Video Tops List Of Preferred Content For Information-Hungry B2B Buyers

Channel marketers are generally aligning their go-to-market activities with the content preferences of B2B buyers. A comparison of two recent surveys indicates that a majority of brands are reaching out to prospects with rich online media, social messages, and cases studies and testimonials.

B2B buyers said they rely on more content than they did the year before to research and inform purchase decisions, indicating a growing preference for more visual, engaging formats. Indeed, the 2020 Content Preferences Study by Demand Gen Report (DGR), a sister-publication to Channel Marketer Report, determined that video topped the list of formats for buyer consumption, with webinars remaining another popular format B2B buyers are gravitating towards. This is the first time in the history of the survey that video topped the list of preferred assets.

Channel marketers clearly understand the lead-generating capabilities of rich media, especially webinars. According to the 2020 State of the Partner Ecosystem report by Crossbeam, a collaborative data platform provider, more than 80% of companies use webinars as a go-to-market tool. Webinars topped a list of activities that also included blog posts (77%), case studies/testimonials (72.4%) email campaigns (67.8%), whitepapers (42.5%) and direct mail (19.5%.)

The results of the DGR study indicate that channel marketers are choosing wisely which content to create and share. In addition to videos which were engaged by 65% of the survey’s respondents, white papers, blogs, webinars, case studies and research/survey reports were viewed by more than half of the buyers.

Webinars are especially engaging, the survey revealed. More than a third of the buyers indicated they are willing to spend 30 to 60 minutes on a webinar; 33% said they will spend between 20 to 30 minutes. More than half of the buyers said they are willing to register and share information about themselves to watch a webinar.

DGR surveyed 214 B2B executives during the months of February and March 2020 from a variety of industries and company sizes to gauge their changing behaviors around content engagement. More details about B2B buyer content preferences are available in the report.

Crossbeam’s 2020 State of the Partner Ecosystem report is based on information provided by 126 respondents in December 2019 and January 2020.