We all know how powerful content marketing and thought leadership are – after all, research shows that 70% of buyers prefer to learn about a product or service through an article over an advertisement. And in our 2025 US Agency Benchmarking Report, we ranked the leading B2B content marketing agencies in the country. Check out our breakdown.
Before we crack on, we should mention how we collect data for our specialisms. In our survey of 29 agencies, we asked agencies to check off what services and capabilities they offered. This included everything from PR and demand generation to sales enablement and much more. After checking those off, agencies were then asked to use the same list to identify the top three specialism services they offer. Using the data from that specific question, we created specialist league tables.
For this specialism specifically, we stated it as ‘Content marketing and thought leadership services (including copywriting, storytelling, editing, video)’. This was to make it clear what was included.
When we had a look at the agencies specializing in content marketing/thought leadership, we saw that 28 out of 29 agencies (96.6%) offered these services to some capacity. When we asked agencies to narrow down the specialisms to their top three, 13 out of 29 agencies (44.8%) considered content to be a priority for them. Despite this lower percentage, it is worth noting that content marketing/thought leadership was the second most selected specialism when agencies were asked to choose their top three, indicating its relevance in the current marketing landscape.
When we spoke to David Van Schaick, our Agency Expert for Propolis, he acknowledged its place in the industry saying: “I think there’s consensus now that one of the main jobs for marketers is to be front of mind when buyers come into the market – building mental availability as it’s called. There’s also a growing recognition of the fact that the quality of attention you get from your audience matters. Performance media plays a role but the attention you get from that is very fleeting, it’s more about being physically available. Content marketing and thought leadership are one of the best options to win quality attention from your audience and build positive associations for your brand.”
Who came out supreme as the highest- earning B2B content marketing agency?
Now that we have looked at the overarching data, let’s have a look at our top five content marketing and thought leadership agencies. Just like our other league tables, agencies were ranked based on the highest gross income to the lowest. Dentsu B2B Americas came in at #1 with a gross income of $79.8 million. Rebranded from Merkle B2B, the agency also came out on top for the fastest growing agency and highest earning agency in the US. Check out the other top agencies below for more information on their services:
Our advice? Keep up with the pace of content
Interested in optimizing thought leadership within your organization? Or inspired to fast-track your content marketing strategy? Well, just as these top agencies have, you need to keep up with the ever-changing landscape when it comes to content – both in terms of format and themes.
In our report, David Jordan, CEO, Bader Rutter said: “Instead of talking endlessly about specs and features, talk about what matters to your customers. What are their challenges? What excites them? How do they make decisions? Research shows that 69% of B2B marketers plan to invest in video content in [2025], recognizing its power to captivate and inform in ways that static content cannot.”
David Van Schaick added to this narrative saying: “It’s an interesting time with these disciplines because of the influence of AI, both in how content is produced and in how people consume and interact with content. But it’s a fair bet to say that amongst the growing noise, real expertise will continue to be valued at a premium. A lot of the talk at the moment is about scaling content or automating production, but the real trick I think is to be able to consistently earn attention from your audience to stay front of mind.”
If you’re looking for more, you can check out our content marketing guide or one of our training courses.
And if that’s not enough, we highly recommend downloading our US report for an inside look into the US industry and market. Download here.
