With the clarity and impact of marketing content playing such an impactful role in B2B industries, senior business technology decision makers are viewing this content more critically—and new research from business technology market insights firm Informa Tech uncovers the disparity between existing content marketing practices and these tech leaders’ preferences, offering marketers essential insights into how to elevate trust with this key audience.
The firm’s first Trust in Marketing Index, which reveals an overall score of 61 on a scale of 1 to 100, measures the state of the relationship between marketers and senior B2B technology buying decision-makers. The survey analyzes how trust is fostered through accuracy, clarity, expertise, personalization and timeliness.
Key findings include:
Quality is key
Although 85 percent of business technology decision makers believe that high-quality thought leadership B2B content improves their perception of a brand, 71 percent are often or sometimes disappointed in the value of B2B gated content
Spammers beware
Four in 10 (41 percent) respondents who were incorrectly targeted or spammed said they wouldn’t buy a product from the offending brand, and 24 percent said they weren’t sure they would do business with that brand in future
Senior appetite for content is high
The same proportion (41 percent) of combined C-level and executive-level B2B technology buyer respondents exchange their data for gated B2B insights an average of once a month or more
Tech budgets are increasing in 2024
Nearly 9 in 10 (88 percent) respondents declared their technology budgets will increase in the next 12 months
“The Index suggests there is more work to be done when it comes to maximizing the value of marketing content,” said Emma Moorman, Informa Tech’s marketing services product director, in a news release. “It’s really interesting to see how valuable content is to senior decision makers but how easily wrongly-timed, wrongly-targeted, or badly-executed content can undermine trust.”
“Trust is key to building long-term relationships, and we know from multiple studies that senior decision makers are more likely to make decisions based on trust and relationships than less senior roles in an organization,” said Moorman. “With tech buying budgets expected to go up next year, it is crucial to understand the factors that will build or break trust in 2024 to create a fertile ground for sales.”
Download the full report here.
The report was created from interviews with 150 senior executives, leaders and the C-suite across the business technology community in the US and UK. It included five baseline questions with assigned point values for each answer to create the Index score.
