B2B Content Marketing Trends 2025 [Research]

Tell me something, marketers. Are you satisfied with the state of B2B content marketing?

According to 980 of you, the answer is likely “no,” given how much more you say you want in the Content Marketing Institute’s annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2025, conducted with MarketingProfs and sponsored by The MX Group.

More what? Well, resources, sure. That’s a given.

Also, more people. Clarity of purpose. Goals. Technology. And maybe more inspiration.

Without these, many of you feel just meh about your work:

• A whopping chunk (58%) of B2B marketers rate their content strategy as merely “moderately effective.”
• Nearly half of those say their strategy struggles because they lack clear goals.
• Only one in three say they have a scalable model for content creation.
• The biggest challenge? A lack of resources.

So what else is new? In the 15 years CMI and MarketingProfs have conducted this survey, these same limitations surface again and again.

As Robert Rose, CMI chief strategy advisor, said after looking through these findings, “One of the most remarkable things about this year’s research is how unremarkable it is. Frustration and simple maintenance have become the status quo in B2B marketing.” 

But, while many find themselves simply treading water, a group of top performers has found a way to surge ahead. They’ve figured out how to understand their audience’s needs, produce high-quality content, and use AI to create more efficient workflows.

Let’s dive into the results — including what separates meh from marvelous. (Use the Table of Contents to navigate to the sections that interest you most. You’ll find Robert’s suggestions on what to do about all of this in Action steps.) 

Team structure

Are organizations dedicating enough people to their content initiatives? When we asked B2B marketers how content marketing work gets done within their organizations, most (76%) have a dedicated content marketing team or person on staff. And the larger the organization, the more likely it was to have dedicated resources.

But most (54%) who have a dedicated content marketing team or staff say the team is small, consisting of two to five people.

What if there’s no dedicated team or person?

Believe it or not, 24% of B2B respondents say they don’t have dedicated content marketing teams or staff. When we asked that group how the work gets done, 50% say they rely on multiple content teams (e.g., department, brand, or product), 7% say they use an outside content marketing agency/vendor, and 43% list “other.”

Those who chose “other” offered explanations that ranged from two people with multiple responsibilities, including content, to whoever was available.

And therein lies a problem: While staff may handle content-related tasks, no one is responsible for leading content marketing as a strategic approach. Reactive, scattershot content tactics aren’t likely to generate any meaningful (or consistent) results.

Content strategy effectiveness

Next, we asked the 95% of B2B marketers who have a content strategy to rate its effectiveness. Less than a third (29%) call it extremely or very effective. Well over half (58%) say it is moderately effective, while 12% say it is not very effective, and 1% say it is not at all effective.

Among those who rate their strategy as moderately effective or worse, 42% cite a lack of clear goals as the reason why they didn’t rate it higher.

Other reasons include:

• Not tied to customer journey (39%)
• Not data-driven (35%)
• Ineffective audience research (29%)
• Other (26%)
• Unrealistic expectations (23%)
• Emphasizes content quantity over quality (20%)
• Failure to iterate/adapt (18%)
• Inconsistent brand voice (17%)
• Poor content quality (10%)

Those who selected “other” cite the following problems:

• Lack of resources (time, budget, and people)
• Lack of leadership (no clear direction)
• Internal silos (inefficiencies and conflicting priorities)

Their comments include:

• “Constantly shifting messaging in response to shifting leadership priorities”
• “Lack of budget to develop content and too many cooks in the kitchen”
• “Lack of resources with strategic content planning and development skills”
• “Limited time and resources to focus on prioritizing content”
• “Too many diverse business units”
• “Too many brands and products without clear priority”
• “Lack of time to focus on long-term strategy due to short-term demands by the organization. Long-term strategic content marketing projects are not prioritized, even though they would move the needle for the overall brand; not enough people/resources and high volume of work.”

Content marketing challenges

When we asked about challenges not related to content creation, the most often cited was lack of resources (54%). Last year, about the same amount (58%) said the same. It’s a problem that just doesn’t go away.

Measuring the results of content efforts (a new option in this year’s survey) came in second, cited by 47%. Aligning content with the buyers’ journey remains a challenge, as 45% indicate it’s a problem this year vs. 48% the previous year.

Another challenge that’s not going anywhere — aligning content across sales and marketing (43% cite it as a challenge this year compared with 45% the previous year).

Also new to the list this year was communicating across organizational silos, with 40% indicating that it’s challenging.

