Three Key Content Types That Add the Most Value to a Target Audience

As part of an ongoing information-gathering initiative, Solutions Review aims to keep its finger on the pulse of what moves the needle in the business software space. In an attempt to continue bringing our partners data-driven marketing products, we recently completed a survey of nearly 100 vendor demand-generation leaders to find out which types of content generate the most engagement from their audiences.

For the survey, we polled enterprise technology marketing leaders on LinkedIn via the platform’s polling feature over 1-week. The polls ran across Solutions Review’s various category-specific Showcase Pages. We received responses through Solutions Review, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Solutions Review, Data Management Solutions Review, Backup, Recovery & Storage Solutions Review, Identity and Access Management Solutions Review, Cybersecurity Solutions Review, and Enterprise Resource Planning Solutions Review. 98 respondents offered opinions on which content types generate the most value.

Vendor demand-generation and marketing leaders are currently working with Solutions Review as a way to accelerate the fulfillment of their mid-lower-level sales pipelines. As prospects finding Solutions Review respond to our content and highly-targeted calls-to-action, they self-identify themselves as being in-market and looking to speak with various solution providers in their field.

With these results in mind, here’s what we learned:

Best Practices and Blogs Drive the Most Engagement

When we asked marketing leaders which content types drive the most engagement from their audiences, 47 percent of the respondents selected best practices and blog articles. With nearly half of those polled choosing this option, we can see just how important it is to provide personalized value to a target audience. While best practice resources offer value by helping the reader answer key questions about their role, blog articles act as a great medium for building trust among community members. If your content is trustworthy and provides value, you can bet it will resonate with your audience.

Don’t Sleep on Whitepapers and Case Studies

28 percent of respondents selected whitepapers and case studies when polled, showing us that while they may not be as effective as best practice and blog articles at driving engagement, they remain a key content type to include in your overall content marketing strategy. Case studies are valuable because they offer a detailed examination of a particular use case within a real-world context. This means that case studies can be an important component of helping a business software buyer decide which tool is going to be best for their specific use case.

Whitepapers are helpful because they provide technical detail on a particular product or service, enabling readers to do a quick “deep-dive” on a solution. They can also be quite useful for running vendor comparisons during the initial phase of the buyer’s journey. However, since they offer little value beyond highlighting a specific company or software product, it can be difficult to get case studies into the hands (or email clients) of a prospective customer.

Online Events and Webinars Play a Critical Role

Pandemic-hastened digital transformation is here to stay, and so are virtual events. In a recent survey that helped us uncover key aspects of a successful virtual event, we learned that live Q&A is essential, consumers strongly prefer private webinars, and the ideal virtual event is one hour or less. And 22 percent of those polled in our most recent initiative report that online events and webinars drive the most engagement from their audiences.

With a growing library of nearly 8,000 unique pieces of content papering key intent-based SEO search results across various business software markets and hundreds of successful marketing programs run with leading providers, Solutions Review has quickly become an authoritative resource hub for those in the enterprise. Solutions Review plans to use the insights generated from our most recent polling to expand and enhance our capabilities in 2022 and beyond.

If you would like to learn more about Solutions Review’s lead generation programs, on-site advertising, and online events, contact us through this portal to see how we can drive demand for your solutions right away.