POV

Your SMEs Are Your Creators. It’s Time to Treat Them That Way.

By: Marc Cooper, CM

A few weeks ago, System1 presented to our CMA B2B Council on creator effectiveness research they’d done in partnership with TikTok. It was one of those sessions that sticks with you, not because the findings were entirely surprising, but because the data finally gave language to something a lot of B2B marketers have been feeling without being able to prove. 

I wrote up the key takeaways in a piece for the CMA website shortly after. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth a look before diving into this one. You can find it here. 

The standout takeaways: over a two-year window, creator-led content delivers the highest total ROI of any media channel. Higher than TV. Higher than paid social. And two numbers from that research keep coming back to me. Sixty per cent of people watching social ads are not connecting the content to the brand behind it. And roughly half of all B2B ads leave viewers feeling nothing at all. Not annoyed. Not inspired. Nothing. 

We are producing more content than ever and most of it is forgettable. AI has made it easier than ever to produce more of everything, and audiences know it. They can feel the difference between content that comes from a real person with real expertise and something that was generated, polished, and published without a genuine point of view behind it. 

Your subject matter experts are sitting on a supply of credibility that most organizations are barely using. And that, honestly, is what frustrates me most about where B2B marketing is right now. 

Why SMEs Are the B2B Answer to Consumer Creators 

Consumer brands have a built-in advantage. There’s an established ecosystem of creators who know how to build audience attention and integrate brands naturally. The challenge, as the System1 research makes clear, is quality control and brand linkage. 

B2B brands face a different problem. The people with the most credibility in your category, analysts, practitioners, technical specialists, healthcare professionals, are not content creators. They’ve spent years building expertise, not audiences. That expertise is the asset. The content creation part is the gap you need to bridge. 

And here’s the thing: the trust is already there. A procurement lead who sees a recognized industry voice speaking directly to a challenge they deal with every day will pay attention in a way they simply won’t for a polished brand video. No production budget replicates that. And this is coming from a marketing agency owner. 

The Part That Actually Frustrates Me 

Here’s what I keep running into. Most organizations are perfectly comfortable getting an SME on a webinar or a panel once in a blue moon. Ask them to commit to a regular cadence of content, something that becomes part of the job, and suddenly it’s “going above and beyond.” Since when did helping the company you work for achieve its objectives become a favour? 

That framing is backwards, especially now. If your SMEs have expertise your buyers need, sharing it consistently is part of building the brand. It should be in the job description, not the ask-nicely category. 

The second problem is the one-off. A brand will invest in one piece of content featuring a credible voice, see decent results, and move on. Building trust takes time. One post doesn’t move the needle. A sustained presence from the same voice, with a consistent point of view, is what eventually shifts an audience from “I know that person” to “I trust that company.” That’s the whole game in B2B. 

Brief Them Like a Channel, Not a Favour 

If you want SME-led content to build your brand, it needs the same rigour you’d apply to any other channel. That means four things: 

• A clear messaging platform. The SME needs to know your positioning and what you’re trying to achieve before they produce anything. Not a script. A foundation. 

• Defined brand requirements. What are the non-negotiables? A verbal mention, a visual cue, a consistent way of framing the problem? Make it explicit. 

• Commitment over time. Consistency is what shifts the association from the person to the brand. One post won’t do it. 

• The right format for the platform. Dense thought leadership paragraphs are not the same as speaking directly to camera about a real challenge. Know the difference and help your SME show up accordingly. 

In an Age of AI Content, Credibility Is the Differentiator 

The brands winning attention right now are the ones putting real people with real expertise in front of their audiences. Consistently. With a brand strategy behind it. 

Your SMEs have something no AI tool can generate: a track record, a perspective, and a professional reputation your audience already respects. The gap isn’t credibility. It’s activation, and more often than not, it’s the willingness to make content creation part of the job rather than something you negotiate one post at a time. 

Brief them properly. Show up consistently. Make the brand part of the content from the start, not an afterthought. Do that, and you won’t just cut through the noise. You’ll own a piece of your audience’s attention that’s genuinely hard for a competitor to replicate. 

If you want help thinking it through, my team and I can work with you on integrating SME-led content into your broader marketing mix. Happy to have the conversation. 

This post extends The Brand-Building Case for Creators in B2B on the CMA website. Research presented by Josh Fruttiger & Alex Carantza from System1 at the CMA B2B Council, and Andrew Tindall’s article in The Drum.