We’re still abuzz
about the release of our 2009 Eccolo Media B2B Technology Collateral Survey
Report last week. We’ve gotten a great response, and the report is filled with
so much interesting information that we wanted to talk about a few specific
facts and figures in-depth. Where should we begin?
Before we get into the nitty gritty numbers, we think it’s
important to point out a major difference between this year’s survey and the
report we released in 2008. Last year, we
asked people whether they actually made technology purchasing decisions or
merely influenced them. For our 2009 report, we dove a little deeper into this
distinction and explored the important differences between the two roles.
Not surprisingly, we found that
decision makers are higher up in their organizations than influencers and
usually work as C-level executives, vice presidents, or directors. They are
also older and have more years of experience in the technology industry. But we
came up with some other, more surprising, differences too. For example,
decision makers consume more of each type of collateral that we looked at—white
papers, case studies, data sheets/brochures, podcasts, and video—and find it
more influential than influencers do.
But you can’t count out influencers
altogether. They are big sharers and tend to pass on collateral more often and
to more people in their companies than decision makers. If you look at white
papers, for example, 90 percent of
influencers share that content with other people in their organization
while only 81 percent of decision makers do.
The bottom line? Purchasing decision makers should be your
number one target, but developing content that can be passed from influencers
to decision makers easily can help your collateral get into the right hands.
You can
discover even more interesting differences between decision makers and
influencers in the full survey. Download a free copy of the
report here.
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