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Mar
10
Give B2B Prospects The Content They Want
March 10, 2007 | Anita Campbell
Content-based strategies are extremely important for reaching B2B prospects and marketing to existing customers. But do you know what B2B prospects really want? Or are you guessing?
I suspect most us do a lot of guessing. And a recent study suggests we may be guessing wrong.
Marketingsherpa and Knowledgestorm conducted a study that compared content preferences among B2B marketers and business end users. It turns out that marketers are making assumptions about what their B2B prospects and customers want to read in the form of white papers, blogs, newsletters, reports and other content.
This chart shows some areas where the marketers and the end users differ in what they prefer to read:
As the Marketing Sherpa article notes:
While many respondents from both camps said case studies on how a product improved a company’s business process are the most interesting type of content, marketers picked such case studies by a 2-to-1 margin over the next most popular choice.
Contrast this with end-users: nearly as many said case studies, industry research, how-to guides and top-10 lists for improving their business were the most interesting type of content. This means that marketers might be seriously underestimating the value of research data, how-tos and other business advice as part of their content mix.
The survey was conducted in February 2007, based on 3200+ responses from end users and 700+ responses from marketers.
The upshot: do provide general information, such as research data, how-tos and advice. Don’t focus too heavily on company-specific information about how to use your product.
I would add that the more it seems like the content is tied to a sales pitch, the less the business person is inclined to read it. Content that describes how a business used a product to improve processes may have a tendency to come off too much like a sales pitch.
