Stop selling, start helping · Tough B2B SaaS sales advice
Most B2B content for technical audiences is vague, condescending, or way too salesy. Technical buyers can spot it instantly, and when they do, they bail.
If you’re selling to developers, architects, IT leaders, or other deeply technical folks, your content isn’t “just marketing”—it’s part of the evaluation process. And if that content isn’t useful, they’ll assume your product isn’t either.
So let’s talk about how to create content that technical buyers actually trust.
Map your content to the actual buyer journey
Here’s where most content strategies fall apart: they treat all content like a single campaign asset. A blog post here, a whitepaper there, maybe a product page refresh. But technical buyers go through a multi-stage process, and they need different kinds of content at each step.
Early on, they’re not looking for a vendor—they’re trying to understand a problem or assess industry trends. That’s where educational content matters. Later, they’re comparing solutions, trying to figure out how your product works, if it integrates with their stack, whether it’s secure, and whether they can justify the purchase internally.
If you don’t support all of those stages with meaningful, accessible content, you’re creating friction. And friction is what kills deals.
So yes, you need blog posts and whitepapers—but you also need integration docs, architecture diagrams, PoC guides, and security documentation that’s actually findable. The right format at the right moment is what helps buyers move forward without stalling out or calling in an SME just to answer basic questions.
Content isn’t just marketing—it’s part of the evaluation experience
One mistake I see over and over: treating content like a top-of-funnel activity only. As if it just exists to generate leads, and once someone fills out a form, the job is done.
That’s not how technical buyers operate.
They’re skeptical by nature. They want to see for themselves that your product works, that it solves the problem they have, and that it fits with their existing systems. And they’ll form an opinion long before your sales team gets involved—if they get involved at all.
That means your blog post, your demo video, your reference architecture PDF—those are all part of the product experience. They’re early proof points.
If your product claims to be developer-friendly, and your documentation is a nightmare to find or read, that’s a red flag. If your content reads like it was written by a marketer who doesn’t understand the product, that’s another.
Content isn’t a side hustle. It’s core infrastructure for technical sales.
You also need to care about credibility
We talk a lot about SEO, but the real overlap between search and buyer trust is Google’s EEAT model: Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
Technical buyers use these same mental filters. If your content feels generic, anonymous, or detached from real-world use cases, it gets ignored.
On the other hand, if your walkthroughs are written by actual engineers, your case studies share real metrics, and your blog includes honest reflections on tradeoffs and implementation challenges—you come across as credible. Not perfect, but credible. And that’s what technical buyers want.
They’re not looking for hype. They’re looking for a partner who understands what it’s like to ship production code, navigate compliance audits, or get yelled at when the app goes down at 3am.
Get serious about format and structure
Some formats just work better than others for this audience.
Whitepapers are great—if they’re technical. Case studies matter—if they include real implementation detail. But honestly, the best-performing content I’ve seen in technical sales often comes from places like:
A detailed API reference page
An integration diagram that shows how your product plugs into the buyer’s existing stack
A raw, unedited Loom video where a sales engineer clicks around and explains what’s happening
You don’t need polish. You need clarity.
The goal isn’t to win a design award. The goal is to be useful enough that the buyer trusts you without needing a three-call sales cycle.
Content is what sells when your buyer avoids sales
Technical buyers don’t want to talk to you. Seventy-five percent of them, in fact, say they prefer a rep-free buying experience. But here’s the kicker: purchases made entirely without sales support are much more likely to result in regret.
That puts all the pressure on your content. It needs to be as good—if not better—than your best sales rep.
So stop thinking of content as a lead-gen form or a checkbox on your campaign calendar. It’s not a one-off asset. It’s a crucial part of the buyer’s experience, and if you do it well, it will build trust faster than any sales call ever could.
Make it useful. Make it credible. Make it easy to find.
And most of all—make it for the buyer, not for yourself.
