2025
Content Trends
and Takeaways:
How to elevate your reach, Impact, and ROI
B2B marketing budgets tend to reflect executives’ outlook on the economy and growth, and 2025 is no different. The impact of rampant uncertainty and cost pressures is clear—the majority of B2B marketing leaders say they expect negligible increases in their budgets.1 Yet most B2B marketing and communications teams have maintained or ramped up their ambitions, forcing them to do more with less.
It’s a tall order. Content marketing is critical for B2B companies, but effective strategy, quality thought leadership, and successful promotion and distribution are time and resource intensive. Now more than ever, leaders have to stay focused on their strategic priorities, identify areas with the greatest impact, and see around corners to determine whether to stay the course or switch direction. In this year’s report, we’ve rounded up trends, research, and ideas to help companies elevate their reach, impact, and ROI—even with fewer resources.
1 John Arnold, “B2B CMOs Don’t Expect 2025 Growth to Come from Budget Increases,” Forrester Research, August 1, 2024.
There’s a lot of talk about the difference between thought leadership and content marketing, and often those two things are positioned in opposition to one another. But in our view, effective thought leadership is an essential part of broader content marketing efforts. Many B2B companies use it to market their analytical rigor, distinctive insights and intelligence, and research to their audiences.
Considering thought leadership as part of a content marketing continuum can help. The continuum encompasses the many different inputs, activities, and outcomes that, when approached thoughtfully and proactively, help a company put a stake in the ground, engage its intended audience, and maximize ROI.
Becky Boyde, content leader at Aon, said it best:
“In my experience, a strong content strategy starts with clearly defining your audiences, understanding their pain points, and creating content that directly addresses their needs while aligning with your business objectives. It’s not just about producing content—it’s about delivering something bold and impactful that sets you apart.
“Stay curious and challenge traditional ideas about content. Often overlooked is the connection between content and activation strategies—they don’t have to be sequential, but they can be developed together for maximum impact.”
Based on years of content work, we’ve identified five foundational elements that hold steady no matter a client’s size, industry, or ambitions.
Content strategy: Defining objectives, identifying priority themes, and articulating distinctive perspectives that advance the conversation.
Audience definition: Determining who you want to reach, how and where they prefer to consume content, and the competitors seeking their attention.
Planning and execution: Developing a publishing calendar aligned with business objectives consisting of integrated campaigns of flagship pieces and supporting content.
Engagement: Taking a coordinated approach to content promotion and distribution, including creating original content for priority social media channels.
Measurement: Using performance metrics to shape content strategy and priorities.
We launched a diagnostic tool, Content Compass, to help companies quickly assess where their content operation stands out or could improve across those five areas. Underpinning everything is high-quality content that contains fresh insights, prescriptive and actionable guidance, and analytical rigor—and that conveys a deep understanding of business challenges in a compelling way.
Based on the Content Compass data compiled from companies that have used it, we developed benchmarks that can highlight where content marketers need to focus more resources or attention.
Some of our recent findings:
// Companies are fairly good at content strategy, but there’s room to grow. The benchmark for strategy—including tying thought leadership to marketing and business objectives and analyzing themes—currently stands at 10.9 out of 15, or 70%. Only a quarter of those who took the diagnostic (24%) reported being very satisfied with their content strategy.
// Audience definition and research tend to fall short across the board, with respondents averaging just 9.3 out of 15. Our research found 60% of respondents said they sometimes or only rarely use data to determine how their audience prefers to use content, and 31% rarely or never conduct qualitative research to gain insight into audience preferences. This is a huge missed opportunity. As one client put it, “Knowing where your audience is and what will truly resonate with them is essential.”
As Becky Boyde put it,
“Knowing where your audience is and what will truly resonate with them is essential.”
// Content planning is an area of opportunity for most companies, which collectively rate 10.5 out of 15 at maintaining editorial calendars, creating campaigns, and tying thought leadership to business development efforts.
// Impact measurement is still a challenge for companies, with a benchmark of 9.7 out of 15. Just 30% reported that they mostly use performance metrics to shape strategy and planning, with 60% saying they sometimes or rarely do.
Few companies excel in all areas of content strategy, creation, and measurement. But particularly when teams are strapped for time and budget, they absolutely need to perform well in the areas that support their overarching objectives.
