Sales vs A Good Story
In the relentless pursuit of content ROI, it’s all about striking the right balance.
Do your audiences really trust the content you’re publishing? You’re reading the second article in our Content Trust series by our Senior Content Copywriter, Alastair Bevan.
Sometimes, B2B content just doesn’t stick.
And very, very often, it’s because it’s too sales-led. According to Demand Gen research, 54% of buyers say the content they encounter is too commercially focused or not objective enough.
It gives people nothing to hold onto. No story. No context. No sense of what the message means in the real world. And when that’s missing, even the most balanced content falls flat.
The issue, of course, has worsened in the AI age. Nothing is more balanced and sales-driven than ChatGPT with a vague two-line prompt. But here’s the nuance: simply removing the sales message doesn’t solve the problem. Content can be completely non-salesy — and still ineffective.
The real problem isn’t selling. It’s forgettability.
There’s a bullseye stat from the London School of Business, widely replicated, that highlights the issue.
People retain 5–10% of information when it’s presented as facts alone. But when it’s wrapped in a story, that jumps to 65–70%.
In other words: information on its own, no matter how objective, rarely sticks.
And that really matters in B2B. Because if your content doesn’t stick, it isn’t trusted. And if it isn’t trusted, it can’t possibly influence the buying decision.
Content needs to work harder than ever
B2B buyers – particularly the tech ones we speak to here at Fox Agency – aren’t just more informed than they used to be. They’re more sceptical.
OK, there’s something broader at play here too – 70% of UK respondents in the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer reported a moderate or high sense of grievance with large institutions.
But B2B buyers in particular inhabit a world saturated with content, automation, and over-polished messaging. As a result, they’ve become far more selective about what they engage with, and far quicker to dismiss what feels samey or irrelevant.
At the same time, they’re more independent. 61% now prefer a rep-free buying experience (Gartner, 2024), choosing to research on their own terms before ever speaking to sales.
This last point is crucial. It means your content is often your first (and sometimes only) chance to build trust.
The gap is self-inflicted
It’s easy to blame changing buyer behaviour. But much of the trust gap is self-inflicted.
In many organisations, volume has quietly replaced relevance as the default success metric. It’s never been easier to produce and distribute content at scale, and many teams are optimising for output rather than impact. That’s only accelerated with the rise of Gen AI, which has made it even easier to create large volumes of superficially ‘polished’ assets.
The result? More content, less value.
And when buyers repeatedly encounter content that doesn’t respect their time or answer their questions, they just stop paying attention.
Relevance first, persuasion second.
So how do you earn trust through content?
It’s through relevance first, and persuasion second.
Too often, content strategies reverse the order. They start with what the business wants to say, then try to shape it into something useful. Buyers see through this immediately.
Relevance means understanding what’s difficult, stressful, painful about your audience’s role – their constraints, their pressures, their priorities. It means meeting them where they are, not where you’d like them to be.
When content incorporates that level of understanding, persuasion becomes far more effective, because it’s earnt, not imposed.
Trust as a long-term investment
Treating trust as a core value changes how content gets made. It means publishing less, but with more intent. It means being willing to not publish something that doesn’t add value. And it means asking harder questions before anything goes live:
- Is this genuinely useful?
- Is it clear who this it’s for?
- Does it reflect real buyer needs, not just our own?
Over time, that approach pays dividends.
The law of accumulating credibility
Buyers return to sources they trust. They share content internally. And they remember the brands that consistently respect their time and intelligence.
Whether you’re planning content from scratch or doing a post mortem on a strategy that’s just not delivering, the trust gap can be bridged. But only with consistent quality, a buyer-first mentality, and a willingness to put relevance ahead of volume.