From belief to evidence: What mining buyers actually want from vendor content

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” Paul Gauguin didn’t say it gently. He walked away from a successful career as a stockbroker, sailed to Tahiti, and rebuilt everything from first principles — because he refused to keep producing work shaped by other people’s assumptions about what art should be. It’s a radical idea, and one that kept surfacing in a series of recent workshops and client conversations we have had about vendor content strategy.

When asked why their content was built the way it was, vendor after vendor responded in a similar way; they were working off belief. Belief about what their buyers cared about, belief about what formats worked, belief about what questions were being asked. Not research. Not data. But a shared cocktail of anecdotally driven belief. 

It was one of those quietly arresting moments where a room full of experienced professionals pauses, looks around, and realises collectively that the foundation they’ve been building on hasn’t been tested. In Gauguin’s terms, they were copying what had always been done and calling it a strategy.

From the Harbour Content Conundrum research, buyers and influencers from across the top 150 global miners made clear the gap that exists with the vendor-generated content they access, both digital and at live events.

1. They’re reading — but not what you’re sending

More than two thirds of mining professionals register to download 5+ vendor content assets every six months. The appetite is real and consistent. The quality and relevance of what vendors are serving up, however, is another story entirely. The most content hungry function? That was ‘Operations’ with 44% consuming 10-20 vendor content assets over a six-month period.

2. Sales-heavy content is actively eroding your brand

Vendors dramatically over-index on promotional content. The worst offenders are video and webinars, hosting content mining buyers consistently describe as evasive, sales-driven, and thin on real evidence. That is not to say that eliminating these formats should be considered, but poor practice has become the norm, and the brand damage is real.

Trust is hard-won in this industry and easily lost. Once your content is tuned out, getting back in is an uphill battle.

3. Proof and long-term data are the real currency

Some 70% of buyers identify long-term performance data (three years or more) as the single biggest gap in vendor content. Buyers aren’t looking for a polished brochure or glorified testimonial. They want transparency, specificity, and a genuine willingness to share risk. That’s what builds credibility at the table. A case study can no longer be a static content piece, it needs to build a story and use longevity and data to back this up.

4. Generic content is a fast track to irrelevance

With AI now generating content at scale for every vendor in the market, undifferentiated material is flooding every channel. Mining professionals expect content that speaks directly to their role, their operational context, and their specific challenges. Personalisation and genuine insight are no longer a differentiator, they’re the baseline.

5. The buying decision is rarely made by one person

For some time, vendors have needed to communicate beyond who they identify as the key individual within a target company, but marketers have been slow to respond. The data is now there to explain what the buying ecosystem looks like; vendors should take advantage. Content must be structured to influence multiple stakeholders across operations, engineering, finance, and leadership, often simultaneously and with different messages.

The gap between what vendors believe and what buyers need isn’t a creative problem; it’s a strategic one.