A report from SEO specialists Backlinko analyzed 502 B2B companies to understand their approach to content marketing.

Here are some of the most exciting discoveries the report made and what we can learn about the B2B marketing method's future.

72% of B2B companies have a blog

Almost three-quarters of B2B businesses have a blog as their hub for their content marketing efforts, while 28% seem to be putting little effort into their content marketing. 

B2B decision-makers typically consume 13 pieces of content during the buying cycle; according to B2B content professionals FocusVision, most of this content comes from the vendor's website. Having a centralised hub for your content is more important than ever for a B2B business.

38% of B2B content is educational

B2B content is now primarily produced to educate an audience. However, most commonly, B2B businesses use a mix of content intentions to achieve the best results. 51% of respondents used the mixed approach.

Only 8% of respondents used their blog purely for PR and news-based stories. B2B businesses realize that to build up an audience through their content, they need to ensure their content provides value to the customer. The report proves this, which shows educational blogs receive 52% more engagement than company-focused content.

Long-form content performs better in the B2B space

The report found that the best-performing organic posts were 855 words long. The top 10% of the content in terms of social media shares averaged 1,116 words, while the bottom 10% averaged 679 words.

Of course, if the content is long for the sake of it, it will most likely not follow the trend; the content still needs to be high quality to perform. However, this data suggests that if you plan to produce B2B content, it needs to be longer.

23% of B2B content is produced without a call to action

Despite the importance of adding CTA's to your content, almost one-quarter of respondents chose not to. The most popular CTA used was related articles at 39%, with subscribe to our newsletter at 35%, no CTA was the third most popular choice.

Although it seems the majority of B2B content producers understand the importance of keeping your audience engaged and trickling down the marketing funnel, there are still many that do not see its significance.

To read the full report, click here.

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