B2B Content Marketing Research: Considerations For B2B Marketing Content

What Content Do Your B2B Prospects Want?

Research on the type, timing and delivery of B2B content your prospects want through the customer journey, continues to improve.  What does research tell us about content types that generates the best leads?

  • 7 Research Facts For B2B Content Marketing
  • 13 Prompts To Improve Your B2B Content Marketing

Improve your B2B marketing content with insights from these respected studies. Consider this series of thought provoking questions to hone your own approach to marketing content.

 A quick reminder to get us grounded:

The goal of your marketing content is: to answer prospects questions and help them choose the right solution for their particular situation.

For those with internal marketing metrics information use these three studies to benchmark your efforts.

The Content Marketing Institute together with MarketingProfs 2017 B2B Content Marketing Report  demonstrated the core marketing objectives of B2B marketing professional are in order:
  1. Lead Generation
  2. Brand Awareness
  3. Engagement
  4. Lead Nurturing

No great surprises in the list. I wonder though, should lead nurturing really be in fourth place.  My experience across clients suggests that there is more room for improvement in lead nurturing that the other  3.

Considerations For B2B Marketing Content

1.  91% of this year’s respondents are using B2B content marketing.  At the beginning of 2017, 70% of respondents expected to produce more B2B marketing content than during 2016.  Similarly 65% expect an increase in 2018.

  •  => Consider your mix of spend on content / collateral versus communication / dissemination?

2.  B2B marketers are reducing the variety of marketing content types (whitepapers, blogs, video, etc) they produce from 13 down to 8.

  • => Consider if you need to double down on a select few marketing content types?
  • => Is there a type of content your customer personas favour (or favor)?
  • => What type of marketing content is your organization good at producing?

3.  71% of B2B marketers consider how their content impacts the overall experience a prospect has with their organization.

  • => Consider what content your prospects needs through the customer journey from awareness to conversion?

4.  Content marketing strategy and quality creation are the top two factors contributing to content marketing success.  Both factors were cited by over 70% of the 800+ B2B marketers surveyed.   However, only 37% have a documented content marketing strategy which means there’s an opportunity for strategic advantage!

  • => Consider shifting your content marketing approach from tactical to strategic.
  • => Consider if a smaller volume of better marketing content may be a more successful.

5. Third party product testing/reviews/opinions top the list of content types that IT pros rely on.  With product demos and literature in second place, company generated content continues to play a strong role in answering prospects queries.

  • Consider: => What is the mix of in-house versus third party content available for your prospects?

6.  Your prospects are focused on their particular set of circumstances. 62% want additional information about the content they already have from you.  45% want industry specific info.

  • Consider: => Are your B2B customer persona industry specific?
  • Consider: => What additional content is appropriate for each customer personas?
  • Consider: => What questions does your existing marketing content not address?

7.  Follow-up calls by uninformed sales reps are considered “poisonous” to the sale (a little scary to say the least).

  • Consider: => What information is available to the sales person about this individual prospect?
  • Consider: => Does your CRM or marketing automation tool show which content your prospect has already received, opened and engaged with (e.g. downloaded)?

Source Of B2B Content Marketing Research

Ready to avail of assistance in developing a B2B content marketing plan?
Email -> jane at JEM9 dot com

About Jane Morgan

With 20+ years high-tech marketing & product development experience from Boston to Billund, Berlin to Bangalore, Jane has managed teams and tech products with millions of installs, and millions of revenue (annually). She's researched and developed market strategy for global markets, and established the blueprint for product management in many new teams. As an intrapreneur turned entrepreneur, she changed vowels in 2014 and founded JEM 9 Marketing Consultancy. Today she works with CEOs & business leaders to assist them in understanding and reaching customers. Speaker on market research, technology marketing and product management.