So what makes thought leadership valuable?

Well, let’s start with a simple insight: B2B buyers are scared. There’s this common misperception in the market that B2B is “rational,” while B2C is “emotional.” You buy Coke because you want to “open happiness,” but you buy IBM afer years of analysis – vendor research, product reviews, pricing and implementation details. According to this narrative, B2B buyers are cold, Spock-like automatons. But as Jon Miller, a co-founder of Marketo, points out, that narrative doesn’t make any sense. In fact, the opposite is probably true – B2B is much more emotional than B2C.

Why? Because making a bad decision in B2B can be disastrous to your career. That IBM deal? Millions of dollars are riding on it. If you mess up, you could lose your job, and your salary, which impacts your family (hence, “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”). It doesn’t get much more emotional than that. Meanwhile, if you don’t like the $1 can of Coke you bought, you throw it out, and move on with your life. No harm, no foul.