B2B Content Marketing Analysis

2021 B2B Content Marketing Analysis  

We have recently analyzed 600 B2B enterprises to understand the approach of their content marketing. We have specifically looked at the following key marketing approaches that work best in the B2B space: 

• How many B2B enterprises are having blogs on their website? 
• The type of content/blog they are publishing?  
• The amount of traffic B2B blogs received each month? 
• The key elements of best performing B2B content 

Here is our discovery 

Following is the summary of our findings: 

1. 72% of B2B enterprises are having blogs on their website. The rest of the 28% of enterprises are not having blogs. 

2. 8% of the B2B enterprises use blogs only to share company-focused PR style content. 

3. B2B blogs that create content about education are receiving 52% more organic traffic than the websites which publish content just about their enterprise. 

4. 29% of the B2B enterprises have allowed the option to comment on their blog posts. 

5. The most popular key point in B2B content is to highlight ‘’relevant posts” or “relevant content”. 

6. 35% of the enterprises have used “subscribe to the newsletter” as a call to action on their blogs. 

7. 24% of the companies use the pop-up options on their blog. 

8. Average 285 organic visitors are received by B2B blogs each month. 

9. Best performing B2B blogs posts get an average of 100 shares on social media and 50 organic visitors per month. 

72% of B2B Enterprises have a Blog 

Our research found that around 6 out of 8 B2B enterprises have a blog. 

The rest of our 170 out of 600 (28.3%) B2B enterprises do not have blogs. 

In most enterprises, their blog is the main section of the content marketing efforts, and a key source of organic traffic. 

Aside from a blog, the research strongly suggests that 28% of the B2B enterprises are making small investments in their content marketing. However, the majority of the B2B enterprises are invested in content marketing and SEO. 

A fair number of B2B enterprises are either not using the content as part of their marketing approach, or their content marketing is happening off-site (with social media networks including LinkedIn).  It’s also good to know about the SEO trends to boost your rankings in 2021.

The rest of this report focuses on the B2B enterprises that do use blogging as part of their content marketing strategy. 

60% of B2B Enterprises Use WordPress CMS 

Across 360 SaaS enterprises with existing blogs, we have identified 25 types of content management systems in usage. The best choice among them was WordPress, used by 61% of enterprises.  

Note: We were not able to fully discover the CMS usage by 53 of the enterprises on our list (10.5%). These are possibly custom-built solutions or not-so-popular CMSs. 

According to BuiltWith, WordPress is the World’s most popular CMS. 

So, the fact WordPress came out on the top shouldn’t come as a surprise. 

However, in 60% of all B2B blogs, it is really interesting to know how dominant WordPress is in the B2B world. The second most popular CMS was HubSpot, it was used by 9% of the enterprises we analyzed. 

38% of B2B Enterprises Blogs Publish Content to Educate their Audience 

Across the enterprises we analyzed, there were 4 distinct use cases for enterprise blogs: 

1. Enterprise News:  This type of blog focuses on the enterprise and its products. 

2. Educational Content: This type of blog is used to provide helpful content/information to find solutions to problems for visitors.  

3. Mixed: This type of company shares press and educational content under one roof.  

4. Industry News: This type of blog focuses on sharing news related to some industry. 

Educational Blogs Receive 52% More Organic Traffic Than Enterprise-Focused Blogs 

The B2B Content Marketing Analysis found that educational blogs get 52% more organic traffic than PR-style and enterprise news content: 

This finding isn’t really surprising, the educational content is more likely to rank for a wider variety of keywords. On the other hand, the content that is being published for enterprise news then it is going to be ranked only for enterprise name and a handful of terms. 

29% of B2B Blogs Allow Visitors to Leave Comments 

Our B2B Content Marketing Analysis found that only 29% of the B2B blogs we analyzed allow visitors to leave comments. 

Allowing the comments isn’t the best practice for blogs anymore. There is a need for research if comments can lead to more site engagement, however, the data is not clear yet on whether comments actually generate more traffic and links. 

Comments also come at a cost: According to our data, most B2B enterprises prefer to run their blogs without comments. 

65% of B2B Blogs Use Stock Images 

65% of the blogs we analyzed used stock images as their featured image. Abut 14% used no images and only 21% of the blogs used custom images for their posts. 

Stock images are an easy way for busy content managers to add visuals to their posts. However, during B2B Content Marketing Analysis, we analyzed that the same stock images crop up multiple times on different blogs. On the other hand, it is impossible to draw wide-sweeping guidelines based on a single SEO experiment, it’s fair to say that custom-made images can help blog content stand out. Which possibly can make creating unique images worth their investment regardless of any potential SEO benefit.