An easy-to-read review of 17 B2B marketing studies summarizing 2025

Insights from studies and surveys on trust, budgets, brand, leadgen, buyer behavior, marketing measurement, CMOs and the marketing team

Regular readers know I spend a lot of time reviewing market research studies and surveys throughout the year.

It’s a useful way to stay on top of developments in marketing and to see what your peers think is working and isn’t.

At the end of the year, I round up some of the studies I looked at in one cliff-notes-style post like this one. Here’s a look at a handful I covered throughout 2025.

1. We market in an age of distrust

Marketing and comms put most of its emphasis on reach when we’d be better served by putting the emphasis on being believed; here’s why:

Just 23% of Americans trust their government, according to the Partnership for Public Service;

Just 36% of Americans trust the media, according to Gallup;

Trust in science remains at all-time low, post-pandemic, according to Pew;

Less than one-third of employees feel trusted by their boss, according to Korn Ferry; and conversely, less than half of business leaders trust their employees;

Customers are more likely to trust other customers(50%), employees (17%) than they are social media influencers (10%), journalists (10%), celebrities (7%) and executives (3%);

Prospects and customers are distrustful of the claims B2B marketingmakes in content; and

With specific respect to technology, 73% of buyers say “most vendors fall short” of the honesty mark.

Related: 10 statistics that drive home why business needs to refocus on trust

2. PR can improve measurement by aligning with sales and marketing

Nearly 7 in 10 (68%) of B2B marketing and PR professionals believe PR efforts make a revenue contribution. However, many struggle to prove it empirically.

The vast majority of respondents (90%) say their organization would see a greater yield from PR if it were better integrated with their sales and marketing efforts. Doing so may help with the measurement challenges.

3. PR desperately needs to invest in professional development

A PRSA survey last year suggested just 1 out of every 100 PR and comms professionals invest in their own professional development with any sort of cadence or frequency.

The survey asked, “How often do you invest in your own professional development?” The responses tallied up as follows:

.01% of respondents said, “once a month;”
0% of respondents said, “once a quarter”;
33% of respondents said, “a couple times of year”;
33% of respondents said, “once a year”;
33% of respondents said, “almost never.”

I find it stunning that just one out of every 100 PR and comms professionals invests in their own professional development with any sort of cadence or frequency.

4. Longer, more frequent blog posts tend to perform better

The trade publication MarketingProfs recently reported on an annual survey of bloggers, which is now in its 12th year and polled 800 of them this year, found that fewer bloggers are publishing long-form content.

Yet fewer is not the same as few. More than six in 10 (63%) published pieces are 1,000 words or longer. Those bloggers who do publish long posts are also more likely to report “strong results.”

I’ve written about this study many times over the years and this finding is the same. The correlation between long posts and strong results is always high.

Length isn’t the only characteristic associated with strong results, either. The same survey of bloggers found that frequency of publication also drives strong results.

Just under six in 10 (59%) of bloggers who publish weekly or more report strong results. The number tops 80% if the cohort that publishes “several per month” is included in the count.

5. SaaS companies that invest in marketing grow faster

There’s a correlation between the overall growth rate of SaaS companies and their investment in marketing.

That’s my interpretation of data stemming from the 2025 Private B2B SaaS Company Growth Rate Benchmarks by SaaS Capital, which lends venture debt.

This one line stood out to me:

“Equity-backed companies report spending 89% more on sales and 100% more on marketing than bootstrapped companies.”

6. Marketing budgets recover modestly in 2025

Marketing budgets are beginning to inch up again. It’s good to see because it’s long overdue.

The most recent edition of The CMO Survey by Duke’s Fuqua School of Business shows marketing budgets have clawed some more pennies into their budget:

As a percentage of company revenue, marketing budgetsrose to 9.4% – up from 7.7% last fall – across all business types.

According to the survey:

“Overall marketing spending increased by 3.3% over the prior 12 months, with digital marketing spending up 7.3%.”

The survey also forecasts that spending will increase throughout 2025:

“Marketers predict stronger budget growth, with 8.9% increase in overall marketing spending and 11.9% growth in digital marketing spending over the next year [2026].”

7. 2025 marketing budgets bode well for 2026

CMSWire polled 515 marketing leaders who are 100% “responsible for leading all or parts of their organization’s marketing function.”

Some 67% of respondents said the budget has increased over the last year. This includes about one in four (23%) who indicated their budget grew “significantly.”

The optimistic outlook for marketing budgets looks solid moving forward as well. More than eight in 10 respondents (84%) said they expect their marketing budget to increase next year too[ 2026].

8. Balancing trust building with lead generation

“How do marketers balance trust-building with immediate lead generation?

That’s a question a consultancy called The Marketing Geeks put to 300 marketers in December of 2024. The results of the survey suggest that many are coming to believe trust has an increasingly important role in demand generation (demand gen).

The final report produced findings like the following:

60% of CMOs and marketing VPs “identified trust-building strategies as essential for long-term success”;

Likewise, 60% of demand gen managers aim to earn trust through “customer testimonials” because they believe testimonials build credibility; and

“65% of respondents rated educational content as ‘very important’ for audience engagement, highlighting the demand for trust-building and value-driven strategies.”

In fact, the word “trust” appears 20 times in a 20-page report. It’s good that trust is back in fashion for demand generation at the strategic level – but we’ve got to put those words into action across all marcom tactics too

9. Data to guide your approach to gated content

Netline, which develops marketing software for lead generation, is out with the latest edition of its annual data report. It’s based on data processed through their software in 2024.

