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Impertion Ltd., a digital publisher of business technology communities is today announcing the results of research into the marketing content that is most valued by business IT buyers during the middle (Evaluation) phase of the B2B Buyers Journey. Impertion polled a segment of their 30,000+ community members, receiving more than 300 complete responses from senior business technology buyers worldwide.Business technology buyers are struggling to cope with the “valley of death” in sales pipeline management that is the middle-of-funnel evaluation phase. While creating awareness and converting qualified leads to sales is somewhat under control, many technology marketers are frustrated with the high rates of disengagement by leads during this nurture stage. This survey sheds more light on what business technology buyers want, and how marketers can plug the enormous leaks in their sales funnels through more effective B2B content marketing.
The results challenge current convictions that content such as white papers, case studies and independent research are among the most popular sources of information for IT business buyers during the evaluation phase. All three actually came in at the bottom of the list in this poll.
The results will be of interest to business technology marketers, especially those involved in IT sales lead generation and nurturing using digital, social and content marketing tactics.
When asked to choose “Which educational content do you prefer to receive from technology vendors?” the results were as follows, in order of preference:
1. Free trials
2. Demos
3. Videos
4. Calculators (ROI, TCO, etc)
5. How-to Guides
6. E-Books
7. Case Studies
8. Independent Research
9. White Papers
The question was deliberately aimed at understanding the “Middle-of-the-funnel” i.e. the “Evaluation” phase in the Buyers Journey. The results show a clear preference for practical tools to help inform and evaluate.
When asked for general feedback on what other content would be useful for business technology buyers to shortlist vendors, responses included:
• Comparison sheets versus other vendors and solutions
• Cloud environments for testing
• Proof of concept workshops on real use cases, and VM workshops
• Customer results statements
• Implementation history. What was easy, what was difficult, how did we overcome the difficulties?
• Free and independent assessments
• Webinars
• Online buyer reviews
Further responses related to the length of time a company evaluated vendors before contacting them, their preferences for sourcing educational content, as well as suggestions for other content that would also be deemed "highly valuable" by business technology buyers. This information is highly relevant for IT demand generation and technology channel marketing professionals.
Readers can access the full research report for free here: http://bit.ly/2uI7FYs
Contact Info:
Name: Michael Kelly
Email: Send Email
Organization: Impertion Ltd
Website: http://www.impertion.com/
Release ID: 216071
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