🧪 The Missing Middle

Read time: 5 mins | Read online

I’ve noticed a gaping hole in the content strategy of 99% of B2B brands.

Sometimes we forget that B2B is still communicating with individuals, just like B2C, only they’re making decisions on behalf of a larger group. That’s why this gap stood out to me. B2C brands seem to (mostly) be navigating it successfully.

The B2B brands that are bridging this gap are the ones winning by miles.

Hope you enjoy!

— Isaac

P.S. to make sure I wasn’t just making this up, I ended up doing a lot of research for this piece. Links to all data sources used in the article are included in the ‘References’ section at the bottom.

Quick Hits

• Heineken’s world without social media [LinkedIn]

• How people are really using gen AI in 2025 [Harvard Business Review]

• Why Airbnb went social-first for its latest campaign [Marketing Dive]

• Why execs should be active on social media [Chief Outsiders]

• How to find (not guess) your target audience [SparkToro]

The Missing Middle

Content has become the backbone of B2B marketing. Every SaaS company now has a blog, a resource centre and social accounts pumping out thought leadership.

But why are conversion rates still so low?

B2B content marketing has been growing for over a decade. Companies are investing more than ever in creating whitepapers, case studies and social posts. But research shows there’s still something missing:

• 80% of new leads never convert to sales¹.

• The average B2B buyer now requires 27 touchpoints before making a purchase decision, a 22% increase from just five years ago².

• 67% of the B2B buying journey is now completed through digital research before contacting sales³.

It all comes down to a critical gap in the B2B content journey, “the missing middle” of B2B content marketing.

The Current B2B Content Landscape

Most B2B content falls into two distinct categories:

The Deep End: Technical Expertise

At the bottom of the funnel, B2B brands are great at creating technical content like whitepapers, product documentation and ROI analyses. This content is comprehensive, data-heavy and aimed at decision validation.

But it serves decision-making that happens too late in the buyer journey. By the time someone is examining your product docs, they're often already leaning toward a particular solution.

The Shallow End: Attention Grabbers

At the top of the funnel, we've seen dramatic improvement in recent years with thought leadership posts, short-form videos and SEO-optimised blog posts.

The problem is this content creates awareness but rarely builds the kind of relationship that leads to conversion. It's like meeting someone at a party. You might remember their name, but you wouldn't trust them with your business.

The Missing Middle: The Relationship Gap

The impacts of this are huge. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost⁵. If that’s not enough for you, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases on average⁶.

Why B2B Brands Struggle with the Middle

Why do so many B2B brands fail in the middle? Two fundamental challenges stand out:

1. Organisational Structure and Skills Gap

In most B2B companies, different teams own different parts of the funnel. The social media team handles awareness content. Product marketing owns decision content. But the relationship-building content that sits between them? It's often no one's responsibility.

This structural gap creates both accountability and capability problems. Only 17% of marketers say they have a fully functioning sales funnel in place⁷. Without clear ownership, the middle of the funnel becomes a content desert where leads go to die.

What makes this worse is that the middle requires a unique skill set, editorial thinking. Technical marketers know how to write about features. Creative marketers know how to grab attention. But nurturing content requires understanding how to build an ongoing narrative that educates and builds trust over time.

It's a publishing mindset rather than a campaign mindset. 52% of marketers struggle with aligning content to the buyer's journey precisely because these editorial skills are rare in marketing departments⁸.

2. Budgets Follow the Wrong Metrics

Companies invest where they can measure impact, and the middle is notoriously difficult to attribute directly to revenue. This creates a self-reinforcing problem.

46% of marketers dedicate the largest share to top-of-funnel awareness, 39% to bottom-of-funnel conversion, leaving crumbs for the crucial middle stages⁹. With limited resources, middle-funnel content becomes sporadic and inconsistent. Exactly the opposite of what we know is needed to build relationships.

When these two challenges combine, the result is a significant relationship gap that directly impacts conversion rates, sales cycles, and ultimately revenue growth.

A Borrowed Solution

These challenges all come from approaching content as a collection of marketing assets rather than as an ongoing relationship with an audience. Instead of creating content to support marketing objectives, the most successful B2B brands today create content so valuable that marketing objectives become a natural byproduct of audience trust. They understand that relationships must be built through consistent value delivery before any transaction can occur.

They’ve stopped thinking like B2B marketers and started thinking like a media company.

Ahrefs: The Content Ecosystem

Their content would be valuable even if they never sold a subscription. It's not marketing disguised as content, it's genuine media that happens to drive business results.

