Recent research by eMarketer estimated that adult Americans spend more than an hour each day watching videos on their digital devices, while another study by Omnicore stated that there are 1.57 billion active users each month on YouTube and that they watch over 5 billion videos each day.
While video content is extremely popular, many B2B marketers assume that video is the way forward and written content is no longer important and effective. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Grist recently conducted a survey among business executives to ascertain the importance of written content for B2B marketing. The survey found that B2B buyers still favour written content compared to any other format. In fact, the most popular content in B2B marketing are short articles, blog posts and feature articles.
Nearly 28% of the executives who participated in this study stated that they prefer long-form written content such as research reports, white papers and eBooks. Just 26% of survey respondents stated a preference for video content.
According to psychologists, the human brain has the ability to process visual content 60,000 times faster than text-based content. Therefore, it does not require a lot of cognitive effort to watch videos, while reading needs more cognitive energy. When people read, the brain has to work to create thoughts related to the content. The human brain is wired to steer clear of cognitive strain, and this is why people look for information that can be processed easily by the brain.
It has been observed that goal-oriented buyers favour written content. In other words, buyers who are seeking an active buying process will prefer written content, while buyers who are not in the active buying process will opt to watch videos.
In B2B marketing, both video and written content are essential. B2B marketers should use video content to capture the attention of prospects and use written content to meet the requirements of focused buyers.
