist automation: deciding what matters, what is true, what is commercially at stake and what your brand is prepared to stand for in public. If that sounds less scalable than pressing ‘generate’, that is because it is. It is also where the advantage still lives.

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The Rubicon Agency In Our industry, Proposition development, Strategic content, Thought leadership, Video content

Video focus – a guide for technology marketers

Edited around 9 chapters on producing best practice content, 'Video focus - A guide for Technology Marketers' is a new free guide published by The Rubicon Agency.

Based on years of writing and producing influential B2B video content, the guide is aimed at any technology marketer who suspects or already knows that video can be a uniquely effective medium for strategic and tactical purposes.

Video marketing – an increasingly influential and integrated channel

With the rapid growth and acceptance of video in all marketing, senior tech marketers are increasing their investment in corporate, industry and open channels that broadcast this content – accelerated by the growing commitment to the medium from publishers and social platforms.

Marketing teams are expected to demonstrate the flare, innovation and communications clarity that they apply to other marketing assets, without necessarily having the training and skills development required to deliver a quality product.

Distilling over a decade of expertise in video production

The guide distils over 10 years of experience, insights, practices and pragmatism from a marketing agency dedicated exclusively to the technology sector. It’s not a comprehensive DIY guide or a geek’s guide to video technology – nor is it a budget-busting view from a creative ivory tower.

Written in a no-nonsense, plain English style, the guide provides a broad overview of the key principles and considerations for various types and formats of video.

What types of video are covered in this guide?

Check out the chapters contained within the guide:

Take 1: About this guide
Take 2: Video types
Take 3: Three considerations for a teaser video
Take 4: Why make a trailer video?
Take 5: The explainer video in three acts
Take 6: Show and tell with a demo video
Take 7: When it’s showcase time
Take 8: Keeping it real with a documentary video
Take 9: What makes a good vision video?
Take 10: Specialist agency or production company?
Take 11: The closing shot

At The Rubicon Agency, we are enthusiastic and experienced advocates of video as a technology marketing asset. From launch trailers to aspirational vision videos, they have a unique ability to stimulate interest, accelerate understanding and influence decision makers – three key goals for any tech marketer.

Download your copy of the guide today, or check out our video gallery if you need some inspiration.

The Rubicon Agency In Our industry, Programme planning, Proposition development, Thought leadership

Dealing with disruption

How to be a credible disruptee in your technology market.

To be in the tech industry is to continually be in the path of disruption.

In a relatively brief period, disruption has been frequent and rapid in the tech industry – from the demise of mainframe computing to the replacement of twisted copper pairs with fibre cable and onwards to the arrival of the Internet. From the growth of Big Data; the transition to cloud computing; mobile, and the Internet of Things (IoT) – disruptions have created a ripple effect that’s transformed businesses, markets, commerce, behaviour and culture.

When disruption arrives, it divides technology players into two camps: those who create it (the ‘disruptor’), and those who have to deal with it (the ‘disruptee’). And while it may seem that those who create it are assured a market advantage, history has shown that’s not always the case. Think back to Steve Jobs acquiring the fruit of someone else’s labours on personal computing technology and making it the first of many Apple market disruptions that changed the world.

Two responses are key for those tech businesses that are obliged to deal with disruption:

The first is recognition – of the true impact that disruption will have on your market, your customers and at a higher level – brand and future success.

Of course, analysts and commentators love a bit of disruption. With every claim of next-generation technology and ‘game-changing’ innovation we see a raft of five- and ten-year predictions around who will or won’t survive in their current form, and who tomorrow’s winners will be.

For some organisations disruption means rethinking the portfolio, delivery and the value chain – for others it’s more deep-rooted and about changing organisational behaviours, culture and skillsets. Whatever the level of ‘organisation reinvention’, the marketing function must consider what level of commitment it wants to invest to propel the cause:

focus efforts on promoting and amplifying the effects of individual change projects around the business
exert greater commitment and influence by supporting a broader programmatic transformation, together with other business functions sharing common beliefs
prepared to lead the charge and act as a change agent and debate-generator for a more progressive model

Every level of commitment is not right for every business. But the point is that marketing leadership need a strong internal point of view about the stance they are taking and the role they should play.

