What’s Driving the Surge in B2B Content Consumption?

B2B Content Consumption Continues to Grow

It’s a veritable buffet of content out there, so it’s no surprise that the rate at which we consume content continues to increase. With tools making it easier to create content, and tools making it easier to match content to the right audience at the right time, we’re pulling our chair up to the table to feast on this boom – here’s how you can make the most of it, too.

B2B Content Consumption is Up 55% Since 2019

We see content consumption increasing year-over-year, in part due to cross-device use and accessible content formats. From on the go to at the gym, consumers and your B2B audience are captive in more ways, for longer than before. In fact, the leading lift in long-form content consumption is in ebooks. How might you leverage these opportunities?

B2B Content Consumption & Purchase Decisions

At PathFactory, we see that content fuels every stage of the B2B buyer journey. In fact, as a buyer moves down the sales funnel, their consumption increases, only feeding their appetite to learn more. From our learning, we see that content consumption on specific formats indicates a higher purchase intent.

But Wait, There’s More

When you’re thinking of migrating buyers down the sales funnel, or understanding where anonymous buyers may be within your sales funnel, we can make some assumptions based on historical data.

Short-term content: is consumed early in the funnel and can be considered your awareness play.

Mid-length content: we would consider this your nurture phase.

Long-form content: whitepapers and ebooks signal a more serious intent to buy.

What’s Hot In B2B Content?

1) Thought leadership and industry trends: Have an expert on your team create content in their field and your buyers will be eating out of their hand.

2) Solutions to common pain points: Give your audience a heaping serving of ways to make their lives easier as a trusted source of information.

3) Product and service comparisons: Not only will this boost your SEO, you’ll be able to compare and contrast what’s in market to position yourself strongly against the competition.

For even more trends in B2B content, down to preferred format types, check out PathFactory’s 2024 Benchmark Report.

The Consumption Gap

Believe it or not, even with the bounty of content available, there are still knowledge and information gaps stranding your buyers out of learning more. In fact, many B2B buyers cite that they can’t find the content that meets their needs.

Instead of sending your buyers fleeing to find solutions to digest on their own, do an industry-wide audit, create content to fill those gaps, and find a Content Intelligent expert such as PathFactory to serve it up on a silver platter.

Small Business Cravings

Small business makes up a majority of all industries. And good news: their interest in B2B content is growing. Creating content that fits their needs will help connect them to your sales funnel and even fill The Consumption Gap within that low hanging fruit category.

Understanding Your B2B Customer

Get started by mapping each stage of the buyers’ journey to the content you have available. Is there any gap? Anything else that a buyer may need at each stage? Interview your buyers or like-minded consumers and see how they consume content and react to yours.

Formats Are The Spice of Life

Although consumption is on the rise, and we already reviewed the types of formats linked to each buying stage, creating a mix of short, medium and long-format content is essential to showing up. Go beyond the blog and create guides, ebooks and whitepapers to appeal to different audiences consuming on different devices. For example, create long format pieces then cut them down into different lengths and formats to extend your effort and maximize your bites.

Optimize Content For Search Visibility

Being searchable will always be the chef’s kiss. Use as many relevant keywords for SEO as possible and promote new content through social media to extend your reach. With backlinking, you’ll also boost domain authority and show up in good form for those bots and readers.

-Share content through email, social and paid ads

-Make content discoverable on your site through calls to action

-Syndicate content to relevant external platforms

Analyze Performance and Iterate

Don’t forget to track your content engagement, leads and sales so you have a full menu of options and levers to pull to pivot, invest or optimize. From there, you can identify high-performing topics and formats, then further invest in what’s winning. Indulge in good content practices and have your fill of engaged audiences throughout the journey.