B2B marketing, measured.
The numbers working marketers reach for in board decks and budget arguments, hung as wall labels. Every measurement carries its source and the date it was last verified. No number hangs without both.
The money
What companies actually spend, and how the budget mood runs.
Marketing budgets have flatlined at 7.7% of overall company revenue, unchanged from the year before.
B2B product companies spend 6.4% of revenue on marketing, against 15.5% for their B2C counterparts.
Nearly half of B2B marketers expect their content budget to increase for 2026. Only 8% expect a cut.
The buyer
Who is actually in market, and how little of the journey you get to see.
At any given time, about 95% of your category's buyers are not in market. Roughly 5% are buying in a given quarter, which is why the brand has to be known before the window opens.
81% of buyers choose a vendor before sales contact. By the time someone fills out your form, most of the decision is made.
B2B buyers spend just 17% of their buying time meeting potential suppliers. The rest goes to independent research your content either shows up in or does not.
A typical B2B purchase is shaped by six to ten stakeholders, each gathering their own information before a supplier ever hears from them.
The search
What happens to attention when the answer engine speaks first.
When Google shows an AI summary, users click a traditional result on just 8% of searches, nearly half the 15% rate without one.
Users click a source link inside the AI summary itself just 1% of the time. Being cited is the new being ranked, and it pays in authority, not clicks.
The channels
What good looks like, channel by channel, so your numbers have company.
The median landing page converts 6.6% of visitors. SaaS and technology pages run lowest at 3.8%.
The average email open rate runs about 21%, with click-through near 4%. Anything above that is earning its keep.
LinkedIn company pages average about 2.5% engagement per post. Native documents run highest at about 7%.
60% of webinar registrants actually attend, and on-demand viewing accounts for half of all attendance. The replay is not an afterthought; it is half the audience.
The practice
How the trade is actually doing, by its own admission.
Only 59% of B2B marketers rate their content marketing as effective, and just 12% call it highly effective.
95% of B2B marketers now use AI-powered marketing applications. The question stopped being whether and became how well.
Two thirds of marketers name data integration the biggest challenge in their technology stack.
HOW THE WALL STAYS HONEST
Every measurement traces to a linkable primary source, named on the label with its sample size where the source states one. A number without a source does not hang, whatever it would prove.
The chip on each label flips to LAST VERIFIED once a person has checked the number against the source itself, and the register behind this wall is edited the day a source updates. Where a measurement appears in the collective’s own published work, the label links the work. The wall cites; the gallery argues.