Despite a majority of marketers highly rating their companies’ ability to personalize content, new research uncovers a major disconnect between the personalization buyers want and what marketers are actually delivering. In the latest study The Experience Disconnect: 2021 B2B Marketing Report from Uberflip, the leading cloud-based content experience platform (CEP) surveyed 500 North American B2B buyers and marketers about their expectations for the buyer journey, to see how their responses differed. The findings show a major disconnect between the experiences marketers deliver and what buyers expect, ultimately resulting in wasted marketing resources and frustrated buyers.

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“While marketers work to slash budgets and meet ambitious targets, they need to be thinking critically about what will drive results and engage buyers in a meaningful way,” said Randy Frisch, president & chief marketing officer at Uberflip. “Amid reduced spending from buyers, it’s our responsibility as marketers to bridge the gap between their expectations and our brand’s value proposition as seamlessly as possible. Our findings show that marketers must start making personalized content assets a priority and start meeting buyers where they are at in terms of their expectations if they want to start cultivating long-lasting customer relationships.”

The study reveals that, in an effort to personalize the buyer experience, many marketers are missing a key opportunity to deliver on the content assets their buyers find most important. The findings show 1 in 5 marketers rated boring or unengaging content as a top pain point when researching a purchasing decision, yet only 5% of buyers agree. Further, marketers are over-prioritizing long-form written content like whitepapers (42%) and ebooks (30%), despite buyers’ overwhelming interest in user reviews (64%), product tours (43%), and videos (33%).

Additional findings highlighted the considerable discord between marketers and buyers when it comes to the importance of content relevancy for engagement. Relevant content was buyers’ top driver (61%) for taking action or engaging with a vendor’s website or other digital property, however relevant content didn’t even make it to marketers’ top three.

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Other key findings from the report include:

• Despite a majority of marketers saying their budgets were cut by 20%, less than a quarter (23%) stated that reducing costs and streamlining operations was a top strategic priority.
• A majority of marketers (52%) rate their companies’ ability to personalize content at least a 4 out of 5.
• Over half (54%) of the marketers surveyed picked personalized calls-to-action as their top method for getting buyers to take action or engage, while less than one-third of buyers stated it as a driver for taking action.
• 1 in 3 buyers stated irrelevant content as one of the most frustrating parts of researching a purchasing decision, compared to less than a quarter of marketers

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