B2B Marketing Statistics 2026: 100 Verified Stats + Myths

B2B marketing statistics in 2026 describe buyers who want less of your sales team and more of your content. Two thirds of B2B buyers now prefer to buy without a rep, almost all of them use AI somewhere in the process, and the average purchase involves 13 internal stakeholders who mostly never speak to a seller.

This page collects 100 figures on B2B buying, budgets, content, video, LinkedIn, AI, demand generation, email, search and measurement. Every number was checked against its original publisher in October 2026: Gartner, Forrester, McKinsey, the Content Marketing Institute, Edelman and LinkedIn, plus vendor research that is labelled as such. We also checked eight of the most quoted B2B "facts", including the claim that buyers are 57% of the way through before they talk to sales.

B2B marketing statistics at a glance

• 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience, up from 61% a year earlier (Gartner)
• 13 internal stakeholders and 9 external influencers in the average buying decision (Forrester)
• 94% of business buyers use AI during the buying process (Forrester)
• 7.8% of company revenue goes to marketing in 2026 (Gartner)
• 15.3% of marketing budgets is now allocated to AI (Gartner)
• Only 12% of B2B marketers rate their marketing as highly effective (Content Marketing Institute)
• 95% of the time, buyers choose a vendor from their day-one shortlist (6sense)
• 8 in 10 B2B teams say LinkedIn is their main video channel (Wistia)

B2B buyer behaviour statistics

From Gartner's buyer surveys, including its 2026 sales survey of 646 B2B buyers:

1. 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience.
2. That is up from 61% in the previous year's survey of 632 buyers.
3. 45% of B2B buyers used AI during a recent purchase.
4. 70% prefer a completely digital, self-service buying experience.
5. 69% prefer to validate AI-generated insights with a sales rep, so reps still matter at the checking stage.
6. Buyers use an average of seven information sources per purchase.
7. 73% actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.

From Forrester's State of Business Buying 2026, based on nearly 18,000 business buyers:

8. The average B2B buying decision involves 13 internal stakeholders and 9 external influencers.
9. Buying groups double in size, from 7 to 14, for purchases with generative AI features.
10. 94% of business buyers use AI during their buying process.
11. Procurement is a decision-maker in 53% of buying cycles.
12. 78% of buyers making purchases over $10 million run a trial first, and more than 60% of all buyers use trials.

From vendor research by G2 and 6sense. Both sell products connected to these findings:

13. 8 in 10 software buyers have sourced recommendations from AI tools such as ChatGPT (G2, 2026, 1,000+ buyers).
14. Nearly half of software buyers had a CFO veto an already-approved deal in the last year (G2).
15. Review sites (38%) narrowly overtook AI chatbots (37%) as the top source for building a shortlist (G2, which runs a review site).
16. The balance between independent research and seller engagement shifted from 70/30 to 60/40 (6sense, 2025, about 4,000 buyers).
17. Buyers now first contact sellers 61% of the way through the journey, down from 69% (6sense).
18. The average B2B buying cycle fell from 11.3 to 10.1 months (6sense).
19. Buyers pick a vendor from their day-one shortlist 95% of the time (6sense).

From consultancy and thought leadership research:

20. B2B buyers use an average of ten channels and split their interactions roughly in thirds across in-person, remote and self-service (McKinsey B2B Pulse 2026, nearly 4,000 decision-makers).
21. More than 40% of B2B deals stall because the buying group is not aligned (Edelman and LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Report, 2025, nearly 2,000 professionals).
22. 71% of "hidden buyers", the finance, legal and procurement people in a deal, have little or no interaction with sales teams (Edelman and LinkedIn).

B2B marketing budget statistics

From Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey of 401 marketing leaders. It skews to large enterprises and covers B2B and B2C:

23. Marketing budgets are 7.8% of company revenue in 2026, from 7.7% in 2025.
24. 56% of CMOs say they lack the budget to deliver their 2026 strategy.
25. Awareness and conversion account for 62.6% of media spend.
26. Digital makes up more than two thirds of media investment, up 18% since 2024.
27. Loyalty and retention spend fell 29% since 2024, to under 15% of media.
28. Labour rose from 21.9% to 24.5% of the marketing budget.
29. Budget and resource constraints are the top challenge for 63% of CMOs (Gartner, late 2025).

From the Content Marketing Institute's B2B research for 2026, based on 1,015 B2B marketers:

30. 45% of B2B marketers expect to increase investment in AI tools, against only 9% in people.
31. 78% of B2B marketers allocate budget to experiential marketing such as events.

From Wistia's 2026 State of Video Report, based on 900+ professionals:

32. Only 40% of companies plan to raise video budgets in 2026, while 46% will hold them flat.
33. Almost 40% of companies spent under $5,000 producing video last year.

