Pistachio
01Founder voice
A founder posting their own thinking each week gives buyers a person to trust before they ever talk to sales.
2026 B2B Content Benchmark
How does your B2B content stack up?
The first B2B content benchmark from Pistachio. We tested 24,346 pieces of content from 134 brands against B2B content best-practices across six different layers.
yourcompany.com72/ 100
Six layers · 0 to 3
- Founder voice
- Team advocacy
- Long-form
- Blog
- Tools
24,346
pieces of content tested
across 134 B2B software brands
- 20,356LinkedIn posts
- 1,904blog posts
- 1,180videos and episodes
- 906tools and resources
Six layers of a strong B2B content strategy
Each layer is a way buyers get to know a brand before they talk to sales: through its people, the channels it owns, and content that keeps working after it's published. Together they cover the middle of the funnel, where a buyer goes from "I've heard of them" to "I trust them".
People
Buyers trust people before logos.
02Team advocacy
Every employee who posts puts the brand in front of their own network, in a voice that network already knows.
Owned channels
Reach the brand owns outright, not rents from a feed.
03Email
A list is an audience you own. No algorithm decides who sees your next send.
04Long-form
Podcasts and longer videos earn real time with buyers, the kind of attention a feed post rarely gets.
Library
Content that keeps working long after it's published.
05Blog
Posts written by named people for readers, not search engines, keep earning trust long after they go out.
06Tools
A free tool that works on the visitor's own numbers is useful on day one, and shows what the product can do.
Where the six layers fit: distribute, capture, qualify
Pistachio builds owned-media systems in three stages. Distribute puts founder and team expertise in front of the right buyers. Capture turns that attention into an audience the brand owns. Qualify finds the engaged buyers who match the ideal customer profile. The benchmark scores the first two stages from public evidence. Qualify depends on private engagement and CRM data, so it is not scored.
- 01
Distribute
Put founder and team expertise in front of the right buyers, week after week.
Scored on four layers.
- 02
Capture
Turn that attention into an audience the brand owns, with a named email list and free tools buyers use on their own numbers.
- 03
Qualify
Score the people who engage against the ideal customer profile, so sales starts with the buyers most likely to be in market.
Not scored. Qualifying runs on engagement and CRM data each brand holds privately, and the benchmark reads public evidence only.
The scorecard groups the same six layers as people, owned channels and library. Both views use the same rules and the same scores.
See how each layer is scored
Who's behind the benchmark
Isaac Peiris is the founder of Pistachio, a B2B content studio that builds owned audiences for software brands. He writes Brand Chemistry, a newsletter for marketers with 120,000+ subscribers, and is a LinkedIn Top Voice. He started in product management and growth at a B2B SaaS startup, then moved into growing media companies, launching newsletters for BuzzFeed and LadBible.
“I talk to B2B marketing leaders every week, and the same gaps come up every time. These six layers are the elements I've seen brands need for a successful full-funnel organic content engine.”
How the scores were checked
Every brand was scored against the same written rules, then the scoring itself was tested.
- 9 of 9
- calibration brands landed within one place of hand rankings.
- 90%
- of layers got the same score from a second, blind scorer. Every disagreement was one tier apart.
- Every score
- links to the posts, emails and pages it was judged on, with the date we checked.
Who's in the benchmark
134 B2B software brands, mostly venture-backed challengers based in the US, Australia and the UK. Here's how the sample breaks down.
Category
13 categories- Developer Tools & Infrastructure18
- Marketing18
- Productivity & Collaboration18
- Sales & GTM18
- Design & Content11
- Finance & Payments11
- HR & People10
- AI Agents & Automation6
- Customer Support & CX5
- Legal5
- Security & Compliance5
- Vertical Software5
- Data & Analytics4
Latest funding round
- Bootstrapped3
- Seed5
- Series A31
- Series B32
- Series C21
- Series D12
- Series E+14
- Growth round7
- Public4
- Not disclosed5
Headquarters
- United States
- 9470%
- Australia
- 1914%
- United Kingdom
- 1310%
- Other
- 86%
Headcount
- 171 to 50
- 4451 to 200
- 47201 to 1,000
- 201,001 to 5,000
- 65,001+
Questions about the benchmark
Read the full methodologyWhat is the B2B Content Benchmark?
The B2B Content Benchmark is Pistachio's study of how B2B software brands use content to earn buyer trust. We tested 24,346 pieces of public content from 134 brands across six layers: founder voice, team advocacy, email, long-form, blog and tools. Each layer is scored 0 to 3, and every score links to the posts, emails and pages behind it.
What does distribute, capture, qualify mean?
Distribute, capture, qualify is how Pistachio builds owned-media systems for B2B companies. Distribute puts founder and team expertise in front of the right buyers. Capture turns that attention into an audience the brand owns, through a newsletter and lead magnets. Qualify scores the people who engage against the ideal customer profile and tracks the result to qualified pipeline.
Which layers measure distribution, and which measure capture?
Distribution is measured by founder voice, team advocacy, long-form and blog. Capture is measured by email and tools. Qualify is not scored, because it runs on engagement and CRM data each brand holds privately.
How are brands scored?
AI agents score every brand against the same written rulebook (spec v7, 22 Oct 2026). Each layer gets a tier from 0 to 3, and the total score is tiers reached out of 18, as a percentage. A blind second scorer re-scored 12 brands and matched 54 of 60 layers (90%), and every disagreement was one tier apart.
What doesn't the benchmark measure?
It doesn't judge how good the content is. It doesn't see reach, followers or engagement, search rankings, paid media, or whether content creates pipeline. Scores are a snapshot as of 20 to 22 Oct 2026, read from public evidence only.
How do I see my brand's result?
Enter your work email on this page. If your company's website domain matches a scored brand, you see that brand's report with its evidence. Any other email opens the full benchmark.
Find more B2B brands doing content well
The Owned Media Directory is a running list of brands that run their own newsletters, podcasts and shows, from Gong and HubSpot to Stripe and a16z. Every entry is tagged by channel, origin and industry.
See where your brand stands.
Your own result if we have scored you, and the full benchmark either way.