Well, I guess this concludes my blog and our webinar series! ; ) Actually, the gap between the highest ranking and lowest ranking information sources was not definitive enough to guide B2B marketers in one direction or another. We must keep in mind that these types of results are a moving target...I would imagine that this study could be conducted every six months and a chronological graph of the responses would show changing trends over time.

The vendor evaluation information sources were ranked differently, with articles in general business press, vendor websites and vendor whitepapers ranking well and all types of blogs trailing the pack.

So, what was the biggest takeaway? I think there were a few major lessons learned:

• Email newsletters still work (it's not just my job to say that...I actually believe it)
• Whitepapers are the highest performing type of written content for B2B marketers (outperforming collateral, press releases, website content, etc). There was a very interesting session purely focused on writing great whitepapers and maximizing the return from those efforts.
• Vendor websites are still missing the mark. As I mentioned in a previous post, a supplementary B-to-B Homepage Design Study was published by MarketingSherpa this year, and it studied the websites of leading B2B technology companies. Web analytics data shows that many visitors are not converting to leads as they browse corporate websites. If you'd like a before and after case study, stay tuned to this blog and WhatCounts.com. We'll be doing a site revamp soon.
• According to the study, vendor blogs are not deemed to be highly valuable in the eyes of technology decision makers. Now, I'm not going to sit here defending vendor-centric blogs...I realize that they are a dime a dozen and many (hopefully not mine) are more biased than informative. But, I wonder what would happen if we altered the question posed to these decision-makers to ask about the blogs' value in personifying the vendor's team, illuminating their corporate culture, and showing their thought leadership in the industry. Sure, you might not write an RFP and then immediately scan the blogs of the companies that you invite to the table, but I wouldn't doubt the value of those blogs as the sales cycle progresses.

The most interesting study that can be overlaid on the data above showed that technology decision-makers generally have prior knowledge of the vendors that they invite to their RFP's. So, that changes everything, doesn't it? If you're writing a whitepaper, hosting a webinar or writing a blog to an audience that already knows you, you can spend less time establishing credibility and more time providing valuable content.