B2B marketers appear to have gained some ground with:

• Managing workflow issues/content approvals process: 33% mention it this year, down from 41% the previous year
• Keeping up with new technologies: 27% cite it this year, down from 34% the previous year
• Accessing subject matter experts: 33% indicate it’s challenging vs. 39% the previous year

Creating content that prompts a desired action isn’t easy

Content creation challenges look different for B2B marketers than the previous year. Based on our conversations with marketers, we added a new option to the list of challenges: Creating content that prompts a desired action.

Turns out, our observation was right. More B2B marketers (55%) cite it as a challenge than any other option.

We asked Ann Handley, chief content officer at MarketingProfs, why B2B content teams struggle with this. Here’s what she says:

My question is … how are you measuring this? Or, rather, how do you know it’s not creating the action you want to inspire?

B2B content is part of a complex matrix of various touchpoints, seen and unseen, including word of mouth, dark social, that one guy who mentioned your brand on LinkedIn. We want to believe the purchase journey is a straight, orderly line of attribution: Read blog post. > Hit demo. > Buy.

But B2B — or any marketing — doesn’t work that way. It’s less straight line, more squiggly scribble that overlaps in oddball ways. Less straightforward path; more conspiratorial crime scene investigation board.

What marketers can do about it is to rethink the messy muddle of attribution to think about more meaningful ways to know what’s ‘working.’

Not how many people downloaded a white paper … but how many then signed up for your email newsletter? And then, how many of them wrote back to you when you told a story in the last issue about a specific problem they have? What did existing customers tell you worked the last time you spoke with them? Rethink off-the-shelf metrics (because there is no shelf).

Other content creation challenges

Last year, most B2B marketers (57%) cited creating the right content for the audience as a challenge. This year, only 40% did. That may indicate that B2B marketers have improved or focused more on crafting better-targeted content in the last 12 months.

Fewer marketers mention differentiating content and creating it consistently as top challenges this year compared to last (43% and 42% respectively this year, down from 54% for both last year).

Creating enough content is still a challenge for 39% this year. Last year, we distinguished between creating enough content to keep up with internal demand (34%) and external demand (30%). Content repurposing is a challenge for 37%. As it was a new option this year, a comparison is not available.

And here’s a somewhat surprising change given recent SEO developments: Only 35% of marketers cite optimizing for SEO as a top challenge this year, down from 45% last year. Perhaps even more surprising? Only 27% said creating quality content is a challenge, down from 44% last year.

B2B marketers’ tech stacks lack these essentials

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. The same number say they do not have streamlined marketing data management and reporting.

Almost as many (45%) said they lack the tech to support data-driven decision-making. 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. Forty-one percent lack easy access to enterprise analytics, and 39% say strong alignment between sales and marketing systems isn’t possible. Only 8% say no capabilities are missing from their tech stack.

Too few have the right technology — or use it to its potential

It’s no wonder B2B marketers struggle with essential tech capabilities: Only 26% of those surveyed think their organization has the right technology to manage content across the organization. That’s worse than last year when 31% said the same thing.

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.

Nearly half of B2B marketers lack a scalable model for content creation

Here’s another way B2B marketers struggle: Nearly half (45%) lack a scalable model for content creation. Just slightly more than a third (35%) say they do have a scalable content creation model, and 20% said they’re not sure whether they have one or not.

Andi Robinson, content strategist at Hijinx Marketing, explains why this failure to have and integrate tech capabilities holds B2B marketers back:

Companies that have not taken the time to develop a robust and scalable content creation framework risk bottlenecks in their process, content that is not aligned to organizational and marketing strategy, and audience-facing brand inconsistencies.

Having a structured, scalable content creation process leads to greater content consistency and quality, more efficient use of resources, and better audience engagement.

On the brighter side, we followed up with those who have scalable models to ask if those models create the desired outcomes. Forty-one percent say they do. Slightly more than half (53%) say no, but we’re getting there, and just 6% say no, we have a long way to go.

B2B marketers struggle to measure content’s impact

Year after year, we hear marketers say how hard it is to prove the impact of their work. Let’s dig in to where they struggle.

We asked the B2B marketers (96%) who say they measure their content performance to indicate their agreement with the following: “Our organization measures content performance effectively.”

About half (51%) say they strongly or somewhat agree. Fifteen percent neither agree nor disagree. Twenty-three percent somewhat disagree, and 11% percent strongly disagree. So, the struggle is real for at least a third to half of marketers.

