New Report: The State of B2B Thought Leadership in 2026
By Lee Odden
The team at TopRank Marketing and our research partner Ascend2 are happy to announce the release of a new research report.
B2B marketers are feeling the pressure to perform during a time of uncertainty and AI-powered disruption. Thought leadership has risen as a key strategy for brands to differentiate, create trust and fuel an engine of full funnel content across traditional search and social media, generative search and industry media.
While the notion of thought leadership is familiar to most B2B marketers, many view the discipline through a limited lens without clarity around tactics or measurement.
Why did we undertake new research into thought leadership? We’ve worked with our research partner Ascend2 on numerous original research projects for clients over the years. Our B2B marketing agency has itself published reports, blog posts, videos and articles, engaged in media interviews and presented at marketing conferences in multiple markets in North America and Western Europe based on insights from our own original research.
We’ve seen firsthand the difference in performance between status quo research reports and what we call “best answer” content. There’s a notable difference between content that involves influencers vs. not, and when that content is dynamic and experiential vs. when it is not. We’ve also seen what happens when thought leadership visibility is limited to brand channels and ads vs. being visible everywhere the audience can be influenced. Last, we have seen the challenges many B2B brands experience trying to pull together disparate data sources to effectively measure multi-channel thought leadership content.
Top performers’ use of thought leadership as an engine of content have been particularly effective during times of uncertainty as competition for attention increases and interest in the most trustworthy sources and solutions accelerates.
Attention is harder than ever, but it’s no longer enough. Trust and belief are what serve the expectations of more disciplined buyers.
Most B2B marketers have seen firsthand the growing importance of thought leadership for credibility with LLMs and Google as well as with industry media, influencers and B2B audiences. To better understand that importance, we partnered with Ascend2 to further investigate the intersection of how B2B marketers are using original research to fuel their thought leadership and the intersection with influence and content.
We surveyed just under 800 B2B marketers in the U.S. and U.K. where 81% were in senior marketing leadership roles. B2B industries represented include technology and software, manufacturing, professional services, financial services, construction and real estate, healthcare and marketing / advertising. We discovered that the value and perception of thought leadership is very high and yet significant gaps exist between top performers and all others.
Key findings from The State of B2B Thought Leadership in 2026:
97% of B2B marketers say thought leadership is critical to full-funnel success, and yet only 43% extend it beyond acquisition to engage and retain customers post-sale.
93% of B2B marketers using original research based content feel that it is effective at driving engagement and leads. 48% feel it is very effective. Original research is an essential part of effective content for marketing …read more
Source:: Top Rank Blog
