You already know what a blog post and a webinar are. The harder question is which formats deserve your budget this quarter, and which ones will quietly eat it.
This guide covers 13 types of content marketing, with what each one is built for, what it costs to produce well, how it converts, and how to measure it. It starts with a quick comparison table and a short answer on which types drive pipeline for B2B SaaS teams, followed by a detailed section on each format with a real example.
The 13 types of content marketing at a glance
| Type | Best for | Funnel stage | Typical cost |
| Blog posts | Organic traffic and topical authority | Top, middle | $500–$3,000+ per post |
| Case studies | Converting buyers at the decision stage | Bottom | $800–$2,000 per study |
| Landing and comparison pages | Conversion and sales enablement | Bottom | $2,000–$10,000+ per page |
| Whitepapers and research reports | Authority and lead generation | Middle | $3,000–$10,000+ |
| Email newsletters | Retention, nurture, and an owned audience | All stages | $200–$800 per issue |
| Video | Awareness and product education | Top, middle | $1,000–$20,000+ per video |
| Podcasts | Authority and long-form audience building | Top, middle | $500–$3,000 per month |
| Infographics | Link building and visual distribution | Top | $500–$2,500 per piece |
| Social media content | Brand awareness and community | Top, middle | $1,500–$6,000 per month |
| Interactive content | Engagement and lead capture | Middle | $5,000–$50,000+ to build |
| Webinars | Lead generation and mid-funnel education | Middle, bottom | $1,000–$5,000 per webinar |
| eBooks | Lead capture and deeper education | Middle | $3,000–$10,000 |
| UGC and testimonials | Trust and conversion lift | Bottom, post-purchase | $500–$2,000 per program |
Costs are typical ranges for outsourced, professional-quality work. Your numbers will depend on who produces the content and how much research each piece needs.
Which types of content marketing drive pipeline for B2B SaaS?
For a B2B SaaS team with a limited budget, I’d prioritize the formats in this order.
- Bottom-of-funnel blog posts and comparison pages. They reach buyers who are already comparing tools, so they turn into demos and trials faster than anything else on this list. One article I wrote for Zapier saves the company more than $20,000 a year in ad spend, and a single listing in one of my roundups led to $36,000 in annual recurring revenue for an agency.
- Case studies and customer proof. Once buyers are close to a decision, specific results from companies like theirs help sales close.
- Expert-led articles. Interviews with your subject-matter experts give your content something competitors can’t copy, which matters more now that so much B2B SaaS content sounds the same.
- A newsletter and founder posts on LinkedIn. These build the owned audience that distributes everything above.
Infographics, gated eBooks, podcasts, and video can all work, but they’re usually a poor first bet for a small SaaS team. They cost more to sustain, and they’re further from a buying decision.
AI search points in the same direction. In the buyer prompts I track across five AI tools, the pages AI assistants name most often are specific ones that answer one question directly, which is what bottom-of-funnel pages and content built to show up in ChatGPT have in common.
1. Blog posts: best for organic traffic and topical authority
- Goal: Organic traffic and topical authority
- Funnel stage: Top and middle
- Typical cost: $500–$3,000+ per post
- Key metric: Rankings and organic traffic
Blog posts are articles published on your website and optimized for search. They’re the foundation of most content marketing programs and the usual starting point for companies new to content.
The goal is to rank for queries your buyers already search, answer those queries better than the current top results, and build enough topical authority that search engines trust your site for related queries over time.
A well-executed blog compounds in value. A post that ranks in the top three for a competitive keyword can bring in leads for two or three years without much additional investment, which is why blog content is one of the highest-ROI formats available.
What it takes to produce
Good blog posts need keyword research, competitive analysis, a clear outline, writing, editing, and SEO optimization, plus internal linking and a distribution plan.
A thorough post takes 6–12 hours of skilled work, and technical or research-heavy topics take longer. Hiring a writer who also handles keyword research and SEO saves time and usually produces better results than splitting those jobs across several people.
Publishing once and forgetting is a mistake. Blog content needs periodic updates to stay competitive, and catching content decay early is often cheaper than writing a new post.
What strong blog posts look like
Intercom built one of the most loyal audiences in SaaS by writing about product, growth, and customer service from the perspective of people who lived those problems. The Intercom blog reads like access to the team, not like marketing. Animalz did the same in content marketing, with honest, specific posts written by practitioners.
From my own work, the article I wrote for Zapier ranks for a keyword the company used to buy ads on, and a post I wrote for CoSchedule converted about 3% of its readers into email subscribers. I’ve also written for HubSpot, Vimeo, Sinch, and Softr, and you can see samples in my portfolio.
The posts that perform most consistently treat the reader like an expert, go deeper than anything else in the search results, and make the next step feel natural. That’s the standard I hold my own SEO content writing to.
Typical conversion path
Blog readers rarely convert on the first visit. The goal is to move them to a next step, like subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a resource, or reading a related post. Mid-funnel posts can link directly to product pages, service pages, or case studies.
How to measure it
Track organic rankings, organic traffic, scroll depth, internal link clicks, and newsletter sign-ups. If you have attribution set up, measure assisted revenue, since blog posts often appear in the paths of buyers who convert later.
2. Case studies: best for converting buyers at the decision stage
- Goal: Proof, conversion, and sales support
- Funnel stage: Bottom
- Typical cost: $800–$2,000 per study from a specialist writer
- Key metric: Demo requests and assisted revenue
A case study documents how a customer achieved a specific result with your product or service. It’s the most direct form of proof a company can publish and one of the most important formats for moving buyers off the fence.
A testimonial is a claim. A case study shows the problem, the approach, and the outcome in enough detail that a prospect can see themselves in the story. The people reading case studies aren’t looking to be educated. They want confirmation that your product delivers for companies like theirs.
What it takes to produce
Good case studies start with a customer interview, usually a 30–60 minute conversation that has to be scheduled, run, and turned into a clear narrative. After that come the writing, the approvals, and often a design pass, and customer approvals alone can add weeks. Case studies written from survey responses instead of interviews usually end up too generic to help.
Specialist writers typically charge $800–$2,000 for a B2B case study, depending on the interviews and approvals involved.
What strong case studies look like
The best case studies read like a profile, not a press release. They name the customer, the specific problem, the result, and why the customer chose you over the alternatives. “Increased qualified pipeline by 47% in one quarter” beats “improved business outcomes” every time.
Notion’s customer stories page leads with a named customer and a specific outcome: Remote building an IT help desk with Notion Custom Agents.
Typical conversion path
Sales teams share case studies directly in active deals, and prospects find them on a public customers page while they evaluate you on their own. End each one with a call to action to book a demo, start a trial, or talk to sales, not a link back to the blog.
How to measure it
Track page views or downloads, and how often the case study appears in the paths of closed deals. Ask your sales team which ones they send most. That’s the clearest signal of what’s working.
3. Landing pages and comparison pages: best for conversion and sales enablement
- Goal: Conversion and sales enablement
- Funnel stage: Bottom
- Typical cost: $2,000–$10,000+ per page
- Key metric: Conversion rate, demo requests, and revenue
Landing pages and comparison pages are the most directly commercial formats on this list. Landing pages convert a specific audience on a specific offer. Comparison and alternatives pages reach buyers who are actively evaluating options.
Comparison and alternatives pages are underused in B2B content marketing. Someone searching for “[competitor] alternatives” has already decided that product isn’t right for them and is looking for a replacement. Few search intents are warmer, and many companies still don’t have a page ready to capture it.
What it takes to produce
Strong landing pages need conversion copywriting, social proof, and usually design work. Every section should answer a specific objection or give a specific reason to act.
Comparison pages also need honest competitor research and SEO work to rank for the right queries, and both should be planned together. When I’m writing SaaS comparison pages as a BoFu content writer, I start with the buyer’s question and the criteria they’ll use to decide.
What strong comparison pages look like
A strong comparison page answers the buyer’s question first, compares the tools fairly, and introduces the publisher’s product only where it fits. The Make vs Zapier comparison I wrote for Softr follows that structure.
Typical conversion path
The whole page is the conversion path. Every section should move the reader closer to the main call to action, whether that’s a trial, a demo request, or a contact form. Secondary calls to action, like a newsletter or a case study, can keep visitors who aren’t ready yet.
How to measure it
Track conversion rate, rankings and organic traffic for comparison pages, demo or trial requests, and directly attributed revenue.
4. Whitepapers and research reports: best for authority and lead generation
- Goal: Authority and lead capture
- Funnel stage: Middle
- Typical cost: $3,000–$10,000+
- Key metric: Downloads, MQLs, and backlinks
Whitepapers and research reports are long, research-backed documents that take a detailed position on a business problem, trend, or decision. They’re often gated, so readers share contact details to download them, and they carry the highest perceived authority of any format here.
A whitepaper argues a point of view using existing research and expertise. A research report publishes original data, and it tends to earn far more backlinks because other writers cite it as a source. If your company has unique access to data, a research report is usually the better investment.
