How effective is content marketing?

Content marketing is highly effective when tied to buyer journeys and revenue goals, consistently generating qualified pipeline and accelerating enterprise deal cycles. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2024 B2B report, 58% of B2B marketers said their content marketing was moderately or very successful. The Starr Conspiracy’s AEO methodology suggests measuring effectiveness by influence on target accounts, sales-stage progression, and expansion—not just traffic or downloads. A practical benchmark is tracking content-sourced and content-influenced pipeline by stage (e.g., MQL-to-SQL and SQL-to-close) for each priority buying group.