We’ve developed four content archetypes that highlight typical performance and rankings against the benchmarks. Knowing where you excel and where the opportunities lie can help organize your efforts and narrow your focus to what matters most.
The traditionalist
These B2B companies focus more on “classic” thought leadership than on content marketing, often investing heavily in editorial and publishing talent. Traditionalists are known for high-quality articles and flagship reports, often drawn from proprietary research. The insights in their thought leadership publications typically respond directly to common business problems and target the C-suite. Although priority themes are established centrally, much of the thought leadership originates with senior leaders and subject matter experts, increasing the difficulty of maintaining consistency in messaging.
// The traditionalist publishing model primarily seeks to build brand awareness and enhance reputation, although individual content pieces are used in narrowcast, high-touch outreach.
// Traditionalists prioritize content strategy to ensure that thought leadership addresses their audience’s business challenges.
// Traditionalists also demand high-quality execution—especially because thought leadership is often one of their few marketing vehicles.
When the traditionalists invest deeply in thought leadership, as many of our clients do, it’s all about quality, utility, and relevance to readers.
The hybrid archetype
The hybrid archetype is all about a bifurcated approach to thought leadership and content marketing. The intent is to maximize the company’s presence on a set of priority themes and topics while also strategically maintaining a steady flow of content for other channels, such as social or video. The hybrid archetype takes a centralized, top-down approach to managing thought leadership and content marketing, which requires close coordination across internal departments.
// On strategy, hybrid companies invest in quality over quantity for flagship pieces and focus heavily on identifying priority themes through audience and market research, trendspotting, and insights from their client-facing subject matter experts.
// Because flagship pieces can take a tremendous amount of time and resources, hybrid companies produce a steady stream of short pieces (such as perspectives and blogs) that can be published much more quickly and fill other channels.
// Strong execution is also essential in creating distinctive, insightful content for social, video, or email channels. Hybrid teams excel in their ability to deliver high-impact, sophisticated messages and insights in long-form offerings as well as quick and compelling hits.
The experimenter
Experimenters push the envelope with new formats and channels and are less likely to rely on traditional PDFs. They seek to get their key messages across in shorter-form pieces, from two-minute videos that pack a punch to well-crafted infographics. A handful of the experimenters we’ve analyzed are open to more provocative design elements and custom, visually striking branding.
//On the strategy side, experimenters give time-strapped executives key insights in a fresh way, thereby pulling ahead of competitors that too often default to standard content formats.
//They also favor content packages for flagship research, allowing audiences to choose their own journey into insights—for instance, through videos, interactives, and other pieces.
//Experimenters set clear success metrics, test and learn on the formats that perform best, and use these results to gain stakeholder buy-in.
By learning from doing, experimenters determine when a traditional or less-expensive route would get just as much traction—insights that can strengthen the entire content operation over the long term
The merchant
The merchant archetype typically leans more toward content marketing. Merchants aren’t courting a general business audience or hoping to be seen as an authority across a wide range of industries and topics. Instead, their content draws on their industry knowledge, expertise, and data but is geared expressly to support the marketing and sales functions. Strategy and priorities are set in a top-down fashion, with content developed as fuel for account-based marketing or lead generation programs.
//Because the sales cycle for B2B companies tends to be long and multifaceted, the merchant produces content for every stage of the purchase journey.
//Merchants favor shorter content formats (perspective pieces, blogs, and infographics) and sales-driven pieces such as sell sheets, decks, and product and service overview videos.
//Merchants distinguish themselves through their emphasis on measurement, using not only website analytics and social media data but also CRM systems and sales metrics.
Investments in content are tied directly to sales and ROI, with merchants allocating budget accordingly
Another type of company
In addition to these archetypes, we sometimes encounter a different type of company—one that floods the market with content but lacks a guiding strategy or objectives to get more from its investment. These organizations often don’t have a central decision-making body, fail to establish a clear voice in the marketplace, and publish pieces that don’t reflect consistent positioning. That can be a lot to overcome, but even small changes can set them on the right path. Website, social, and email data can establish performance baselines. By focusing on what is working—and building a strategy and processes around it—these companies can begin to develop the institutional muscles to direct resources where they have the greatest impact.
