News. Information. Data. Opinion. Advice. In one word: Content. It’s what buyers of technology products crave — and what B2B marketers work hard to provide for them. With the explosion of the Web and emerging media, as noted in the KnowledgeStorm Emerging Media Series studies published in the Fall of 2006, the volume and variety of marketing materials has increased dramatically. Traditional offline information, such as corporate and product overviews, analyst reports, white papers and case studies, now live in the online world. But it’s a world with new inhabitants: interactive blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds and podcasts, which provide new, efficient
ways for B2B technology marketers to provide content that is fresh and compelling to their audiences.

The objective of the research-based Connecting Through Content Series, jointly produced by KnowledgeStorm and MarketingSherpa, is to explore the impact of content development and distribution on audience engagement and message delivery. More specifically, this first study is
designed to closely examine how content development, formatting and targeting affect technology buyers’ perceptions of value and create opportunities for marketers to more effectively reach their potential buyers. The study was conducted in February 2007 by KnowledgeStorm, the Internet’s top-ranked search resource for technology solutions and information, and MarketingSherpa, a research firm publishing real-life Case Studies, practical know-how and benchmark data on what works — and doesn’t work — in marketing today.

Nearly 4,000 B2B marketers and technology and business professionals responded to the survey used in this study. The marketer and technology buyer surveys were conducted concurrently.