We asked B2B marketers what challenges their team faces while measuring content performance. Fifty-six percent say difficulty attributing ROI to content efforts. The same number cite difficulty tracking customer journeys.

Other challenges include:

• Inability to tie performance to business goals (44%)
• Insufficient resources or budget (41%)
• Lack of clear marketing goals/KPIs (39%)
• Data silos within the organization (37%)
• Limited access to advanced analytics tools (33%)
• Complex or inadequate reporting systems (29%)
• Inability to extract valuable information from data/analytics (29%)
• Lack of data skills/talent (25%)

Amy Higgins, director of content strategy at Cloudflare, offered her take on why it’s so hard:

Many marketers have a hard time calculating the ROI of their content initiatives because they don’t count both the creation and the distribution of their content. Most look only at the distribution costs alone.

It takes time to create content — whether the hours you pay an agency or your in-house team, their time costs money. Many people forget that and will only look at an agency invoice or the distribution spend. That means they are only calculating a portion of their content investment.

AI use trends

When it comes to AI use in B2B content marketing, we found many marketers experimenting, but few incorporate it into daily operations. That’s one area where top performers have pulled ahead of their peers. I’ll get into that shortly. For now, let’s look at a few findings.

Eighty-one percent of B2B marketers tell us their teams are using generative AI tools — that’s a jump up from 72% the previous year.

Marketers who don’t use AI cite accuracy concerns

We asked the few marketers who don’t use generative AI tools why. They cite these reasons:

• Accuracy concerns (35%)
• Corporate mandates not to use (28%)
• Copyright concerns (26%)
• Lack of training (22%)
• Lack of understanding (19%)
• No need/no use for gen AI (17%)
• Other (14%)
• Unsure (13%)

Many teams experiment, few integrate it

Most teams (54%) take an ad hoc approach to AI (i.e., they’re experimenting but not necessarily applying it widely). Another 27% report their teams don’t formally use AI, but individual staff members may choose to use it. Only 19% of B2B marketers say AI is integrated into their daily processes/workflows.

How can B2B marketers move the needle on AI integration? Pam Didner, author of The Modern AI Marketer, suggests these elements:

• Train with show and tell. Show what AI can do in real time. Give examples of how different job functions can use AI.
• Incorporate AI into your processes or workflows. Identify specific, repeatable tasks where AI can seamlessly fit, reducing the need for experimentation. If necessary, building custom AI tools or integrating existing platforms can help more consistent use.
• Advocate for it: C-suite executives and department heads must actively champion AI adoption. Their support is vital to fostering a culture of innovation, encouraging teams to move beyond occasional experimentation.

More B2B marketers have AI guidelines than last year

The number of B2B marketers whose organizations lack AI usage guidelines dropped to 45%, down from 61% last year.

Well over a third (38%) say their organization has AI guidelines, while nearly a quarter (23%) say their marketing team has guidelines. (Respondents could select both options.) Three percent are unsure if guidelines exist.

What AI guidelines cover

The respondents’ generative AI guidelines address a range of topics. Acceptable uses in content marketing topped the list, cited by 78%. Other areas include:

• Security measures specific to using generative AI (66%)
• Unacceptable uses of generative AI in content marketing (66%)
• Data-handling guidelines for generative AI platforms/output (64%)
• Purpose/objectives for using generative AI in marketing (58%)
• Transparency (i.e., disclosing when content is generated by AI) (48%)
• Legal/copyright recommendations (47%)
• Mitigating bias in generative AI output (29%)
• Real-world applications for generative AI (27%)

Most still use free AI tools

As in the previous year, most B2B marketers working with generative AI use free tools (88% vs. 91% the previous year). Forty-nine percent (up from 39% the previous year) use AI tools in their content creation/management systems, and 32% (up from 27% the previous year) pay for tools.

Do B2B marketers trust generative AI’s outputs?

We wondered how much trust B2B marketers place in generative AI’s outputs. It turns out that only 4% report a high level of trust. Most (67%) have a medium level of trust, and 28% percent say they have a low level of trust. Just 1% percent don’t trust AI output.

AI content quality is doubted

What about the quality of content generated by AI? That gets mixed reviews. Only 17% rate it as excellent or very good. But 44% say the output is good, and 35% say it’s fair. Only 4% percent rate it as poor.