Based on a survey designed to better understand the preferences of today’s B2B buyer, the report had some important insight for marketers who are developing content marketing strategies:
Show Me the Money - 75%
of buyers would like marketers to “curb the sales messaging and “focus less on
products and more on value”. Today’s more skeptical and frugal buyers want marketers
to reevaluate their content strategies, focusing more on the value proposition
and how the solutions can help buyers achieve business objectives and overcome
challenges.
Short Attention Span
Theater - 48% of buyers would like content to be more concise, taking less
time to consume. The ideal length for
consuming content: · Webinars – between 30 to 60 minutes,
· White Papers and Case Studies – between 10 and 20 minutes,
· Videos, Interactive Presentations / Tools, Blog Posts –between 5 to 10 minutes,
· Infographics and Podcasts – less than 5 minutes.
Only a Matter of Trust - 60% of buyers are placing a higher emphasis on the trustworthiness of the content, particularly as to the source that created the content. To gain more trust, 52% trust content more when it includes peer reviews and user generated feedback, while 33% indicated that they trust content more when it is created by 3rd parties / analysts.
It’s Personal - Content
personalization is important, with buyers wanting to see vendor content more personalized
by business role (46%), by industry (42%) by vertical (33%) and by all of these
in combination (31%). Location as a content personalization preference lagged
dramatically, with only 3% having location based preferences.
The Bottom Line
Buyers remain more in-control, overloaded, skeptical and
frugal than ever before as Frugalnomics remains in full effect. The DemandGen
Report highlights that it will take a more refined content marketing approach
to win – focusing more on value, relevance, trust and personalization.
For more information on how Alinean tools can help reshape
your content marketing to meet this challenge, click here to learn more.
Source: DemandGen Report - B2B Content Preferences SurveyMay 2012
1 comment:
Great post Tom, as always concise and to the point.
We're seeing this too especially the 'focus less on products (services) and more on value'. Products only have meaning for customers when they're actually using them, in context, and relevant to the problem they're trying to solve. Understanding context from the customers perspective is the first step to understanding what they really value.
Cindy Barnes, author of Creating & Delivering your Value Proposition
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