What it takes to produce
Whitepapers need deep research, a strong argument, and writing that respects an expert audience, plus a design pass. For a writer with subject-matter expertise, a whitepaper typically takes 20–40 hours, including research, writing, and revisions.
What strong whitepapers look like
HubSpot’s annual State of Marketing report is a well-known example. It publishes original data each year, which gives other marketers a reason to cite it. Salesloft’s guides and research hub takes the same approach for a sales audience, with reports and guides written for sellers.
The weakest whitepapers are 12-page blog posts in PDF form. A strong one takes a position, backs it with evidence, and leaves the reader with a framework they can apply.
Typical conversion path
Gated whitepapers convert at the download, and readers then enter a nurture sequence that moves them toward a demo, a trial, or a sales conversation. Some companies ungate whitepapers to maximize reach and backlinks, which makes sense when authority matters more than lead capture.
How to measure it
Track downloads, MQLs, backlinks (especially for original research), and pipeline from leads who downloaded the document and later converted.
5. Email newsletters: best for retention, nurture, and an owned audience
- Goal: Nurture, retention, and owned reach
- Funnel stage: All stages
- Typical cost: $200–$800 per issue
- Key metric: Open rate, click-through rate, and conversions
An email newsletter is a regular message sent to subscribers who opted in to receive it. Unlike every other format on this list, email is a channel your company owns outright.
Algorithm changes, platform policies, and ranking shifts can’t cut you off from your subscribers. That ownership is the strongest argument for building a list, especially as organic reach on social platforms declines.
Newsletters serve every stage of the funnel. A welcome sequence moves new subscribers toward a first conversion, a regular editorial newsletter keeps customers engaged, and a nurture sequence moves prospects toward a buying decision over weeks or months.
What it takes to produce
Consistent newsletters need consistent writing, and the editorial discipline to produce a useful issue every week or two is easy to underestimate. The other requirement is list hygiene: keeping the list clean, segmenting subscribers, and testing subject lines. A well-managed list consistently outperforms a large, neglected one.
What strong email newsletters look like
Lenny Rachitsky’s newsletter covers product management and growth, has a paid tier, and lists more than 1.2 million subscribers. It works because the content is specific, expert-level, and hard to find anywhere else. Morning Brew built an audience of millions by making business news read like a conversation.
The B2B newsletters that perform best aren’t weekly roundups of company news. They send one useful thing per issue, like an insight, a framework, or a resource that makes the subscriber glad they opened it. A content marketing consultant can help you choose a format and cadence before you commit to a schedule you can’t sustain.
Typical conversion path
Readers click through to blog posts, landing pages, or product pages from the email. A well-placed call to action at the bottom of each issue sends steady traffic to whatever you’re prioritizing that week.
How to measure it
Track open rate, click-through rate, list growth, unsubscribe rate, and revenue influenced by email.
6. Video content: best for awareness, product education, and brand recall
- Goal: Awareness, education, and brand recall
- Funnel stage: Top and middle
- Typical cost: $1,000–$20,000+ per video
- Key metric: Views, watch time, and conversions
Video is one of the most engaging formats in content marketing and one of the most expensive to produce consistently. Well-made explainer and tutorial videos can also bring in steady search traffic from YouTube.
The range inside “video” is enormous. A founder recording a 10-minute tutorial is video content, and so is a $50,000 brand film. Production quality should match where the video will be seen.
What it takes to produce
Short social videos can be shot on a phone. A product demo for a sales page benefits from professional editing and sound, and homepage or campaign videos usually need a full production crew.
The ongoing cost is the real challenge. Plenty of companies can produce one strong video, but four to eight a month at consistent quality is hard to sustain without dedicated resources.
What strong video content looks like
Wistia built a loyal audience by teaching people how to plan, produce, and distribute better video, which is the job its product supports. The Wistia blog and its video library attract the audience most likely to buy and show product expertise without a sales pitch.
Typical conversion path
YouTube videos link to landing pages in the description and pinned comments, and on-site videos end with a call to action. Product demo videos on landing pages often drive trial sign-ups directly, while educational videos usually point viewers to a newsletter or a follow-up resource.
How to measure it
Track views, watch time, click-through rate on calls to action, and the conversion rate of landing pages with video compared with those without.
7. Podcasts: best for authority, community, and long-form audience building
- Goal: Authority, community, and brand affinity
- Funnel stage: Top and middle
- Typical cost: $500–$3,000 per month
- Key metric: Downloads and listener growth
Podcasts are audio (and often video) shows distributed on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Their main value is building a relationship with an audience over time.