You may see your company in more than one of these archetypes. The key is to clearly define your content strategy and objectives and ensure your organization has the clarity, capabilities, and resources to execute against them.
In a recent conversation with a client, we asked about the promotion plan for a flagship report. The client replied, “We haven’t had any time to think about it. As soon as we get this one out the door, there’s another one right behind it.”
Sound familiar? When teams are under pressure and stretched thin, their focus often shifts to managing short-term priorities versus maximizing the reach of content over the long term.
But approaching high-quality thought leadership content as a one-off is like setting money on fire. It’s a heavy lift to produce a piece with truly distinctive insights that advance the conversation, stand out in the market, or turn on a light bulb for a potential client. And your insights won’t rise above the fray on their own. Audiences may not actively look for content; they may not be on social media when you promote that piece; they may not have time to take in a long report. One executive survey found that CEOs spend just two hours a week consuming thought leadership.2
Anchoring thought leadership in a thoughtful, extended campaign can help. The content marketing continuum illuminates the value of incremental investment in strategy and marketing and measurement. That flagship report, for example—with its proprietary research, fresh insights, and useful recommendations—provides the fuel for an integrated content campaign across platforms and channels, targeted to the right audiences. Doing it right involves strategy, smart content atomization, and thoughtful marketing and measurement.
2 Cindy Anderson and Anthony Marshall, The ROI of Thought Leadership: Calculating the Value That Sets Organizations Apart (Wiley, 2025).
It’s a heavy lift to produce a piece with truly distinctive insights that advance the conversation, stand out in the market, or turn on a light bulb for a potential client.
Start with content strategy and planning
Most companies understand the importance of content strategy, but it can fall to the wayside in the rush to publish. The key to increasing ROI is to put in the time up front to understand what competitors are saying, how thought-provoking your messages are, what the audience actually cares about, and where they are.
A client recently undertook a competitive analysis and found that over time, many peers had moved to a more authoritative, assertive tone. In response, the client incorporated different language and sharper, more incisive messages into their content creation—ensuring they aligned with the trend rather than publishing something that fell flat among competitors’ more assured voices.
Convening a cross-functional team—including subject matter experts, marketing communications, and PR—to agree on objectives, goals, and metrics at the outset helps define the strategic needs. Then, you can view content strategy as a set of ways to achieve your objectives and achieve the greatest ROI. For example:
// Start with a message map that links your insights to audience challenges, making it more likely they’ll pay attention.
// Conduct a competitive analysis to illuminate where your insights are most distinctive and determine what to emphasize.
// Build a data-driven campaign plan that reaches your audience members where they are, when they tend to be most active, and in the formats they’ll respond to best. By taking a proactive, thoughtful approach earlier in the process, you’ll be able to cover a lot of ground for incremental effort. For instance, one client developed a global report consisting of a set of smaller industry- and region-focused cuts that could support direct outreach, with the narrative threads already established. That initial strategic work enabled the client to deliver tailored content efficiently to those audiences, substantially expanding the work’s reach and maintaining internal and external momentum.
Atomize thought leadership
With the campaign in development and the thought leadership anchor piece coming together, determining which parts of the report can be repurposed—or “atomized”—is next. A common fallacy is that people will dismiss repurposed content because it isn’t “new.” That opinion assumes your audience found the report in the first place—which they likely didn’t. Even if they did, consider that people are still paying good money to see James Taylor sing “Fire and Rain” or Jerry Seinfeld talk about the secret life of socks. If content has value and resonates, a little reinforcement is welcome.
Some content elements are almost begging to be repurposed. The foreword of a report, for example, can easily become a blog post. Exhibits and images can be the main visuals for a webinar. A set of prescriptions can become a series of short LinkedIn posts. For example, a client once developed a large-scale content series featuring articles, data visualizations, and regular emails, all built from the same dataset and interviews. The client also drew on all of the content to build an interactive that ended up having the highest time on site of all the client’s content in a given time period.
Aon content leader Becky Boyde summed up the atomization approach as follows, using high-quality thought leadership as the narrative-driven anchor:
“The most successful campaigns share a common formula: They begin with a compelling story that connects deeply with the audience, are powered by data-driven strategies, and feature striking visuals designed to capture attention instantly. These campaigns leverage the right platforms to reach the right audience at the perfect moment, igniting engagement and sparking meaningful conversations.”
