The uncomfortable number
AIM B2B surveyed business leaders across Japan and Asia-Pacific, and the results came out on 15 October. 69% agree that most B2B content gets its message across but rarely changes minds. Read that again. The message lands. The mind stays where it was.
It gets sharper. Among people who believe good content has an effect, only 12% say it changes what buyers ultimately decide or do. When leaders were asked what makes storytelling influential, useful insight ranked first at 48%. Credible expertise came second at 32%. Storytelling itself came in at 31%.
So the story isn't the point. What's inside the story is.
Why industrial content goes in one ear
Most industrial content is a brochure dressed up as a blog. "We're proud to announce our new 5-axis machine." "Quality is at the heart of everything we do." It's accurate. It's also almost word for word what your three nearest competitors posted last month.
The data backs this up. Among people who say B2B content fails to influence, 50% blame a lack of distinctiveness. Not budget. Not channels. Sameness.
Here's the good news. You already have the cure. Your factory floor knows things your buyers would pay to learn: why a tolerance drifts in winter, which spec gets over-engineered on most tenders, what actually causes the delay everyone blames on freight. That's insight. Most firms leave it in the heads of their estimators and engineers, then post a photo of the Christmas party.
Three brands that teach instead of tell
John Deere, The Furrow. In 1895 Deere launched a free magazine for farmers. By accounts of its history, the editorial didn't focus on Deere's products. It focused on better farming. In 2018 The Drum reported that the company's own readership surveys found 40% of readers read every single word, ads included. That isn't storytelling as decoration. It's usefulness kept up so long that people trust the brand behind it.
Maersk, market updates. Maersk publishes regular regional market updates for Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America and beyond, plus advisories when things go wrong. When typhoons threatened East Asian ports, it told shippers to add buffer time to time-sensitive shipments and pointed them to air freight and inland alternatives. A shipping line telling you to plan around delays sounds like bad marketing. It's the opposite. The customer who planned around that typhoon remembers who warned them.
Hilti, Pros Know. Hilti North America's campaign took Silver for Brand Re-Positioning at the ANA's 2026 B2 Awards. It isn't built on tool specs. It's built on the conditions construction pros actually work in: bad weather, muddy sites, tight deadlines, chaos. It's specific enough that a site foreman recognises their own Tuesday. And it's hard to copy, because it comes from Hilti's direct sales team standing on those sites every day.
Content that changes minds is industrial branding in action, not just activity.
Three different formats. One rule. Each gives the buyer something they didn't have before they read it.
The insight test: run it before you publish anything
Before your next post, case study or newsletter goes out, put it through four questions.
1. Could a competitor post this unchanged? If yes, it's wallpaper. Cut it or make it specific. 2. Does it contain something only you know? A number from your own jobs, a failure you've seen fifty times, a shortcut your best engineer swears by. 3. Would a buyer forward it to someone on their team? Insight travels. Announcements don't. 4. Does it change a decision? Spec, timing, supplier, budget. If it changes nothing, it influences nothing.
Then fix how you measure it. The same study found 64% of organisations judge content by leads generated, and only 22% by shifts in how their audience sees them. Leads matter. But if leads are all you count, you'll keep writing for the handful of buyers ready to sign today and ignore everyone forming an opinion ahead of the next tender.
Where to start this month
Book one hour with your most experienced engineer or estimator. Ask them one question: what do customers get wrong before they call us? Record the answer. You'll come out with months of material that no agency, no AI tool and no competitor can fake, because none of them have stood on your floor.
At Marketing Week's Festival of Marketing on 14 October, Addleshaw Goddard's head of marketing Brian Macreadie said it bluntly: "There's no such thing as a boring product. There's only boring brands and boring marketers." Industrial businesses hold some of the most useful knowledge in the economy. Most of them never let it out of the building.
Find out what your brand is really saying
Content is just one place where your brand either earns trust or quietly loses it. To see where yours stands, take nim's free 2-minute Industrial Brand Health Check. It scores where your brand is costing you work and shows you what to fix first. Strategy before design. Insight before content.
If you are considering brand or marketing services, view our products and pricing here.
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