B2B Content Trends: On-Demand Webinars More Popular than Live Ones

COVID-19 has positively influenced the consumption of B2B Content across all managerial levels. Today, organizations are curating tons of content for their customers, hoping to cut through the noise in the industry that is already overflowing with data and information. 2020’s events dramatically influenced the way B2B content was produced, consumed and analyzed with a stunning effect, showcased by Netline in its latest research.

How B2B Content Changed During the Pandemic

According to Netline’s latest survey, 68% of all B2B content consumption occurred at or above the Manager level — a 2% YOY increase. One of the most fascinating aspects of B2B content consumption is observed in the way registration for on-demand webinar trounced registrations for the live ones. Webinar uploads increased 103%, with On-Demand Webinars generating 36% more registrations than Live Webinars.

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NetLine Corporation released its annual 2021 State of B2B Content Consumption and Demand Report for Marketers — an exhaustive review of first-party content consumption and demand data from the previous year. The report extracts and examines key insights from the content consumption behaviors of millions of B2B buyers, equipping Marketers with data-backed research required to guide their centric content demand generation marketing programs.

The 2021 State of B2B Content Consumption and Demand Report for Marketers focuses on the consumption behaviors from 2020, studying a year that introduced us to COVID-19. The virus’ effects are addressed throughout the report, as it weighed heavily on B2B activity. Fueled by a dearth of in-person events and virtual meetings, the effects of the pandemic drove an overall spike in consumption — especially with webinars — resulting in a 22% YOY increase in content registrations. The greatest surge came between Feb. 1-Sept. 30, 2020, where consumption equaled 83% of 2019’s total registration volume.

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Some of the key highlights include:

• Senior VPs in the organization were the fastest to consume B2B Content, while supervisors were the slowest. According to Netline, SVPs improved their ‘consumption time by 26% from 27.6 hours to 20.4.’
• IT, HR and Engineering among the top job areas that consume B2B content.
• C-level executives within Finance, Service and Education domains are the most active audience groups.

Influence B2B Audiences with Security, Predictability, and Simplicity

In analyzing these more than 4.3 million registrations, NetLine uncovered three core elements required to successfully market to B2B audiences in 2021 and beyond: Security, Predictability, and Simplicity. While the connective tissue between these three elements is trust (the backbone of every business relationship), COVID underscored how crucial these principles are. The company believes that applying these elements will help B2B organizations to better protect their ecosystems, anticipate future threats and opportunities and, ultimately, attract its target buyers.

While NetLine reported a significant lift in total demand, it once again observed that total time to consume requested content ballooned, increasing another one hour and 12 minutes. Despite the additional time it took for B2B professionals to initially consume their requested content, the time it took between additional content requests accelerated by 15%, marking the first year this stat took less time than the previous year.

CEO and Chairman of NetLine Corporation Robert Alvin marked the findings of the company’s 2021 report as a pivotal moment in B2B Content Marketing. “With the year we’ve just come through, and with millions of businesses looking to successfully navigate through so much trepidation and ambiguity, Content Marketing cemented itself an essential pillar in B2B organizations across the globe,” Alvin said. “NetLine’s strength exists in its singular ability to identify what audiences truly want. This report, combined with our open lead gen marketplace and our suite of tools like Audience Explorer and Buyer-Level Intent Discovery, highlights how much we know about what target buyers need and want. At a time when certainty isn’t a given, we offer that to B2B Marketers.”

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As the root of the largest content-centric lead generation platform, NetLine is perfectly positioned to present the Who, What, When, Where, and Why of B2B content engagement thanks to its first-party data obtained from B2B decision-makers actively consuming content related to their purchase decisions.

[To share your insights with us on Content analytics and business intelligence, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com]