“B2B buyers want more interactive content to help them make their buying decisions, and companies such as Lenovo and Lattice Engines are leveraging formats such as assessments, quizzes and video to promote engagement throughout the buyer’s journey.”
2015 Content Preferences Survey report shows that 91% of buyers prefer visual and interactive content for relevant buyer experience, instead of traditional ones. It is considered to be a high level engagement format for buyers which offer better buying experience. Besides, it provides B2B marketers with deeper insights for future marketing initiatives.
“We’re doing a lot more dynamic, interactive content,” said Michael Ballard, Digital Marketing Center Manager for Lenovo, in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “It allows us to measure engagement, which makes the content production process much easier. We gain key customer insights from tools like assessments and quizzes.”
The increasing demand for interactive visual content, along with the valuable insight into prospects’ buying behavior, is contributing to the growth of content marketing within the B2B marketplace. A study from Gleanster Research shows that B2B firms in the U.S. spend more than $5 billion a year on content creation efforts through internal resources, agencies, technology and production processes.
This interactive content marketing strategy has been implemented by Lenovo and was put to test to engage inactive prospects back into their pipeline. This implementation resulted in boosting Lenovo’s prospect engagement by double and its email unsubscribe rate dropped 50%.
The report proves that, “adding interactive elements to popular content formats such as video can boost engagement and lead to greater insights about prospective buyers, experts noted. Several video software tools enable B2B organizations to score leads based on their engagement with video content, which can then supplement other data in CRM and marketing automation platforms.”
Recently observed marketing trends show that B2B marketers are adapting more in-depth assets that add value. Experts described a variety of tools available to B2B marketers to that can help organize their initiatives and maximize success, including:
- Content creation platforms, such as Uberflip and LookBookHQ;
- Affiliated content producers, such as Contently;
- Pipeline management tools, such as Intuit and Capterra; and
- Distribution and analytics, such as Kapost and Sharethrough.
However, the report states that there are multiple challenges to B2B marketers’ success with video and interactive content formats as it typically requires more resources to develop than traditional formats. Thus, creating compelling interactive content can be very time consuming. But the good part being, it provides B2B marketers with engagement data with the aim to enhance future content initiatives, increased personalization and relevant experiences.
