Much marketing today is built on that idea education that’s enough. Give the searcher with functionality, half decent information, and we are half way to winning hearts and minds.
In a pre-AI world, that was true. Accurate and relevant information is scarce. Curating web content into a more accessible format is a real added value. Education is the engine that drives growth.
But now, information has become very cheap. Any brand can become a public publisher, generating thousands of search-optimized products how guidance on any topic. So it’s easier and easier to find customized and personalized answers to the most curious questions.
The Internet has transformed from place to place lack of information to one of the abundant informationand thus, the value of “education” as a marketing strategy has fallen off the cliff.
Early in my career (some thirteen years ago), many of the articles I published were simply “educational” SEO content pieces written on specific topics.
That may seem like fun now, but at the time, there was a problem. Many SERPs are a mish-mash of different types of content and search intent. The onus is on you to gather the answers from the plates from sources that can help you.
As I have written before:
There were times when a Google search would return a page of only vague search results; Finding an article that addresses your specific question is rare, and incredibly welcome.
Those seeking the information they want are usually there, but locked away in hard-to-access places: obscure forum posts, esoteric PDFs, hard-to-find personal blogs.
My added value is simply finding and using this information into a more accessible format – one that will show up when people are looking for it. (This is a big benefit of the skyscraper approach: the centralization of disparate information into one place.)
This arbitration: take advantage of temporary information asymmetry to turn a profit. The information I’m talking about is already on the internet, but it’s hard to find—I’m making it simple, making it more specific and relevant to whatever language the searcher uses. My content is rewarded by traffic growth.
Looking back, we can call this period the era of Google lack of information:
- Specific and hyper-relevant information is difficult to find.
- Content is expensive to create.
- Simple information arbitrage is useful and appreciated.
- There is little competition; companies in every industry can be the first movers.
- The source of the information is not important; you will take information from wherever you can get it.
- It is easy to separate the good content from the bad.
The age of information scarcity is characterized by hunting for signals among the noise. You have a certain problem; search engines help you search for semi-relevant information in hopes of an answer.
But the internet is a different place now.
SEO is a table stakes strategy, used by everyone from solopreneurs to multinational corporations. It is too late for the first-mover advantage to apply: simple arbitrage does not have the same impact, because it is very likely that another brand (or a dozen brands) has beaten you to the punch.
It’s also the easiest and cheapest to create content. The marginal cost of creating content has dropped to almost zero; a brand can publish fifty articles a day and have change left over from a hundred dollar bill. The amount of “educational” SEO content is growing exponentially as more brands become public publishers.
Even the most specific, long-tail, ultra-specific questions can benefit from highly relevant answers because LLM can generate them quickly, pulling from different sources and changing the context to fit the question. Thanks to AI Overview, Google can even do this for you.
This AI content is at least as good as average human content (ie, not very good—but certainly true of SEO content). Most questions on many topics can receive answers that can be answered.
… or something that looks like that. The hallucinatory nature of LLM means that the content you create can have a polished and professional look and feel—while containing a lot of nonsense information. Bad content looks like good content. It’s hard to tell the difference without a deeper inspection.
We have entered the age of Google abundant information:
- Specific and relevant information for many questions is almost guaranteed.
- Content is cheap to make; there are no barriers to entry.
- Simple information arbitrage has become almost useless.
- There is high competition; companies in every industry are very likely to be second-movers.
- Sources of information are everything. Search will look to brands and people you trust for information.
- It is more difficult to separate the good content from the bad.
The era of information abundance is characterized by finding signals among… signals. There are dozens, even hundreds from competing sources demanding the right answer (including Google itself). A lot of it is AI slop, LLM output regurgitating LLM output, with ever-worsening resolution.
This single change – information becoming cheap and abundant – has changed the marketing function.
The simple act of sharing simple educational content is enough to capture the hearts and minds of your audience. In the age of AI, where educational content has become cheap and ubiquitous, we need to do more.
But how?
It offers a new sense of information
Consider yourself limited to publishing the same information as your competitors. Can you find a way to tell the difference?
Yes: by providing a unique “feel” of the information.
For example: there are hundreds of ways to use news. There is news for positive people. News for people with obvious political leanings. News for financiers and economics. News for nerds. News for the local community.
The core body of information – happening around the world – is largely the same, but the curation, presentation and experience of that information is very different.
We can do the same for the information you share. “The ultimate guide to link building” could be “the SaaS founder’s guide to link-building”, or “how to build 10 high-quality links,” or a series of content that follows you as you correct build links.
The core information contained in each “flavor” of the link-building guide will be largely the same, but the consuming experience will be very different.
There is a trade-off here: the more specific your focus, the smaller the total market you can address. But the search is increasingly zero-sum. For many brands, it is better to have a low volume topic than to try to compete against a competitive high volume topic.
Create new information
Thankfully, we are not limited to publishing the same information as others. We can make it new information, and expand the pool of available data.
Very few topics have constant knowledge. By running simple experiments, trying to solve difficult problems, or exploring strange edge cases, you may be able to find ways to create new and useful information – something that cannot be found directly on the website of competitors or in LLM output.
This is generally more difficult and expensive, but offers longer-term benefits. I wrote more about the practicalities here: How to Stand Out in an Ocean of AI Content.
Go through rote information
Finally: consider that education is a table stake, where each brand offers a comprehensive resource center and certification program that covers the core topics of the industry. How can you attract attention?
Entertainment is one obvious answer. The majority of media that most people consume on a daily basis isn’t very educational – it’s entertaining. Big brands like Paddle and HubSpot and smaller brands like Wistia and AudiencePlus recognize this fact, and are willing to make big bets on their entertainment strategy without paying off easily.
Entertainment is difficult, but it offers many benefits:
- TAM is bigger. The strategies mentioned above work because they target specific audiences, creating ultra-specific content that appeals to small audiences. Media is the opposite, expanding the total addressable market to the greatest extent possible.
- Moat to enter. There’s a reason most companies haven’t built a media brand: entertainment is hard. You need a broader understanding of your target audience than simple educational content; it is subjective and unfamiliar and risky. This makes it harder to do well, but more valuable if you succeed.
- Time-to-value is faster. As I said before, “Content marketing allows companies to deliver value to consumers earlier in the buying process than they might otherwise; but as content marketing becomes more common, media allows this to happen at an earlier stage.
Source: Media Strategy Is Not As Crazy As You Think
As Kieran Flanegan of HubSpot says, “The challenge with education is that it’s only relevant when you need it.” An entertainment-as-marketing strategy allows you to reach your audience at the earliest stage of awareness—before understand the problem. There is virtually no competition at this stage of the buying cycle.
A final thought
Today, most digital marketing is supported by “educational” content: simple, utilitarian information, created by jack-of-all-trades generalists and bylined by faceless brand accounts.
We have at least progressed to a level of sophistication where most brands publish information that is reasonably accurate, reasonably helpful; but very few brands have progressably passed the simple stage of information arbitrage. Most marketing content is a rehash of someone else’s work.
In the age of information abundance, this arbitrage is useless. Large and established brands will use their brand awareness and domain authority to benefit for several more years from the strategy; but small brands that want to carve out market share have to do something completely different.
