The 2017 Content Summit is a 5-day virtual conference, dedicated to sharing the most effective B2B content marketing strategies and lead generation tactics. Each session from this summit was delivered by B2B marketing executives and thought leaders. More than 50 video sessions were showcased covering a collection of topics geared towards helping marketers take their content to the next level to drive lead generation success.

David Fortino, SVP of Audience and Product at NetLine Corporation, presented at the 2017 Content Summit, The Buying Committee Has Changed: What 8.5 Million Content Downloads Tells Us. The session included an insightful and entertaining discussion with host, James Carbary of Sweet Fish Media. Fortino and Carbary examined the latest B2B research report published by NetLine, 2017 State of IT Content Consumption and Demand Report for IT Marketers, and the pivot marketers need to be making this year to be successful with their content and lead generation strategies. You can watch the full session here.

[Excerpt] The Buying Committee Has Changed: What 8.5 Million Content Downloads Tells Us:

Carbary: We had you on the B2B Growth Podcast awhile back and I’m really excited to dive into another topic here on Content Summit. We’re going to be talking about how the buying committee has changed and what 8.5 million content downloads have told you. [You] recently wrote an article in Ad Age about this idea. I want to start there, but actually before I get into that can you explain, just to set some context for what we’re going to be talking about, explain to the folks attending what is NetLine, what are you guys all about over there?

Fortino: Sure, so NetLine is the largest B2B content syndication and lead generation platform on the web. At the core and in its most simplistic form, we help marketers succeed for their lead generation strategies through content syndication. It’s all about getting gated content in front of not only contextually relevant and correct audience types but most importantly delivering filtered leads that are based upon users actually engaging with that content. It’s not about driving traffic, not about driving exposure; it’s about ultimately getting content into the hands of qualified professionals and then having those professionals net out through a filter process of meeting our clients’ needs.

Carbary: I love it. So David, now that [listeners] understand what NetLine is, I think it will make a little bit more sense why this is the topic that we’re going to be honing in on with you. So I want to start by talking about the Ad Age article that you wrote. I read it this morning and thought that it was very fun – but the data that you covered in it was really interesting. Can you talk to us about that article a little?

Fortino: Sure, so we’ve got to this process and as you said back on the B2B Growth Show, I started [sharing] some thoughts as we were going through this research process internally. Part of the process was looking at all of the leads that we process for our clients, and over the past year there have been about eight and half million leads. Looking at those leads concretely but then also doing deep dives into specific industry functions and job level occupations, and the matrix between those data points and seeing if there are some content consumption behavioral trends or perhaps insights that are specifically aligned to certain and/or unique influencing type of audiences.

And so, the one thing that we constantly hear from our clients is that they’re always looking to try to reach the C-suite; and so this is something that is a pretty evergreen concern of our customers. Yet, it’s realistically a very difficult one for any organization to achieve and most importantly achieve at scale. So, the one interesting thing that stuck out right away as we were diving into the data was the vast majority of content is not consumed by C-level professionals at all. I think it was something that we knew, but it was very anecdotal and off the cuff and it wasn’t research driven in terms of our supporting of the hunch…and so it turned out to be that less than five percent of C-level professionals accounted for our total content consumption behavior. More likely are managers, directors, and individual contributors accounting for at least fifty percent of content being consumed…And then it’s everyone else, and people in between.

But then we started comparing those datasets across what types of content are being consumed by C-level professionals and what types of content are not. And so, there were all of these insights that [grew] a deeper interest internally at NetLine, and within myself. But then beyond that too, it started leading myself into a snarky mindset, which that Ad Age article was a byproduct of, of trying to kind of come to grips with the fact that reaching exclusively into the C-suite is near impossible and if you’re a marketer and you’re trying to do that, I offer severe caution that this perhaps isn’t the most sound strategy for you to explore.

So the one key takeaway there was that, ok so that’s […] the bad news. What’s the good the good news?  The good news is that there are literally [dozens] of influencers surrounding that key decision-maker. And what is it that you can do as a marketer to try to reach those folks and influence the ultimate decision-maker in the process. So I think that’s what we’re going to dive in a little bit more deep today, and talk about some high-level points.

To learn more about how to pivot your lead generation strategy, watch the full session here.

To access all of the insights from NetLine’s latest research, download the full report:

• 2017 State of IT Content Consumption and Demand Report for IT Marketers
• 2017 State of HR Content Consumption and Demand Report for HR Marketers