Why We Stopped Content Marketing. Nobody Read It.

Content marketing was supposed to be the scalable growth engine. Publish SEO-optimized blog posts. Rank on Google. Capture organic traffic. Convert readers to leads. The funnel fills itself!

We hired content writers. Built an editorial calendar. Published twice weekly for two years. 200+ blog posts covering every keyword we could think of.

Let's look at what actually happened.

The Numbers That Made Us Stop

Metric	Reality
Total blog posts	214
Total organic traffic	45,000/month (after 2 years)
Average time on page	47 seconds
Average scroll depth	23%
Blog → Demo conversion	0.08%
Annual content cost	$180,000
Leads from blog (annual)	432
Cost per blog lead	$417

Four hundred dollars per lead. From "free organic content." We could have bought those leads for $50 each from paid channels.

Why 47 Seconds? Because Nobody Cares

The average time on page tells the whole story. 47 seconds isn't "reading"—it's skimming the headline, maybe the first paragraph, then bouncing.

We analyzed our top posts. They ranked for keywords. They got traffic. The traffic left immediately because:

• The content was generic. "7 Best Practices for API Testing" sounds like every other post ranking for that keyword. No unique insight. No differentiation.
• People wanted answers, not education. Most visitors had a specific question. They found their answer (or didn't) and left. They weren't looking for our product.
• The funnel was imaginary. We assumed: read blog → explore site → sign up for demo. Reality: read blog → close tab.

The Pivot: Customer Education Over Lead Generation

We didn't stop creating content. We stopped creating content for strangers.

We redirected budget to customer education:

• Webinars for prospects in pipeline: Deep dives on problems our product solves. 200 registrants, 60% attendance, 25% conversion to demo. 10 webinars generated more pipeline than 200 blog posts.
• Documentation for existing customers: Comprehensive guides that help customers succeed. Better documentation → lower churn → more expansion revenue.
• Case studies with specifics: Real customer stories with real numbers. Prospects in late stages loved these. Blog visitors never read them.
• Email nurture with substance: Instead of weekly "new blog post!" emails, monthly insights that executives actually forwarded internally.

What We Learned About "Organic Growth"

SEO traffic ≠ qualified traffic. Ranking for "API testing best practices" gets you people researching API testing. Very few of them need your specific API testing product right now.

Content marketing is a long game... that most companies lose. Yes, some companies build massive organic traffic engines. They've been at it for a decade, have dedicated teams, and their content is genuinely exceptional. Most company blogs are mediocre and stay that way.

The opportunity cost is real. Every dollar spent on generic blog posts could have been spent on activities with direct ROI. Paid acquisition. Sales enablement. Customer success. Product improvement.

"Everyone else does it" is not a strategy. We did content marketing because SaaS companies do content marketing. We never validated that it worked for us.

When Content Marketing Actually Works

We're not saying content never works. It works when:

• Your content is genuinely differentiated (original research, unique perspective, exceptional quality)
• Your buyer journey includes significant self-education
• You have the patience for 2-3+ year time horizons
• You're willing to invest at a level that produces quality, not quantity

Generic "best practices" posts don't meet these criteria. They're commodity content in a saturated market.

Current State

We still have a blog. We publish maybe once a month—only when we have something genuinely worth saying. Customer stories. Product announcements. Actual insights from our work.

Organic traffic dropped 60%. Revenue from content-influenced deals went up 40%—because the content we do publish actually resonates with people who are buying.

Nobody reads marketing content. People read content that helps them. Know the difference before you build a 200-post content machine that generates nothing but writer invoices.