Report: Marketing Content Often Fails to Resonate with B2B Buyers

Although B2B marketers are focused on creating marketing collateral, such as white papers and ebooks, new research suggests that these forms of content are not the most trusted among B2B buyers.

Recently, TrustRadius published “The 2019 B2B Buying Disconnect” report to shed light on the disconnect between B2B marketers and vendor expectations. Statistics showed that most B2B marketers (about 80 percent) focus on marketing collateral – ebooks, white papers and webinars – to educate and engage their prospects.

However, on a scale of 1 to 4 (4 being the most trustworthy), B2B customers said that marketing collateral barely earned a 2.5 in terms of trust.

In terms of trustworthiness, B2B customers ranked their own prior experience with a product (more than 3.5) as the most trustworthy. However, product demos earned slightly more than 3.0, on average.

In regards to effectiveness on a scale of 1 to 4 (4 being the most effective), B2B marketers ranked product demos the highest, at slightly more than 3.5.

The Most Effective Tactics for B2B Marketers

Product demos may not be the only way that B2B marketers attempt to resonate with their target audience in the near future. Previous research shows that video marketing, for instance, is beginning to grow in prominence.

Spiceworks conducted a survey of more than 250 marketers to gauge which trends are on the rise in the B2B realm. Research indicated that the most mainstream trends are currently video marketing (68 percent), ABM strategy (64 percent) and on-demand content strategy (55 percent).

Influencer marketing (48 percent), purchase intent targeting (44 percent) and advertising on emerging social channels (44 percent) are becoming more common as well.