CXOs prefer to consume premium-grade, feature-length articles and reports to gain business insights and inform critical decisions, according to a new study about the value of strategic content from Deloitte and Forbes Insights.
Thought leadership pieces are more important than ever for B2B enterprises as they look to develop a content strategy that showcases their authority and expertise within a particular sector. They are also vital for CXOs, as engaging written resources enable them to learn, lead and prosper in today’s competitive business landscape.
The study polled the opinions of almost 300 CXOs to get a better picture of how decision makers are gaining business insights, and when asked about their most preferred format, long-form articles and reports (22 per cent) topped the list ahead of business books (21 per cent), interactive data visualisation tools (18 per cent) and live presentations (13 per cent).
Meanwhile, videos (four per cent) and webinars (six per cent) are considered the least useful for CXOs, perhaps due to the difficulty with extracting concise information from visual focused resources. “Learning takes a lot of time, which is why CXOs need business insights that are comprehensive, relevant and clear,” the author of the report noted.
Executives also show a preference for data-driven content, but the majority remain sceptical about the value of big data. Almost three-quarters of respondents said that traditional surveys are of value, but 62 per cent are unsure whether they offer any immediate worth to analytics efforts.
B2B marketers are now collecting a colossal amount of data to inform content marketing decisions, and a separate B2B Lead Generation Survey from Chief Marketer shows that they are working harder to maintain the accuracy of this information, though quality and standardisation, data residing in silos and incomplete data are among the top challenges that they face.
Despite the growing importance of data, just 25 per cent of marketers said that they conduct data hygiene practices every quarter, with around the same number revealing that they only standardise their data once each year, which could potentially harm decisions about content. A further four in ten respondents said that they don’t check for duplication information via data overlay procedures.
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