Here are a few examples, all of which work well for different types of
thought leadership:
// Create industry cuts as companion pieces to an overarching
report to reach leaders in specific areas.
// Consider a series of C-suite guides or one-pagers that highlight different perspectives on a topic for different types of leaders. How would a CEO, CMO, CFO, or CHRO look at the same issue and its impact on the organization?
// Build an infographic or interactive to offer another way into the
material for people who prefer visual storytelling.
Other options can significantly extend a campaign’s reach. Are the authors ready to be evangelists for their insights? If so, use the report findings as fodder for a LinkedIn post or series. Research shows that content posted by CEOs has four times the engagement of other LinkedIn content.3 Consider webinars, podcasts, and events. Interview the authors to showcase their intelligence and personality, and then carve the transcript into a Q&A, op-ed, or first-person essay.
Atomization may feel daunting, but when done efficiently, it’s a bit more effort for a lot more payoff. In our experience, developing social assets, email, and promotional video for a flagship report can be done in half the time when we’re doing the work concurrently.
3 Cristina Criddle, “Power and influencers: CEOs on social media,” Financial Times, October 13, 2024.
Execute the campaign and track the results
Pressing “go” on the campaign is celebration-worthy. You’re marketing insights to your audience in creative, compelling ways. Right? Time will tell.
Monitoring and measuring campaign results will guide next steps. If the campaign is slated to last three months, you can also rely on initial metrics for engagement as a trigger for committing more resources or focusing on certain channels.
Thought leadership campaigns are notoriously hard to measure. They can be narrowcast, meaning numbers are small despite high engagement, for example. Companies sometimes have to rely on anecdotal or qualitative inputs, such as great feedback from a client or winning a proposal that highlighted published research or insights. But tracking all of that provides a full picture of campaign success and how to continually improve.
One tip for allocating resources more effectively is to track initial metrics across channels two weeks after a flagship piece is published. If audience response is greater than expected, it can make sense to invest in an expanded campaign to maintain visibility. Again, it’s worth remembering that your audience is busy, so you may need to promote your insights in multiple channels to break through.
As one content leader said,
“Campaign success also lies in adaptability—constantly refining and optimizing in real time to stay ahead of the curve.”
The bottom line: Rather than producing six discrete pieces of mediocre thought leadership, produce one distinctive piece—and then break it up six ways.
Many of our clients have found that gen AI–driven search platforms are materially changing how their audience finds and engages with their content. That holds true both for the search engines we’ve all been using for years (Google) and for the emerging ones (such as ChatGPT and Perplexity). While gen AI is changing the game, companies that understand the opportunity, adapt their approach, and rethink certain performance metrics can pull ahead.
Where we were and where we’re going
Over the past 10 to 15 years, companies have traditionally prioritized search engine optimization (SEO) in the hopes their content will rank at the top of search results on Google. Good thought leadership tended to rise to the top, rewarded for being high quality and relevant to searchers’ queries. When done well, SEO and organic search has accounted for more than half of all website traffic.4 For our clients, website traffic is hugely rewarding—once on the site, users explore other content and service offerings, enabling clients to capture data on activity and preferences.
Change has always been a constant in search, but generative AI is shaking things up even more. For years, paid search and new features, such as the “People also asked” questions and YouTube or social links, have been taking up more and more space on search engine results pages. User behavior has changed as well, with more people turning to social media for content rather than searching for it on Google.5
Recent research has found that traffic could drop by as much as 25 percent as a result of gen AI,6 and one of our clients reported a decrease in line with these findings. For instance, AI overviews (AIOs) on a search engine results page can be effective enough that many users won’t venture past them to explore the contributing sources.
Adam Volk, senior editor, SEO, at McKinsey, noted:
“AIOs are generating far fewer clicks to publishers. First, they provide longer, in-depth answers than a traditional search page, so there is less reason for the user to click through when they can get the answer they need—a ‘zero click’ search result. Second, there is far less visibility for publishers. That’s because while an AIO does feature links (known as ‘citations’) in the answers, they are not as prominent as traditional search results.
