(This month’s Analysis Spherical-Up discusses the newest B2B content material consumption report from NetLine Company. NetLine publishes this report yearly, and it persistently gives a wealth of real-world insights relating to how enterprise professionals truly eat content material.)

Supply:  NetLine Company

Nearly all B2B firms now use content material advertising in some type. However sarcastically, the recognition of content material advertising has made profitable content material advertising harder to attain. As firms produce increasingly content material, the overall quantity of content material obtainable to potential patrons will increase exponentially. And, so does competitors for purchaser consideration and mindshare.

Understanding how enterprise professionals eat content material is crucial to success in these circumstances. The 2023 State of B2B Content material Consumption & Demand Report by NetLine Company gives many invaluable insights on this important problem.

NetLine operates a content material syndication platform, and this report is predicated on information about greater than 5.4 million content material registrations that occurred on its platform in 2022. The NetLine analysis is especially invaluable for 2 causes.

First, it captures the real-world content material consumption behaviors of enterprise professionals. The info used for the report was not derived from a survey or interviews, however from precise engagements with B2B content material.

And second, the report is predicated on first-party information. The enterprise professionals who use the NetLine platform voluntarily share details about themselves and the organizations they work for in change for entry to the content material assets obtainable on the platform.

NetLine tracks content material consumption for greater than 400 job features, greater than 300 industries and sub-industries, and group measurement. Subsequently, the NetLine report incorporates a wealth of detailed details about content material consumption behaviors, and I encourage you to assessment the complete 59-page report. 

Listed here are a number of of the report’s highlights.

The Persevering with Progress of Content material Consumption

As measured by registrations on the NetLine platform, general B2B content material consumption in 2022 elevated by 18.8% in comparison with 2021 ranges. NetLine discovered that the overall demand for B2B content material has grown by 54.8% for the reason that 2019 version of the analysis.

Content material consumption by C-level executives can be nonetheless on the rise, rising by 7.3% in 2022 in comparison with 2021. Nonetheless, there have been vital variations in executives’ content material consumption behaviors relying on the scale of their group.

In 2022, C-level executives at firms with 100 or fewer staff requested 96% extra content material than in 2021, whereas executives at firms with 1,000 or extra staff requested 56.7% much less content material than in 2021.  

Most Common Content material Codecs

The ten most requested content material codecs on NetLine’s platform in 2022 had been:

1. eBooks
2. Guides
3. Cheat Sheets
4. Analysis Experiences
5. White Papers
6. Suggestions & Methods Guides
7. Articles
8. Guide Summaries
9. Reside Webinars
10. On-Demand Webinars

Collectively, these ten content material codecs accounted for 85% of all content material registrations on the NetLine platform final 12 months, and eBooks alone accounted for 33.6% of whole registrations.

The Consumption Hole Shrinks

Some of the helpful insights supplied by the NetLine report pertains to the consumption hole, which NetLine defines because the time between the second content material is requested and the second it is opened for consumption. This information level is essential as a result of it constitutes a information for timing follow-up contacts with potential patrons. In any case, it makes little sense to contact a possible purchaser a couple of content material useful resource earlier than she or he has truly reviewed the content material.

In 2022, the typical consumption hole throughout all job classes was 28.7 hours, down from 33.3 hours in 2021. It is value noting that the 2021 consumption hole was the most important ever recorded by Netline. In 2020, it was 29.7 hours, and it was 28.5 hours in 2019. So, the decline in 2022 could also be extra of a return to regular than the start of a long-term pattern of shrinking consumption gaps.

Content material Consumption and Purchaser Intent

Entrepreneurs have been advised for years that it is essential to have content material tailor-made for every stage of the shopping for course of. This recommendation was and is predicated on the common sense notion that patrons’ pursuits and knowledge wants change as they transfer by means of the shopping for course of.

The NetLine analysis reveals that the content material format a possible purchaser chooses to eat is usually a good indicator of the place she or he is within the shopping for course of. This level can simply be seen by evaluating the consumption behaviors for eBooks with white papers and webinars (stay and on-demand).

As famous earlier, eBooks accounted for simply over 33% of all content material registrations on NetLine’s platform in 2022. In the meantime, white papers and webinars accounted for, respectively, solely 7.5% and three.5% of all content material registrations.

Clearly, eBooks had been much more standard with enterprise professionals than white papers or webinars. Nonetheless, general recognition would not inform the entire story of the significance or effectiveness of a selected content material format.

NetLine’s evaluation revealed that white papers and webinars had been extra seemingly than eBooks to be related to a near-term shopping for choice. For instance, Netline discovered that enterprise professionals registering for stay webinars had been 22% extra prone to make a purchase order choice inside three months than professionals registering for different content material codecs.

Past functioning as a great indicator of near-term buy intent, white papers, webinars, and different “weighty” content material codecs play an essential function within the later phases of the shopping for course of. As potential patrons transfer additional into their shopping for course of, they have an inclination to need extra detailed info, and information-rich content material assets akin to white papers and webinars fill this want.