Every year, DemandGen Report releases the results of a survey looking at B2B buyers’ content preferences. What a gold mine! Real B2B buyers expressing their likes and dislikes when it comes to content. For a content marketer, this report is a breath of fresh air.
Producing content our buyers actually want is one of the most important (and most difficult) parts of a content marketing program. Taking findings like this and tweaking our production schedules, formats, and approaches can allow us to hit more home runs with our content more often.
So without further ado, here are our top 5 findings on making your content lovable and consumable for your B2B audience.
1. Make it Visual
Compared to last year, B2B buyers are sharing infographics with their peers much more often – a 15% increase in both categories. On top of that, 88% of respondents reported that compared to last year, they prefer “more interactive/visual content [they] can access on demand.”
The message here is clear – B2B buyers are looking for visual content that is easy to access and quick to digest.
How to do it? Investments in infographics, videos, and interactive content will start paying off in 2015 and beyond. Free tools like Canva can help you create more visually appealing content more easily, and check out our walkthrough on developing interactive assessments.
2. Optimize for Mobile
Mobile accessibility is one of the hottest topics in content marketing right now. According to DemandGen Report, almost 90% of buyers believed that content provided by B2B marketers needs to be more mobile friendly. That may be due to a second finding: Respondents who frequently use mobile phones to access content jumped from 43% in 2013 to 56% in 2014.
Our buyers are using mobile devices to access content more frequently than ever before – to capture their attention, our content must look great, be readable, and be sharable through mobile.
3. Use More Data & Offer Benchmarks
A whopping 99% of respondents expressed a preference for data-driven content from B2B vendors, and 97% want content with more benchmarking data. But developing this type of content can be time-consuming and costly – so producing original research in-house might be out of reach for some content teams.
There are a few ways to get around this: Repurpose research reports you’ve already produced (into assessments, calculators, blog posts, webinars and more) with an emphasis on the hard numbers and benchmark info. Or you could gather information from third party sources and compile them into net-new content. Your audience will appreciate having data from several sources pulled together in one convenient place!
4. Make it Interactive
Buyers are also much more interested in interactive and visual content this year than they were last year – the number of buyers that “strongly agree” with that sentiment increased from 34% in last year’s survey to 48% in 2014.
Obviously, here at SnapApp we’re not too surprised by this finding – we’re all about interactivity! Not sure how you could get started with interactive content? Take a dive into the mechanics of interactive content types.
5. Cut Out the Sales Messages
It might come as little surprise to content marketers that B2B buyers don’t want to hear our sales pitch – they want information that helps them. In fact, 97% of the respondents in DemandGen’s study agreed that marketers should “curb the sales messages” to improve their content, driving home the message that content should be about the buyer, not the company.
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Developing remarkable content for B2B buyers doesn’t have to be rocket science. Studies like this one from DemandGen give us a little window into what our audience is really looking for – and lets us really cater to them. We’re happy to see interactive, responsive content coming to the fore in 2015, and are looking forward to seeing where the next wave of content marketing takes us!
Ready to improve your B2B content in 2015? Set up a demo!
This post was originally published on the SnapApp blog.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 5 Ways to Make Your B2B Content More Appealing
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