The second response is authenticity – because you can’t ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ in the tech sector.

A thin veneer of IoT or a fluffy cloud proposition can cause more harm than good if it’s not credible, supported and sustainable. It’s not enough for the business to merely charge marketing with creating a quick fix – it needs more than a campaign or a sprinkle of ‘trouble-making’ on an existing portfolio.

Marketing is a key partner in propagating and communicating a culture of innovation – but the task needs to be around broader programmes that affect the value proposition, operating model and mindsets.

The process of recognition can benefit from impartial insight and an objective assessment and articulation of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. At this point, you begin to discover authenticity ie. what you and your technologies can truly offer now, and promise for the future.

Unless you’re able to match or even trump a technology disruption then your best strategy is to meet it with brand, marketing and ecosystem fire. But beware, a veneer of marketing won’t hide weaknesses such as a vision vacuum, unempowered sales people or a siloed portfolio.

Wherever your marketing leads, your portfolio, services and solutions must follow – with customer education, thought leadership and business-focussed benefits that demonstrate vision and a command of new disruptions. Those technology companies that can achieve this have the opportunity to catch the wave of disruption and leave others in their wake.

The Rubicon Agency In Digital lead generation, Enterprise demand generation, Marketing resources, Thought leadership

White paper: white noise?

The white paper has taken on a ‘grey’ hue since it was first introduced by Winston Churchill in 1922. Apparently, business is to blame - with marketers extending its original remit whilst adding it to a growing armoury of content assets.

Technology marketing can gain real advantages from including a white paper within an integrated campaign or programme. As a content asset, it can fulfil a unique role but only if some basic rules are followed in order to avoid the white paper simply becoming ‘white noise’.

A white paper shouldn’t be a product pitch. Neither should it try to combine the detailed product information of a backgrounder with an industry-wide perspective or thought leadership. It has to be authoritative – with facts, figures, examples, comparisons and quotes.

White papers should be found at the academic end of the marketing content library with a high degree of expertise backed by solid research and fully documented with references. If that means they can be a little bit ‘boring’, requiring two or three reads to fully understand, that usually means the balance is right.

Getting the quality and balance right requires time, especially when you factor in technical, legal and brand approval. Breadth and depth is essential, and anything less than six pages could be deemed lightweight. Tight deadlines and white papers aren’t a good combination but they can be afforded longer lead times if the need is identified early enough in campaign planning and they’re offered as a downloadable fulfilment piece later in the delivery schedule.

White papers perform a unique role in establishing credibility, trust and preference when they help to clarify an issue, solve a problem or help to guide a decision. And as downloaders are usually further into the customer buying cycle, they can be positioned at a critical point in the sales funnel.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency In Digital lead generation, Event & experiential marketing, Marketing resources, Thought leadership

Webinar wasteland

In the marketing cannon, webinars are an interesting proposition.

On face value, it’s a great medium for a crash course on a subject which combines demos, expert opinion and commentary, coupled with the traditional PowerPoint slideware. What’s not to like? Most of us would rather voyeur at our screens for an hour than trawl the internet or read white paper after white paper in an effort to uncover the gems of information that we can otherwise be spoon-fed via a webinar.

With so much potential, it’s not surprising to see that marketing departments are keen to take advantage of our webinar expectations.

Gone in 60 minutes

It’s almost a given that once you decide to produce a webinar (regardless of subject matter) that it will last an hour. After the initial introductions, house rules and agenda (which if marketed correctly should already be obvious in the lead generation part of the campaign), you’ve already burnt through the first 10 minutes. Add the traditional, and very choregraphed Q&A’s at the end and that’s 20 minutes of the hour that could have be shaved from the length.

In an era where time is precious and ‘productivity’ is the watchword on many boardroom agendas, surely keeping things to the point and getting the important information across as succinctly as possible should be the goal.