The time that elapses between registering for gated content and reading, viewing or listening to it continues to grow: the study puts it at 39 hours;

Demand for AI content spiked in 2024 by 186%;

Ebooks account for the vast majority of download assets; and

66% of prospects that registered and downloaded content won’t be ready for a purchase for more than a year.

10. How many ‘touches’ does it take to turn a prospect into a lead

A 2025 study by Focus Digital found that, on average, it takes 28.87 interactions to close a customer:

Low-value transactions, defined as less than $100 in value, require 6.89 touches;
High-value transactions, defined as greater than $100,000 in value, require far more: 46.89.

A separate study, based on behavioral data, found it requires an average of 266 touches to close a deal from start to finish. The vendor breaks this out into segments:

71 touches to make an MQL;
96 touches to turn an MQL into an SQL; and
99 touches to close an SQL.

11. B2B prospects avoid sales conversations

A Forrester survey finds 92% of B2B prospects start evaluation solutions with one vendor in mind; 41% have a single preference from the get-go.

Gartner says 61% B2B buyers want to avoid talking to sales.

Why?

The survey offers an educated guess: “69% of B2B buyers report inconsistencies between information on the sales organization’s website and that provided by sellers.”

Related: B2B tech vendors that hide pricing may never make a prospect’s short list

12. Search marketing performs best when a brand is already familiar

Page One Power surveyed 1,000 Americans to understand the impact of brand and trust in search results. Among the findings was this nugget:

“59% of Americans click results from brands they know, while less than one-third choose the top-ranked result. That means users are twice as likely to trust brand recognition over algorithms — perhaps a response to growing skepticism toward search engines.”

Zero-click searches are on of the biggest problems in search marketing today, so this helps, yet there is divergence on what prompts them to click:

“Baby boomers (50%) and Gen X (52%) are drawn to compelling headlines, while millennials (55%) and Gen Z (63%) favor high star ratings and positive reviews, showing that younger generations rely more on social proof when searching.”

13. Generative AI is changing buyer habits

The way buyers find and evaluate information is changing with generative AI, yet many B2B marketing teams are still optimizing for traditional organic search engines:

Anywhere from 25% to 40% of searches are zero-click;
“Just 19% of mobile searchers and 7.4% of desktop searchers clicked on a citation”;
“The median scroll depth inside AI Overviews is 30%; and
Nearly nine in 10 B2B buyers (89%) are using generative AI “at every stage of the purchase process,” according to Forrester.

Related: What marketing and comms *really* need to watch how generative AI is changing *behavior*

14. Top reasons CMOs get fired

If you had to guess, what is the top reason marketing leaders get fired? My hypothesis has always centered around measurement and the perennial challenge of proving value.

Yet that’s not what a recent survey by the tech analyst firm Gartner found. The company polled 123 CEOs and CFOs and asked them to rank probable reasons for firing the top marketing leader – in this case the chief marketing officer or CMO.

The results stacked up this way:

69% said the CMO failed to deliver promised results;
58% said the CMO neglected to adapt to market changes;
54% said the CMO did not earn the respect of C-Suite peers;
41% said the CMO failed to communicate a vision;
33% said the CMO didn’t relate marketing metrics to business priorities;
22% said the CMO didn’t continuously improve the function; and
20% said the CMO took on responsibilities beyond their skill set.

Did you notice that measurement is the fifth-place reason?!

And it’s only true for a minority – about one-third – of respondents. The biggest reasons marketing leaders get fired tend to center around communication and collaboration.

Marketing Charts, where I first spotted this survey, summed that point up aptly:

“…the results show the need for CMOs to improve their relationships with other management, as fewer than 4 in 10 CEOs and CFOs believed that their CMO consistently collaborates effectively with other senior leaders.”

15. Turnover on the marketing team harms brands

When a marketing team turns over a team member, two things happen: 1) the value of the brand falls; and 2) customers hear more negative news about the company.

This conclusion stems from a new academic study published in 2025:

Adverse brand effects of senior marketing turnover:

“We find a highly significant effect of senior marketing executive turnover on both measures, with one senior marketing executive turnover leading to declines of 0.041, or roughly 6.1% of a median within-firm standard deviation, in brand buzz, and declines of 0.022, or roughly 2.4% of a median within-firm standard deviation, in brand equity.”

Junior marketing turnover adversely impacts marketing leaders:

“We find a small, but significant effect of juniors on the short-term measure of brand buzz…but we find null impacts of junior turnover on brand equity…[and] that some of the negative impacts of senior executive turnover are partially driven by their indirect effect on the turnover of lower-level employees.”

16. Marketers lack measurement expertise

Marketers don’t seem to be equipped to measure marketing, according to a piece by Ayaz Nanji for MarketingProfs. He reported on a survey of 357 marketing decision-makers by Ascend2 , which found the top challenge marketers struggle with in measurement is “a lack of expertise.”

17. Talking about ‘pain points’ turns customers off, study says

Sopro says it surveyed “404 senior B2B decision makers” and analyzed “data from 97.9 million emails and 21.6 million multi-channel touchpoints.” It also surveyed people who perform sales outreach.

As part of the study, they analyzed the messaging on a thematic level to understand the effect those themes had on prospects. Messaging tones and themes that had a positive impact on leads included the following: