Three-quarters of B2B professionals consume content for two hours or more every week and articles, whitepapers and blog posts are among the most popular formats, new research published this week by BrightTALK shows.
The report analysed the reading and viewing habits of eight million B2B professionals occupying roles in IT, HR, sales, marketing and finance, with the majority holding senior managerial positions. The findings again underscore the critical role informative and engaging content plays in both business-related decision making and personal professional growth.
Of those analysed, 77% are spending multiple hours of their working week taking in online content. The go-to format is webinars, but industry articles, whitepapers and blog posts also featured heavily in the most preferred content types.
B2B marketers looking to provide educational content should also leverage the power of video as 84% of professionals said they regularly interact with visual clips to keep abreast of industry developments. Almost half also watch videos to help them solve specific issues and problems related to their respective enterprises.
“Year after year, we have seen that providing engaging, informative, and helpful content is B2B marketers’ most powerful weapon in building authentic connections with their prospects”, BrightTALK CEO, Paul Heald said.
BrightTALK revealed that its demand marketing platform has seen a 20% spike in content sharing during the last 12 months and noted that there has been positive growth in a plethora of engagement metrics in 2019. The latest research is part of the company’s annual benchmarks report for the B2B industry.