Case study cop out

Another staple of the webinar is the good old case study. The chance for the webinar owner to showboat customers that have bought and benefited from their technology. In theory, this section should provide real insight which can include watchouts and potential added audience interest and value.

The reality though is that these examples are often over-sanitised and thus offer very limited value to the webinar participant. Devoid of budget allocations, lead times, tangible monetary savings or quantitative productivity gains, case studies merely become a beauty parade of brand names and or an exercise in customer ego stroking.

All mouth, no trousers

The final, and probably the most infuriating tactic webinar marketers use to attract both volume and quality of audience, is the topic headline. Employing the mantra that ‘every day is a school day’, participants register for these online events with the expectation that they will discover something fresh. Razzamatazz headlines, high-calibre speakers and stellar brand case studies all help to convince the participant that the subject matter is going to be innovative, revelationary and… new. Alas, many webinars promise a lot but deliver little – dusty content is repackaged and rolled out, case studies are devoid of actual insight and thought leadership material is revealed as thinly disguised sales pitches.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency In Corporate comms, Programme planning, Thought leadership

Killer content for technology marketing

Somewhere between quality and quantity there’s a point at which content can be more ‘killer’ than filler’.

A point at which content can fulfil its proper role as a bridge between broadcast marketing propositions and customer acquisition.

Finding that point requires objectivity bordering on ruthlessness.

When marketing began embracing the power of content in the new digital age, the initial challenge seemed to be creation and curation. Now, it seems there’s no shortage of content flowing from a multitude of channels towards a market that appears to be drowning rather than waving.

As the enabler of the digital marketing age, the technology sector not only has ‘paternal’ rights to its content distribution capabilities but should also be one of its biggest beneficiaries. Let’s face it, technology marketing is different. It needs all the help it can get in order to penetrate extended decision making groups; align with buying cycles; provide clarity on complex technical arguments, and translate innovations into ‘must-have’ market benefits.

Content objectivity begins with an audit of everything you have that falls into the content spectrum – from a white paper to a vision manifesto and everything else between. If you’ve read the best-selling book ‘The life-changing magic of tidying’ by Marie Kondo you’ll realise that with the right method and mindset, any mountain of accumulation (in this case, content) can be conquered.

There is a method and a mindset that can be applied to creating killer content. It includes a recognition of ten typical reasons to conduct an audit; a checklist of sixteen essentials; four alternative assessment enablers and four key criteria for creation and curation. And if that sounds complicated, the good news is you don’t have to do it yourself. In fact, you’re more likely to get the best result if you leave it to a specialist.

Find out more by downloading The Rubicon Agency free guide: ‘Killer or Filler – assessing content success for technology marketers’.

The Rubicon Agency In Programme planning, Sales enablement, Strategic content, Thought leadership

When content goes bad – the business case for auditing your collateral

Producing content is an expensive exercise - in terms of time, resource and ultimately marketing budget.

So, how can you be sure your investment is delivering long term benefits? Not just initial enquiries, but much further and deeper than contact acquisition. An effective content strategy extends and strengthens customer relationships.

There can be no argument about the role content has within the technology sector, and how it makes up a critical part of the marketing mix. As early adopters of content marketing, the technology industry now faces new challenges as the late majority realise the value of content and joining the increasingly noisy party.

Content creation, if left unchecked, is in danger of losing its lustre. Coined back in 1997, CNet’s notion that ‘Everyone’s a publisher’ has definitely rung true. Content is no longer produced by niche teams, instead publishing sprawl has bled into other functions within the organisation. Now social departments, comms teams, product experts and business leaders all contribute to corporate content. This has resulted in variable levels of quality – in addition to moving us closer to saturation point where killer material is lost in the sheer noise of advertised ‘premium’ content.

So what are the essentials qualities for successful content?

What are the magic ingredients that make up killer content? Is it the promise of industry insight, best practice techniques, cutting edge research or inspiring thought leadership material that entice our target audience? Well, yes and no. These are all tried and tested methods, but how many times have you felt ‘suckered in’ after you’ve handed over your contact details?

