Kristin Stair || Social Media Supervisor
A lot of modern marketing advice is built around one thing: attention. Jump on the trend. Make it entertaining. Keep it short. Simplify the message. Find a clever hook.
Those aren’t necessarily bad recommendations. But after spending most of my career marketing to dairy producers, engineers, plant managers and other technical audiences, I’ve seen where those rules start to break down.
Some might think these audiences are no fun or harder to engage, but I’d argue that’s exactly what makes them interesting. I thrive on the challenge of earning attention from people who know their industries inside and out and can quickly recognize when marketing wasn’t made with them in mind.
They understand the nuances outsiders miss. When they come to social media, they’re often looking to learn something, solve a problem, hear from their peers or stay current on what’s happening in their industry. Entertainment can still have a place, but it isn’t always what they’re looking for from a brand.
What I’ve learned is that reaching technical audiences requires a willingness to challenge marketing best practices. Sometimes expertise matters more than a trend, clarity wins over cleverness and practical value goes further than another attempt to stop the scroll.
1. Value over viral
Trends dominate a lot of the conversation around social media. Reels, trending audio, short-form video and emerging formats can absolutely have a place in B2B marketing.
But participating in a trend isn’t a strategy by itself.
Technical audiences aren’t necessarily opening LinkedIn or Facebook hoping a brand will entertain them. What works on one platform doesn’t automatically translate to another, either. A Facebook Reel and a LinkedIn video may both be social video, but someone can have very different reasons for watching each.
That’s why expertise tends to have a longer shelf life than trends. A knowledgeable audience can quickly tell whether a brand understands what they do. You earn credibility by speaking their language, recognizing their challenges and offering a perspective they haven’t heard 100 times before.
The good news is that expertise doesn’t always require creating something new. Some of the best content already exists inside an organization. A long-form article, interview or webinar can fuel social posts, videos, quotes and thought leadership long after its initial promotion ends. We often think we’ve maximized a piece of content once we’ve used it across web, email and social, but good ideas can have a much longer shelf life.
One of the best things we can do as marketers is let the experts speak for themselves. Employee, dealer and subject-matter expert content puts a person behind the expertise and gives audiences a chance to hear directly from the people doing the work.
None of this means brands marketing to technical audiences should abandon trends. Q&As, mini mics, true-or-false videos and hot takes can all make expertise more engaging. The difference is that the trend becomes the vehicle for the value, not the value itself.
2. Speak their language
Marketers love a concise benefit statement. How many times have you caught yourself writing:
“Increase efficiency.”
“Optimize performance.”
“Drive better results.”
The problem is those phrases can apply to almost anything.
“Increase efficiency” sounds good, but what does it actually mean? Reduce sorting time during herd checks? Cut downtime on the plant floor? Spend less time troubleshooting equipment? The details are what make the benefit relevant.
Specificity is not the enemy of creativity. In technical marketing, specificity can be the creative advantage.
That specificity shows up in ways that seem insignificant to someone outside the industry. It’s knowing the terminology your audience uses and the terminology they don’t. It’s understanding that “AI” may mean something very different to a dairy producer than it does to a software engineer. If you know, you know.
It can even come down to a photo. Someone who works with livestock will notice if an animal doesn’t look quite right. An engineer will notice when technical specifications don’t add up. A plant manager knows whether a supposed pain point reflects what actually happens on the floor. Your audience knows their world, and they’ll notice when you don’t.
But being specific doesn’t mean making content unnecessarily complicated. Making expertise accessible isn’t the same as dumbing it down. Turn a complex article into a social post. Use video to explain one part of a complicated topic. Break a process down in a carousel.
Simplify the delivery, not the intelligence behind the idea.
3. Question your channel assumptions
Another assumption worth challenging is that B2B automatically means LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is important. For many of the technical audiences we work with, it’s extremely important. But platform selection should follow audience behavior and campaign objectives, not a blanket best practice.
We saw that firsthand with a lead-generation campaign where Meta substantially outperformed expectations. By removing website friction and testing the campaign in a higher-volume environment, Meta generated 27 times more leads while reducing cost per lead by 98%.
The lesson wasn’t that Meta is better than LinkedIn, but that we shouldn’t decide where a technical audience will take action before giving them the opportunity to prove us wrong. Sometimes the channel marketers associate most strongly with B2B isn’t the one that will produce the strongest result.
The same willingness to challenge “best practices” should apply to creative.
We’re constantly told attention spans are shrinking and video needs to be shorter, faster and vertical. Then we posted a long-form, horizontal brand video on LinkedIn.
On paper, there were plenty of reasons to question it. It was long. It was horizontal. It was brand-forward. But it made people feel something.
The boosted post generated:
- 64,500 impressions
- 14,229 video views
- $0.02 cost per view
Other videos that were shorter and vertical, but boosted to the same audience with similar budgets and durations, averaged roughly:
- 4,200 impressions
- 1,400 video views
- $0.12 cost per view
The right story doesn’t always come in the “right” format. That’s why best practices should be a starting point, not a substitute for understanding your audience.
4. Authenticity matters more than ever
There’s another reason substance matters more than ever: audiences are increasingly skeptical of what they see online.
Across industries, I’ve A/B tested highly designed promotional creative against simpler imagery and repeatedly seen the less polished approach perform just as well or better.
People don’t want every interaction with a brand to feel like an ad, and AI is raising the stakes even further.
I once had someone leave a negative comment accusing an edited image of being AI-generated. It wasn’t. What struck me wasn’t only the accusation, but where it happened: LinkedIn.
We often associate questionable AI content with consumer-facing platforms, but research suggests LinkedIn has become a significant home for low-quality AI content. That’s especially important when LinkedIn is where so many B2B brands are investing their time.
As audiences become more skeptical, authenticity isn’t just a brand attribute. It’s part of the creative strategy. Use real people. Show real environments. Share informed perspectives. Let experts sound like experts instead of rewriting everything until it sounds like marketing. Or risk getting reported as “AI slop.”
Know the rules. Know when to challenge them.
Technical audiences have made me a better marketer because they force me to question the advice we hear every day and pay closer attention to the people we’re actually trying to reach.
Sometimes the long video works. Sometimes Meta surprises you. Sometimes the technical detail you were tempted to cut is the exact thing that makes someone pay attention. Those moments are a good reminder that best practices can only take us so far.
Know the rules, test them and be willing to challenge them. Give your audience some credit, too. They know their world better than we ever will, and our job is to show them we’ve done our homework.