B2B content marketing statistics

34. Only 12% of B2B marketers rate their marketing as highly effective (Content Marketing Institute).
35. 97% of B2B marketers have a content strategy (Content Marketing Institute).
36. 89% personalise content, but 59% only at a basic level (Content Marketing Institute).
37. 95% of hidden buyers say strong thought leadership makes them more receptive to sales outreach (Edelman and LinkedIn).
38. 71% of hidden buyers say thought leadership is better than traditional marketing at showing a company's value (Edelman and LinkedIn).
39. 79% of hidden buyers would advocate in an RFP for a vendor that publishes consistent thought leadership (Edelman and LinkedIn).
40. 63% of hidden buyers spend more than an hour a week reading thought leadership (Edelman and LinkedIn).
41. Website, blog and SEO is the top ROI channel, named by 27% of marketers (HubSpot State of Marketing 2026, 3,400+ marketers).

B2B video marketing statistics

From Wistia's 2026 report, whose audience skews B2B:

42. 8 in 10 B2B teams say LinkedIn is their primary video channel.
43. 81% of teams share video on LinkedIn, against 76% on YouTube.
44. Customer testimonial videos are planned by 47% of companies, up from 17% in 2023.
45. 76% of companies make at least one video a month.
46. 57% of teams spend more time creating video than promoting it.
47. Videos of 30 to 60 minutes drive the highest click-through in Wistia's data.

From HubSpot and other sources:

48. The three content formats marketers most often credit with ROI are all video, led by short-form at 49% (HubSpot).
49. Short-form video is the most-used content format, used by 60% of marketers (HubSpot).
50. 82% of video marketers say video gives them a good ROI, down from 93% a year earlier (Wyzowl, 266 respondents).
51. 85% of video marketers say video generates leads, and 83% say it directly increases sales (Wyzowl).
52. 63% of video marketers have used AI video tools, up from 51% a year earlier (Wyzowl).
53. 89% of consumers say video quality affects their trust in a brand (Wyzowl).
54. 63% would most like to learn about a product through a short video, against 12% for articles (Wyzowl).
55. 65% of viewers watch business videos under one minute to the end, against 20% for videos over 20 minutes (Vidyard, 940,000+ videos, 2024).
56. LinkedIn video viewership grew 30% year on year (LinkedIn, 2025, platform data).

For the full B2B video dataset, see our B2B video marketing statistics and product demo video statistics.

LinkedIn and social media statistics for B2B

57. 42% of marketers use LinkedIn, up 11% from 2024 (HubSpot).
58. 76% of B2B marketers rate LinkedIn the top channel for thought leadership (Content Marketing Institute).
59. 67% of teams that repurpose video post the clips on LinkedIn (Wistia).
60. 70% of video marketers use LinkedIn, and 50% call it effective (Wyzowl).

AI in B2B marketing statistics

61. CMOs allocate 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI (Gartner, 2026).
62. 70% of CMOs want to be AI leaders, but only 30% are ready to scale AI (Gartner).
63. CMOs expect AI automation of marketing work to rise from 16% to 36% by 2028 (Gartner).
64. 81% of marketing technology leaders are piloting or have implemented AI agents (Gartner).
65. 75% of marketers have adopted AI, but only 13% use agentic AI (Salesforce State of Marketing, 4,450 marketers).
66. 78% of marketers need more personalised content than they can produce (Salesforce).
67. 95% of B2B marketers' organisations use AI-powered applications (Content Marketing Institute).
68. AI improved productivity for 89% of B2B marketers, but content performance for only 39% (Content Marketing Institute).
69. Nearly 75% of marketers use AI to create media, including video (HubSpot).
70. 22% of B2B organisations have fully implemented generative AI, up from 19% (McKinsey).
71. B2B market leaders are twice as likely to have adopted generative AI, 44% against 22% (McKinsey).

B2B demand generation and ABM statistics

72. Nearly 70% of marketers say leads now arrive later in the buying journey because buyers research with AI first (HubSpot).
73. 49% of B2B marketers use account-based marketing: 19% combined with account-based experience and 30% ABM alone (Content Marketing Institute).
74. Companies where sales leads ABM are more likely to report top revenue growth, 43% against 31% (McKinsey).
75. B2B market leaders are four times as likely to use one-to-one personalisation (McKinsey).
76. Buying-group alignment delivers up to 2 to 3 times higher win rates in Demandbase's 2026 ABM benchmark of 1,452 customer accounts. This is the vendor's own platform data.
77. Integrated CRM, marketing automation and predictive stacks reach 22%+ account-to-pipeline conversion, against 14% for others (Demandbase).

B2B email marketing statistics

78. 78% of email teams now deploy an email in three days or less, where 62% took two weeks or more in 2024 (Litmus State of Email 2026, 500 marketers). A second Litmus page gives 76% for the same measure.
79. Advanced AI adopters are 75% more likely to achieve email ROI above 45 to 1 (Litmus).
80. Email ties with organic social as the second most-used channel, at 40% (HubSpot).
81. About 75% of marketers will maintain or increase email investment in 2026 (HubSpot).
82. Email is the top channel for customer loyalty and the fifth most impactful overall (Gartner, 2025).

