Everyone knows that people learn differently. But few know the scale of different learning styles. Education theorists have identified over 71 different styles.

This has profound ramifications for content marketing professionals. Whenever you create content, you must take into account the different audiences and their particular styles of learning new information.

What content do you need to do to generate and nurture leads from business and technical people? How can you cut across multiple audiences and generate content for visual, auditory, and reading learners? Answer these questions and you can expand your client base to cover every walk of life. Here is your quick guide.

Business People

Business people like numbers. They want to know how much time and money a product or service will save them, and they want to know how it works – usually at a high level.

A two-page brochure is a good introductory resource. It gives you the opportunity to lay out the key facts about your product or service.

If someone is looking just for the numbers, make sure you have infographics handy. Focus on a particular set of figures, like how much time it takes to use your product or service in comparison to your competitors. Feel free to provide them with a few different infographics at once.

Once you have cultivated interest, you can give business people a short-form custom eBook. Visually appealing graphical eBooks (gBooks) are ideal! Instead of containing 90% text and 10% graphics, gBooks are usually split 50/50. They allow you to communicate both business and technical topics, but in less time than a long-form eBook.

Well-written survey reports are particularly helpful to business people, especially if they’re new to a particular security industry segment. And Key Economic Impact Reports are great for those who want to know how your product or solution will affect their company’s bottom line.

Technical People

Technical people are not dissimilar from business people. They want to understand numbers and processes, but they also want more details about how the processes play out. You can delve into your knowledge of your security industry segment with them, laying out the nuts and bolts.

Feel free to use infographics as a hook. But you can provide them with white papers early in your interactions with them – the more comprehensive and “meaty,” the better.

You can then present them with long-form (usually 48-72 pages) Definitive Guide eBooks or custom eBooks. Research reports based on your company’s proprietary data can be particularly useful to technical people who are trying to influence decision makers to purchase your product or service.

Visual Learners

65 percent of Americans identify themselves as visual learners. This means that they learn through visual reinforcements like videos, photographs, and graphics.

You should make plenty of videos to reach the significant market share of visual learners. Many cybersecurity vendors create tutorials, demonstrating how their viewers can use leverage their product or service to solve specific IT security challenges.

Animated explainer videos and whiteboard animations are fantastic for visual learners. Within 1-2 minutes (the shorter, the better), you explain the business problem, provide an overview of your solution, and communicate the benefits of using your solution. These videos are particularly useful for emerging cybersecurity product and service categories that many buyers are just learning about.

Even when you write blogs, you can appeal to visual learners. Put a photograph at the top of each blog post that compliments the topic. This will draw the visual learner into your content.

Auditory Learners

Auditory learners learn best by listening to information. Podcasts are the easiest way to reach auditory people.

As with videos, you want to focus your podcasts on providing the most relevant information for your listeners. Tutorials and customer interviews make for great topics. If you publish a new podcast at regular intervals (weekly or monthly), you can gain traction among your auditory learners.

Don't make a podcast without planning your content out. Many people turn on their microphones and talk for a long period of time. Focus your material on a particular topic and end the recording when you've said everything you planned to say.

Reading Learners

Reading learners learn best by reading materials. For reading learners who are new to your security industry segment, blogs are ideal. Select digestible topics like top-five lists and guides about the essentials on given topics. Be sure to provide a call-to-action at the bottom of every blog post, just as we’ve done in this blog!

For reading learners already familiar with your space in the cybersecurity industry, white papers and eBooks are reliable resources. For many readers, the more technical, the better! Just avoid content that is boring and too dry. Don’t be afraid to introduce humor now and again. And casual writing styles often work best.

Need Help With Content Creation?

CyberEdge is the largest content creation firm dedicated to the IT security industry. CyberEdge creates business and technical content across all learning styles for about one in every six IT security vendors – on both a project and a retainer basis. Find out for yourself why so many security vendors turn to CyberEdge for content. Request a 20-minute consultation