HubSpot: Building a Media Portfolio

The Psychological Impact of Middle-Funnel Content

Let's talk about the psychology of why middle-funnel content works. Or more specifically, why certain formats create deeper connections than others. It's not enough to know what content to create. The real insight comes from understanding why these formats build relationships that convert.

Newsletters: Creating Habitual Relationships

Have you ever thought about how strange newsletters actually are? Someone you've probably never met shows up in your inbox, nestled between messages from your boss and your mum, and somehow that's normal.

This is the secret sauce of newsletters. They muscle their way into an already-established habit space. Unlike social posts or blogs (where people have to remember to visit), newsletters arrive in a place your audience checks multiple times daily.

After a few weeks of consistent newsletters, something magical happens. It’s called the “mere exposure effect” if you want to sound smart in meetings, but basically we just like things more because they're familiar. Your brand shifts from “that company I've heard of” to “that weekly email I get”. Subtle difference. Massive impact.

Podcasts: Why Voice Gets Into Your Head

Voice creates connection in ways text just can't match. Our brains process spoken communication through different neural pathways than written words. When we hear a human voice, it triggers areas associated with social connection and empathy.

It's primal. It's hardwired.

We establish what’s called a para-social relationship. When you hear someone's voice week after week, with all its quirks, cadence and authenticity, your brain builds a sense of genuine connection. It's the difference between reading a transcript and hearing the conversation.

There's also the time investment. Someone might skim your blog post in 90 seconds while multitasking, but podcast listeners commit 30+ minutes of focused attention. That's a relationship builder that's hard to match.

Most powerful of all is that podcasts accompany people during intimate daily moments. Commutes, workouts, doing the dishes. Your voice becomes part of their personal routine. Try achieving that with a white paper.

Video: The Trust of Visual Presence

Video works because it hacks our ancient trust-building mechanisms. Humans judge by watching faces and body language. Video lets you tap into those instinctive systems.

When people can see real humans (rather than just logos) they make instant, unconscious assessments about credibility. It's another use of social proof, our tendency to look to others for cues about what's trustworthy.

Including video content in the middle of the funnel can raise conversion rates by 66%¹⁴. The psychology here is less about familiarity (like newsletters) or companionship (like podcasts) and more about verification. Video says "We're real people. Here we are. Judge for yourself."

Regardless of format, remember that the psychological impact comes from consistency and value, not polish or persuasion. Your middle-funnel content needs to genuinely serve your audience before it can serve your sales goals.

The missing middle is both a challenge and an opportunity. Those who successfully bridge this gap gain lower acquisition costs, shorter sales cycles and larger deal sizes.

If your content disappeared tomorrow, would anyone genuinely miss it? If the answer is no, you haven't yet cracked the missing middle.

The most successful B2B brands of the next decade will be the ones thinking like media companies, creating content so valuable people would consume it even if they never bought the product.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: brandchemistry.co/p/the-missing-middle

When you’re ready, here’s 3 ways I can help you:

1. Free Content
On top of this weekly newsletter I also post daily on Linkedin with the latest trends, insights and strategies for brand building with organic media.

2. Modern Media Masterclass
A free resource walking you through how to use owned media channels to build your brand and business.

3. Pistachio
We work with brands like BuzzFeed and Clay to launch, grow and monetise organic media channels that drive real business results.

References

1. Marketo (cited in Salesgenie, 2025): Lead Nurturing Statistics

2. Sword and the Script, 2022: B2B Sales Cycles Require 27 Interactions

3. Forrester, 2015: Myth Busting 101: Insights Into The B2B Buyer Journey

4. Backlinko, 2024: 26 Crucial B2B Marketing Statistics

5. HubSpot, 2013: 30 Thought-Provoking Lead Nurturing Stats

6. Invesp, 2025: The Importance Of Lead Nurturing – Statistics and Trends

7. Gartner, 2024: The B2B Buying Journey: Key Stages and How to Optimize Them

8. Content Marketing Institute, 2024: B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends

9. Demand Gen Report, 2022: 2022 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey

10. The Marketing Meetup, 2021: How Ahrefs grew their website traffic

11. Tim Soulo, Medium: Tim Soulo (CMO @ Ahrefs)

12. HubSpot, 2015: Blogging Statistics — 31 Stats You Need to Know

13. TechJury, 2025: 33 Landing Page Statistics Every Marketer Should Know

14. Amra & Elma, 2025: Top Marketing Funnel Conversion Statistics