B2B Marketing Strategies: A Complete Guide

Like the previous year, the top performers attribute their success mostly to understanding their audience (82%). Fifty-four percent report moderate success and 21% feel minimally or not at all successful. Each year, we ask, “How would you characterize the success of your organization’s content marketing approach in the last 12 months? That 43% is going to increase in the 2026 version of this report.

McKinsey research shows that data-driven commercial teams that blend personalized customer experiences with generative AI are 1.7x more likely to increase market share. REPORT_DATA_PROBLEMREPORT_PROBLEM_LINK_TEXTORCOPYRIGHT_INFRINGEMENT_LINK_TEXT With more than three decades of media and event experience, I love helping shape new multimedia content and event experiences. As managing director of Informa Connect’s martech group, I lead our marketing, insights, and innovation portfolios, which includes the Content Marketing Institute. This article reports on the 980 B2B respondents, mostly from North America.

• A strong brand position creates brand awareness, helps maintain a positive brand reputation, and ensures B2B companies remain top-of-mind for potential buyers.
• By focusing on an integrated strategy rather than isolated tactics, you move beyond just generating leads.
• Consistent engagement through email marketing, personalised consultations, and after-sales support ensures potential customers become loyal, repeat buyers.
• B2B (business-to-business) marketing refers to the strategies, tactics, and processes businesses use to promote and sell their products or services to other businesses.
• It involves sharing informative and entertaining content about your brand and industry to provide value to your audience.

But most (54%) who have a dedicated content marketing team or staff say the team is small, consisting of two to five people. Are organizations dedicating enough people to their content initiatives? They’ve figured out how to understand their audience’s needs, produce high-quality content, and use AI to create more efficient workflows. As a content professional, she has created content for a wide range of industries, including meetings and events, government and defense, education, health, and more.

Use it to free up time to be more strategic and creative. It turns out that only 4% report a high level of trust. If necessary, building custom AI tools or integrating existing platforms can help more consistent use.

B2B reporting differs fundamentally from B2C reporting because B2B sales operate on completely different principles. B2B reporting has unique requirements that generic tools simply can’t meet. This assumption costs them valuable insights and leads to poor decision making. Most marketing teams think they can use any analytics tool for B2B reporting. Meanwhile, organizations stuck with manual reporting spend countless hours weekly on spreadsheet gymnastics.

Content strategy effectiveness

This ensures the benefits of attending the event extend well beyond its duration. After the event, reach out to new contacts, share insights with your team, implement the strategies you've learned, and follow up on any leads you might have generated for your sales team. Attend sessions, ask questions, engage with speakers and fellow attendees, and set meetings with anyone who might be a valuable connection.

Also challenging is the percentage of marketers who say they have the technology but aren’t using its potential, which increased to 38% this year from 30% last year. Forty-four percent say the ability to automate repetitive tasks and workflows is missing, and the same number say advanced personalization options aren’t available. The same number say they do not have streamlined marketing data management and reporting. When we asked B2B marketers which capabilities, if any, are missing from their marketing tech stack, nearly half (47%) say they lack efficient lead generation and nurturing processes. Only 27% said creating quality content is a challenge, down from 44% last year. Last year, we distinguished between creating enough content to keep up with internal demand (34%) and external demand (30%).

Creating enough content is still a challenge for 39% this year. Last year, most B2B marketers (57%) cited creating the right content for the audience as a challenge. Not how many people downloaded a white paper … Or, rather, how do you know it's not creating the action you want to inspire? Next, we asked the 95% of B2B marketers who have a content strategy to rate its effectiveness. Those who chose “other” offered explanations that ranged from two people with multiple responsibilities, including content, to whoever was available.

Nowadays, creator-led campaigns and vertical videos bring a funnier and less stodgy flavor to the LinkedIn feed. Eighty-five percent say LinkedIn delivers the best value, followed by 28% who say Facebook, 22% who cite YouTube, and 21% who say Instagram. And marketers often focus on the wrong KPIs for podcasts. More than half used organic social media platforms (89%), blogs on corporate websites (84%), email newsletters (71%), email (63%), in-person events (55%), and webinars (55%).

How do teams allocate marketing budgets?

As we saw with the content types, the distribution channel list looks almost identical to what we reported last year. Less than half of B2B marketers used product technical/data sheets (41%), research reports (36%), and interactive content (27%). We asked B2B marketers about the types of content, distribution channels, paid channels, and social media channels used over the last 12 months.

Marketing effectiveness is decent, but underinvestment in needle movers exists

Incorporate AI into your processes or workflows. Another 27% report their teams don’t formally use AI, but individual staff members may choose to use it. Many people forget that and will only look at an agency invoice or the distribution spend. Most look only at the distribution costs alone. We asked B2B marketers what challenges their team faces while measuring content performance. Having a structured, scalable content creation process leads to greater content consistency and quality, more efficient use of resources, and better audience engagement.

As I’ve said to many clients in the last six best b2b marketing channels months, the decisions you make are not nearly as important as making them. I asked CMI's Robert Rose to provide some advice. As we saw in the last two years, the majority of B2B marketers (61%) think their organization will increase investment in videos in 2025. Sixty-three percent of B2B marketers say they have knowledge of their organization’s budget/budgeting process for content marketing. With LinkedIn delivering the best value, it’s unsurprising that 68% of marketers increased their use of it in the last 12 months. The brands that do LinkedIn right today will wield huge influence over the next year.