Dangling the proverbial carrot of premium content often fails to deliver once we digest it; Regurgitated opinions, stale executions or uninspiring content leave the consumer feeling short changed and disenfranchised with your brand.

Too often, content is utilised as a contact acquisition tool, however if planned and executed from a 360° perspective the value can be increased exponentially. Applying more rigour outside the initial purchasing phase helps enable other functions within the organisation, including channel teams, field marketers, sales and account management. Providing progressively influential arguments accelerates the purchase cycle and even exploits customer relationships post acquisition.

How can those qualities be measured?

Making sure your message inspires interest and then maintains it is critical to how we measure the value of each asset. Ultimately, engagement, not just social metrics including likes, comments and shares, but more tangible measures (as stated in the introduction) are the benchmark here. Yes, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL’s) are important but they shouldn’t be considered the only yardstick to measure success (or failure). Content should be part of the marketing mix for the long-haul and should go much deeper than a data acquisition tactic. In reality, it’s not just a numbers game.

Prospects may have felt duped after the first wave of activity could, on the face of it, be considered a warm lead when in reality they aren’t. The key, is to ensure that you have a campaign structure that contains equally engaging, entertaining and useful content that builds brand trust, engagement and ultimately advocacy.

Producing ‘deceitful’ content may yield an initial response, but value to the business may be minimal. Being too populist could result in droves of unqualified leads, too niche and the number of relevant leads could be reduced to a trickle.

How can they be improved?

The answer is to look at the bigger picture not just individual assets. Just as you would with an outreach campaign, each stage should be evaluated. Who am I talking to? What is the message we want to get across? Is it pitched correctly? Is it engaging? Does it align with the business strategy? What do we want them to do next? Looking at your content holistically may add an extra stage to the process but in the long run it makes good business sense.

Failure to properly audit your content inventory could prove costlier in the long-run with outreach budgets and potential customers being lost.

To make sure your content isn’t in danger of turning bad, register for our unique M4 content audit.

The Rubicon Agency In Our industry, Thought leadership

Lessons from history for (disruptive) tech marketers

Take a look back at the early days of technology marketing and you’ll discover a rich seam of material for amusement.

However, what might have passed for legal, decent and truthful may have been guilty of committing other crimes.

In the early 80s, print advertising was still a dominant media. So, imagine the scene when the geeks from the computer company met the creatives from the advertising agency. With the Account Director acting as referee, they would wrestle with the challenge of translating the client’s enthusiasm for bits and bytes into features and benefits that would spark ideas from the creative team.

Compared to today’s multi-media, multi-format, multi-message marketing, the classic format of advertising headline, image, copy and call-to-action seems limited. But with a team which included an Art Director, Writer, Photographer, Typesetter and Artworker, the agency would craft single or double page ads and billboard posters for the technology that would eventually disrupt the advertising industry itself.

By enabling and merging creative skills and processes, the all-conquering Apple Macintosh computer was the Trojan Horse welcomed into the confines of the creative industry to disgorge a cargo that created both threat and opportunity.

The early 80s saw the first ripening of Apple, primarily as a Technology Transformer and later, it could be said, as a Social Shaper. As an early mover, Apple was also an early victim of crimes perpetrated by the advertising industry. The evidence includes this press ad:

Let’s start with the positioning. Side-stepping the headline (which borders on discriminatory) the copy is striking an uncomfortable balance between personal and business use and between independent entrepreneurialism and corporate captivity.

The marketing strategy seems to be based on convincing an individual, rather than a decision making group, to be persuaded to spend a ‘downright affordable’ $2500 on a personal computer rather than suffer the delays and ‘uncreative drudgery’ of using a big mainframe. This is slightly at odds with the subsequent suggestion that Apple makes things easy with three (count them) programming languages that ‘let you be your own software expert’. Not exactly the most compelling proposition for someone who was just beginning to warm to the idea of uncomplicating their life.

As the Internet was only a twinkle in Tim Berners Lee’s eye, the call to action had to rely on a toll free telephone number with an address (should the prospect prefer to put pen to paper) and the third option of a request for information via the magazine publisher. With a response mechanism like that, the agency must have had a few sleepless nights, waiting to count those inbound responses.