“What this impact will look like is not entirely clear—and some publishers and topics will be more impacted than others—but my belief is that most publishers will see about a 10% decline in traffic due to AIOs alone (this is on top of any declines from Google algorithm updates, which have also impacted countless publishers). This could, however, change as Google continues to roll out AIOs across the globe, and they are constantly testing and refining the technology.”
This may be just the start. As users get more and more comfortable with relying on gen AI to sift through all the available material on the internet, they could become less inclined to go to the source. And large language models such as Perplexity AI, ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini will continue to capture more of the search market.
Andy Crestodina, cofounder and CMO of Orbit Media, told us,
“Some studies show that ChatGPT has 4% market share already. But those users may also be clicking through to websites. AI is a new traffic source.” Even Google knows its traditional search products are in for change—which is why it’s investing so heavily in Gemini.”
4 Garry Grant, “How Much Traffic Is From Organic Search | Organic Click-Through Rates – 2025,” SEO Inc., accessed February 24, 2025.
5 Jeremy Goldman, “Social media overtakes search engines for discovery among Gen Z and millennials,” EMARKETER, June 6, 2024.
6 “Gartner Predicts Search Engine Volume Will Drop 25% by 2026, Due to AI Chatbots and Other Virtual Agents,” Gartner, February 19, 2024.
Even Google knows its traditional search products are in for change—which is why it’s investing so heavily in Gemini.*
*Roger Montti, “Google CEO’s 2025 AI Strategy Deemphasizes Search Box,” Search Engine Journal, December 29, 2024.
How companies can respond
The B2B audience will still want to research their questions and use high-quality thought leadership to guide decisions. So the charge for companies is to make sure they show up on these new platforms—with compelling content—and adapt their strategies for connecting with their audience through other channels and approaches.
Focus on quality
Some fundamentals won’t change. Building authority through high-quality content will help you rise to the top. Today’s changes may mean that more engaging, conversational content—that responds to queries—becomes even stronger currency. Adam Volk recommended:
“Focusing on quality of content is more important than ever. This means producing great pages that are written by passionate experts on the subject. Also, taking the time to hit the SEO fundamentals remains important. For all of its increased sophistication and new AI technology, Google is still looking at the same on-page factors it always has to rank content—they’ve invested billions into their search engine and they’re not just going to throw it all away. There’s no ‘tricking’ Google into anything. Good SEO is a reflection of good content.”
You can stay ahead of competitors, who are vying for the same eyeballs, by ensuring your content provides more value with fresh and original insights.
Define your search audience
Understanding your search audience—what they’re looking for, how they’re asking for it, and what they need to know—is critical to your search strategy. The enhanced gen AI search capabilities in Gemini, ChatGPT, and others enable searchers to ask more nuanced, conversational questions, and the results will be more comprehensive. Tracking audience search trends and queries will help companies refine their content to edge out the competition, even on chatbots such as ChatGPT that answer queries with multiple sources.
This isn’t very different from the advice we’d have given a decade ago; it’s just that the software is becoming much smarter and more sophisticated. So should we.
Cultivate and maintain a follower community—relying less on search and more on reputation and authority
Search engine traffic is an important channel for content promotion, but many other channels are available and should be used in a thoughtful, coordinated manner. The menu should include webinars, video formats, and social media—particularly LinkedIn posts and newsletters. LinkedIn newsletters, for instance, saw a 47% increase in engagement in one recent year.7 High-touch opportunities, such as in-person conferences and panels, are another opportunity. These channels enable B2B companies to cultivate their own audience and engage with them with curated content on a consistent basis without having to rely on the vagaries of SEO. It is more narrowcast—but for many B2B companies, thoughtful engagement goes further than broad-brush traffic.
One client mentioned they were focusing more resources on implementing a subscription model for users by industry and topic—think of it as the Substack model without the fee. This higher-touch, narrowcast strategy has the added benefit of increasing the odds of audience engagement. For B2B companies, that type of promotion and connection can make a huge difference in the return on investment.
2025 may look like a year of tighter budgets and tired teams, but it’s also a huge opportunity to reinvigorate your content strategy and operation. By maximizing time and resources on a few key areas this year, you can come out ahead and be more energized in the process.
7 Andrew Hutchinson, “LinkedIn Rolls Out New Updates for Newsletters, Including Improved Creation and Customization Tools,” Social Media Today,
December 6, 2023.
