In B2B Marketing, Experience Matters

When it comes to developing marketing content for the B2B market, targeting by experience level matters. 

This is the conclusion of a survey of 700 global business executives by The Economist Group, which found that B2B prospects from Generation Next (up to 10 years business experience) have very different preferences and motivators than Business Veterans (more than 10 years business experience). In fact, when it comes to marketing content and channel preferences, there can be up to 35 percentage points difference.

Among the differences between the two?

	Generation Next	Business Veterans
Are turned off by content with feels like a sales pitch	46%	69%
Prefer content in the form of articles	69%	91%
Find research reports helpful	30%	65%
Find white papers helpful	12%	37%
Favor video content	21%	12%
Prefer other multimedia such as infographics	12%	24%
Spend at least four hours per week perusing business content	31%	57%

Source: The Economist Group

In other differences, 41% of business veterans think company reputation holds more weight than colleague recommendations (10%). Meanwhile, only 28% of Generation Nexters think company reputation holds more weight than colleague recommendations (27%).

People are people, whether they are in a business context or a home and family context.  When crafting your next B2B campaign, remember that targeting your content by experience demographic matters as much as market vertical, job position, or other traditional demographics.

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