That’s the words, what about the pictures?- a Benjamin Franklin character in full period costume? Looks like agency creatives suffered from the same affliction that drove 80s music video directors to plunder ideas from the nearest theatrical dressing-up box. It’s also interesting to see actual ‘product’ juxtaposed against the period furniture as if to say ‘here at last is that bright white shiny future we were promised by technology’. Today, it begs the question: when was the last time you actually saw a router or blade server in a marketing campaign?

Finally, it’s nice to see the copywriter couldn’t resist the line: ‘Apple is a real computer, right to the core’ though hardly surprising it didn’t make it to strapline status (probably over-ridden by SJ himself).

With the benefit of 20:20 hindsight it’s easy to criticise this early foray into tech marketing but we can also learn some lessons from it. Whether you’re a Market Maker, Technology Transformer or Social Shaper, it pays to understand where you are on your marketing roadmap , where you need to be and what needs to be said and to whom in order to get you there. Above and beyond the advantages of innovations such as digital media, the Internet and social strategies, we can employ the advantages of messaging and content that’s segmented for business and technical decision makers; realistically set against a clear adoption curve and single-minded in its proposition.

To paraphrase the ad, you may not have to be a wise man/person to own an Apple pc or any other technology for that matter, but it helps if you want to convince people to buy.

The Rubicon Agency In Our industry, Thought leadership

Map of technology disruption

Disruptive technologies don’t just displace sustaining technologies, they can also unsettle or displace customer, partner and channel relationships and even business models.

Take a look at our Map of Technology Disruption infographic below and you’ll see plenty of examples of technology disruptions that combined with other factors to offer ‘disruptive innovation’ and create new challenges for technology marketers. Take SMS for example: when the Short Messaging Service was introduced to mobile phones, who knew that the original strategy to market to business users would be overtaken by the mass adoption of ‘Txt Msg’ by a nascent market of socially active teenagers?

Disruptive Technology journey infographic

The Rubicon Agency In Disruptive technology, Market development, Our industry, Thought leadership

Technology markets don’t buy disruption

In the world of technology, new or better doesn’t necessarily mean disruptive.

Unless ‘new’ means revolutionary and ‘better’ means businesses and markets have to think or behave differently, then it’s not true disruption.

Do an online search for ‘disruptive technology’ or ‘disruptive innovation’ and you’ll see they stir up discussion and debate. Talking of Google, here’s a good example: the Google search engine algorithm was not in itself disruptive. It was AdWords, its advertising service. By offering a self-service ad product for as little as $1, it disrupted the previous model sustained by Yahoo who in turn had sustained the traditional advertising model of premium rates for display advertising.

Combine disruptive technology with business models, sales, market and economic dynamics and it becomes part of a bigger displacement which is disruptive innovation. Computers are a prime example of disruptive innovation. Whilst the original mainframe computers were a technology innovation, they only began to create significant, global disruption when the concept of ‘one computer, many users’ was overturned with the introduction of personal computers which enabled ‘one user, many computers’.

People don’t buy disruption, they buy ‘better’. Understanding what’s better can often be a challenge with disruptive technology. Sometimes, it doesn’t fall neatly into the categories of bigger, better, faster or even cheaper.

The first mobile phones were certainly bigger than we’re used to today and they could in no way claim to be cheaper than landline phones. Whilst they were seen as ‘desirable’ they were also open to derision, accusations of elitism and viewed by horrified company accountants as unnecessary and very expensive. And of course, early mobile phones also had limited, unreliable network coverage for the small minority of early adopters who used them.

Taking disruptive technology and innovation to market means communicating effectively with early adopters right through to laggards. It means harnessing enthusiasm and managing scepticism with neither being confined exclusively to users and buyers – internal sales forces and external channels can be evangelists and sceptics too. With clarity, context, joined up thinking and realistic timescales, it can be done. And when it does succeed, the prize is much bigger and longer lasting for those technology companies that aren’t afraid to cross the rubicon.