SEO and AI search statistics for B2B

83. AI Overviews are associated with a 58% lower click-through rate for the top result (Ahrefs, 300,000 keywords, all industries).
84. The informational share of queries showing AI Overviews fell from 91.3% to 57.1% in 2025, meaning more commercial searches now get them (Semrush, 10 million+ keywords).
85. 72% of B2B tech buyers have encountered Google AI Overviews (TrustRadius).
86. 90% of those buyers click through to sources cited in AI Overviews (TrustRadius).
87. Nearly 30% of marketers report less search traffic because of AI tools (HubSpot).
88. Only 62% of B2B marketers say they understand organic search challenges, against 70% in B2C (HubSpot).
89. 88% of marketers are already optimising for AI-generated answers (Salesforce).
90. 92% of B2B professionals who use AI say it has shaped their vendor shortlist (Semrush, 2026, US).

B2B marketing measurement statistics

91. Lead quality and MQLs are the top success metric for 40% of marketers (HubSpot).
92. Only about 8.4% say email opens and click rates are their most important metrics (HubSpot).
93. 80% of B2B marketers measure thought leadership by engagement, and 63% by business impact (Content Marketing Institute).
94. 17% of marketers do not track how much they spend on video (Wyzowl).
95. Only 32% of video marketers measure video ROI through bottom-line sales (Wyzowl).
96. Only 26% of marketers are completely satisfied with how their data is unified (Salesforce).
97. 96% of B2B marketers expected to see the main effect of their advertising within two weeks, according to LinkedIn B2B Institute research from around 2021, despite most buyers being out of market at any moment.
98. 60% of B2B market leaders report double-digit revenue growth, against 21% of laggards (McKinsey).
99. Measuring marketing ROI is marketers' top challenge in 2026, at 33% (HubSpot).
100. B2B decision-makers consume 26% more video on LinkedIn than a year earlier (LinkedIn, 2025, platform data).

B2B marketing myths we checked

"B2B buyers are 57% of the way through before contacting sales." This comes from CEB, now Gartner, in 2012: about 1,500 customers of 22 suppliers were "nearly 60%" through the purchase process before their first serious engagement with sales. It measures progress through the process, not time or a decision already made, and it is 14 years old. 6sense's 2025 figure is 61%.

"Buyers are 70% (or 80%) through the journey before talking to sellers." This is 6sense's older figure. Its 2025 report puts first contact at 61%, down from 69%.

"Buyers spend only 17% of their time with suppliers." Accurate but dated. Gartner's research from around 2019 found 17% of buying time goes to meeting all potential suppliers combined, so time with any one rep may be only 5% or 6%. Gartner's original page has since been removed.

"The 95/5 rule: only 5% of B2B buyers are in market." From Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for the LinkedIn B2B Institute, 2021. It assumes buyers switch providers about every five years, so roughly 5% are in market each quarter. Dawes calls it a heuristic, not a precise statistic.

"It takes 7 touches to convert a prospect." No primary study could be found. Demandbase's 2026 data points the other way: buying groups receiving 180 to 190 touches reached a 94% conversion rate.

"80% of B2B decision-makers prefer articles over ads." Credited to a 2012 Roper Public Affairs study through a 2015 roundup. No primary report, sample or method could be found. Do not use it.

"Viewers retain 95% of a message from video against 10% from text." LinkedIn's own blog repeats it without a source, and the agency report it is usually credited to does not contain it. Treat it as unverified.

"Video makes up 82% of internet traffic." This was a 2018 Cisco forecast for 2022, measuring bandwidth that is mostly consumer streaming. It is not a current measurement and says nothing about B2B.

What the B2B marketing statistics mean

Three things stand out. First, buyers have moved most of the buying process away from sales. They prefer rep-free buying, use AI and an average of seven sources, and bring 13 people into the decision, most of whom never meet a seller. Whatever the buying group sees without you in the room, your content, demos and videos, does the selling.

Second, budgets are flat while expectations rise. CMOs spend 7.8% of revenue on marketing, more than half say it is not enough, and investment is going to AI tools far faster than to people. Most teams are being asked to produce more content with the same headcount.

Third, video sits where those two pressures meet. The top three ROI formats are all video, LinkedIn is the main B2B video channel, and most teams spend more time making video than promoting it. The teams that win keep output consistent without adding staff. Our attention span statistics cover how fast buyers decide what to watch.

How we verified these B2B marketing statistics

Every figure was taken from the publisher's own release, report page or blog, not a roundup. Gartner, Forrester and McKinsey publish full reports to clients only, so their figures come from public press releases and summaries. Several widely shared B2B statistics were left out because we could not find them at the source they are credited to.

A few cautions. Many figures come from companies that sell related products, including G2, 6sense, Demandbase, HubSpot, Salesforce, Wistia, Wyzowl and LinkedIn, and are labelled. Gartner's CMO data skews to large enterprises and covers B2C as well as B2B. Wyzowl's sample is small. Older figures, such as the 95/5 research, are dated in the text.

Where Pixel8 fits

Pixel8 Production is a video editing agency for B2B, SaaS and agency teams. We do not film. We edit the footage you already have, webinars, demos, interviews and recordings, into long-form videos, LinkedIn clips and Shorts on a monthly plan. Pricing is a $900 one-time trial, then $2,000 to $3,200 per month; see pricing.