At the end of the day, no marketing effort in the world can make up for the need to provide good content that is meaningful and relevant to the users you are trying to attract to your brand. This sentiment is just as true for business-to-business marketers as it is for B2C promoters.

Recently, DemandGen Report conducted a survey with business executives tasked with finding and purchasing content solutions to determine their specific needs and preferences in an effort to give B2B organizations more detailed information to improve their content marketing strategies.

The survey, titled The Content Preferences Survey, found that 75 percent of respondents would like solution providers to create content that will curb sales messaging, meaning that these marketers should re-imagine their content strategies so that prospective buyers have a better understanding of their solution’s value. Over half of them agreed that these messages should focus on the actual objective-based value of a solution and less on product specs.

Although email is the most popular way to share content, 53 percent of executives also use LinkedIn for sharing purposes. The vast majority (88 percent) also said that they prefer white papers as the top choice for content-based research, with visual formats such as video (44 percent), infographics (38 percent) and webinars (72 percent) emerging as accepted alternatives.

And, of course, there’s the mobile trend. Forty percent of respondents said they now access content on mobile phones, with 23 percent using a tablet more frequently. This should signify to B2B marketers the importance of also providing mobile-optimized content whenever they can.

“Solution providers, now more than ever, need to demonstrate a clear understanding of their prospects’ challenges, market trends and objectives,” says DemandGen Report managing editor Amanda Batista.