Find out how TRA takes disruption to market at the point where technologies and business models are being displaced – when opportunity and threat co-exist.

Find out more

The Rubicon Agency In Brand strategy, Disruptive technology, Market development, Programme planning, Thought leadership

Map, message and migrate – the path to disruption

It’s true that each of the ‘3 Degrees of Disruption’ will cause waves of discontent with traditional users, value chains and routes to market.

But ultimately, their ‘value creation’ needs to outweigh the ‘value erosion’. There’s a multiple of indices to this value – with wealth/prosperity, employment, competitiveness, innovation, sustainability and wellbeing at the more esoteric and philosophical level. For the more everyday marketer there’s market-share, customer sentiment, revenue streams and lifetime customer spend. The list across the two levels is extensive.

However, these two levels are not quite as disparate as they seem. For the disruption to fully succeed, the marketing function has to combine the attributes and qualities of both levels to vision, lobby, evangelise and trade their way to success. This is crucial as the key influencer group often includes commentators, media opinion formers, industry leaders and practitioners of the ‘current normal’ – as well as the ‘next normal’.

Take automated vehicles and transport as an interesting example. Whist there’s definitely a provocative user story there, it’s easy to ignore the impact on other stakeholders – town planners, insurance companies, driving schools, safety bodies, regulators/policy makers. For this disruption to be realised, it’s crucial that these stakeholders get on-board for the journey (excuse the pun!). If not, they will dissent, distract and deflect the evolution to death.

Marketing leaders need to articulate and quantify the two levels of value using an exciting and ever-expanding range of digital, social, experience and content tools. But, many marketers go into execution mode too quickly, without establishing robust stories and stakeholder visions at the outset. It’s essential that they’re developed in the early days – even though they can be recalibrated over time.

Let’s explore the pathway to Map, Message and Migrate to Disruption:

Map, Message and Migrate to Disruption infographic

It takes tech experience, marketing dexterity and a Jackanory-mindset to tackle the two levels. The pioneers of Disruptive Technology will typically demonstrate rapid change in terms of price/performance/choice relative to alternative approaches. Or they experience breakthroughs and improvements in capability that were previously unachievable. Dramatising this for the whole influencing and decision making group is arguably marketing’s most important task.

The Rubicon Agency In Brand strategy, Disruptive technology, Market development, Programme planning, Thought leadership

Disruptive tech – navigating the ‘3 Degrees of Disruption’

‘Disruptive Technology’ is a mere two words – but with the power to change all of our lives (business and consumer).

A daydream involving cloud computing, automated transportation, Internet of Things and mobile internet leaves you thinking wistfully about the innovation possibilities. This is just a snapshot of Disruptive Tech – but you still have outcomes and probabilities that will change how we live, work and play for decades to come.

However, not all Disruptors are created equal. There’s a relativity to their ‘trouble-making’ that can be captured broadly by the ‘3 Degrees of Disruption’. Each degree has a consequential effect on markets, technology and the broader society – with the most dramatic and impactful of innovations having a seismic effect on all three.

Let’s explore the ‘3 Degrees of Disruption’ in more detail.

Each of the 3 Degrees of Disruption fuels rapid innovation in products, services, business processes and go-to-market strategies. Consequently, each degree needs a different approach to addressing marketing challenges – with a unique mix of activities and programmes to meet the idiosyncrasies’, embedded agendas and opportunity creation of the marketplace and value chain.

It can be a complex exercise understanding how much disruption and innovation to let loose on a workforce, distributor/reseller network and partner community. It needs a client/agency relationship that understands the new dawn of disruption – but understands the value and legacy of ‘that’s how it’s always been done’. It’s a relationship that requires a number of marketing skillsets and success blueprints to instigate and deliver the transformation, including thought leadership, channel development, social community development, market development and proposition development/message mapping.

In later blogs we’ll explore each of the degrees and characteristics in more detail, together with exercises around some of the successful technology and digital brands that have navigated the 3 Degrees of Disruption.