Every few months someone on LinkedIn announces that content marketing is dead. Or that it’s the future. Or that it’s dead and the future, depending on what they’re selling that week.
Meanwhile, John Deere has been quietly doing it for over 130 years.
In 1895, John Deere started publishing a magazine called The Furrow. Not a catalog. Not a brochure. A magazine for farmers, full of practical advice on how to run a better farm: crops, soil, livestock, new techniques, stories about other farmers who’d figured something out. Tractors and plows? Barely in there.
Wait, it’s still going?
It is. The Furrow has outlived the horse-drawn plow, two world wars, the invention of TV, the internet and probably several of your company’s logo redesigns. It’s been published in a bunch of countries and languages, and at its peak it reportedly reached millions of readers. Today it’s online too, still doing the same job: helping farmers be better farmers.
Think about how wild that is. A company that sells very expensive equipment decided the best way to sell it was to… not talk about it. To become the most useful voice in its customers’ lives instead. And when those farmers needed a tractor, guess which company they already trusted?
Why it works
The Furrow gets the one thing most B2B blogs get wrong: it’s about the reader’s business, not the company’s.
Go look at most B2B company blogs. You’ll find “We’re excited to announce our new VP of Sales!” and “Meet us at Booth 412!” and “Our product now integrates with X!” That’s not content. That’s a press release wearing a fake mustache. Nobody bookmarks it. Nobody forwards it to a coworker. Nobody cares.
The Furrow works because a farmer reads it and comes away knowing something that helps them make more money or have a better season. That’s it. That’s the whole secret. Be useful, consistently, for a long time.
How to build your own Furrow
You don’t need a printing press. You need a little discipline. Here’s how to start:
- List the questions your customers ask before they buy. Your sales team hears them every day. Ask them. Every question is a blog post, an email or a video.
- Write about their world, not yours. If you sell accounting software to restaurants, write about food costs, staffing and slow Tuesdays. Mention your software when it genuinely helps, and not before.
- Feature your customers. The Furrow tells stories about real farmers. Your customers have stories too, and their peers want to hear them a lot more than they want to hear from you.
- Pick a schedule you can keep. Once a month, forever, beats three times a week for six weeks and then nothing. Trust is built by showing up.
- Measure trust, not just clicks. Are people replying? Forwarding? Mentioning it on sales calls? That’s the signal it’s working.
Content marketing isn’t a trend. It’s just being helpful in public, on purpose, and a tractor company figured that out before cars were a thing. What’s your excuse?