Listeners typically spend 20–60 minutes with each episode, far more attention than most formats get. A podcast audience will probably never match your social following in size, but listeners who stay for 40 episodes know your company better than any other audience does.
What it takes to produce
Recording is only part of the work. A weekly show needs guest sourcing, preparation, recording, editing, show notes, and distribution, which typically adds up to 6–15 hours an episode. Plenty of company podcasts go quiet after 10 episodes. The ones that last either have a dedicated producer or outsource production so the host can focus on guests.
What strong podcasts look like
Dave Gerhardt’s Exit Five podcast runs weekly conversations with B2B marketing operators, founders, and CMOs about what works in practice. It sounds like practitioners talking, not a marketing vehicle, which is what keeps listeners coming back. Successful brand podcasts share that trait: a clear point of view and a host worth spending time with.
Typical conversion path
Listeners visit the host’s website, follow the brand on social, or click links from the episode. Podcast listeners often convert at higher rates than other traffic because of the trust built over many episodes.
How to measure it
Track downloads per episode, listener growth, and retention within episodes, and ask new leads how they heard about you. Podcast attribution is imperfect, so measure what’s available.
8. Infographics: best for link building and visual distribution
- Goal: Backlinks, shares, and awareness
- Funnel stage: Top
- Typical cost: $500–$2,500 per piece
- Key metric: Backlinks, shares, and referral traffic
An infographic turns data or complex information into a visual that’s quick to understand and easy to share. About a decade ago, infographics were one of the most effective link-building assets in content marketing.
That era has passed, but infographics built on original data still earn links and shares more reliably than most text-only content. Generic infographics that summarize public information earn almost nothing.
What it takes to produce
A strong infographic needs a clear data story, a skilled designer, and a distribution plan. Without outreach, even a great infographic rarely earns backlinks, so budget for an outreach campaign alongside production.
What strong infographics look like
Visual Capitalist built a media business around data visualizations that journalists and other writers want to cite and embed. The design quality matters as much as the data. A well-structured visual gets embedded, and a cluttered one gets ignored.
Typical conversion path
Infographics are an awareness format, so the path is indirect. Someone finds the infographic, visits your site to see more, and enters your content from there. Including an embed code with a link back to your site turns shares into backlinks and referral traffic.
How to measure it
Track backlinks, social shares, referral traffic from sites that embedded or linked to it, and reach on the platforms where it was shared.
9. Social media content: best for brand awareness and community building
- Goal: Awareness, community, and brand affinity
- Funnel stage: Top and middle
- Typical cost: $1,500–$6,000 per month
- Key metric: Reach, engagement, and follower growth
Social media content is anything you publish on platforms like LinkedIn, X, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. It’s the highest-volume format for many marketing teams and often the lowest-ROI when it’s treated as a broadcast channel.
The challenge is competing for attention in feeds built to surface whatever earns the fastest engagement. The content that spreads is usually native to the platform and conversational. The content companies default to is promotional and formal, and the two rarely overlap.
What it takes to produce
Effective social content needs platform knowledge, a consistent voice, community management, and a publishing cadence you can sustain. Understaffed programs end up posting inconsistently.
On LinkedIn, posts from founders and executives consistently outperform brand accounts, which is why many B2B companies invest in LinkedIn ghostwriting for their leaders.
What strong social media content looks like
Adam Robinson built one of the best-known founder brands in B2B SaaS by documenting the growth of RB2B on LinkedIn, including revenue numbers, lessons from failures, and honest takes on what’s working. It earns trust because it’s specific, and it sells the product by showing that the person behind it knows the space. Wendy’s and Duolingo did something similar in consumer brands by committing fully to a distinctive voice.
Typical conversion path
Social media rarely drives direct conversions. It builds the familiarity that makes every other channel work better. A typical path runs from a social post to a website visit, then a newsletter sign-up, and eventually a purchase.
How to measure it
Track reach, engagement rate, follower growth, profile link clicks, and traffic from social channels, plus how social visitors behave once they land on your site.
10. Interactive content: best for engagement, lead capture, and personalized value
- Goal: Engagement, lead generation, and personalization
- Funnel stage: Middle
- Typical cost: $5,000–$50,000+ to build
- Key metric: Completions and leads captured
Interactive content includes calculators, quizzes, assessments, configurators, and comparison tools. Anything that responds to a user’s input and returns a personalized result counts.
It tends to hold attention longer than static content, and it’s one of the most effective ways to capture leads. The value exchange is explicit: users share information to get a result tailored to them.
What it takes to produce
This is the most technically demanding format on this list. A good tool needs defined logic, a thoughtful user experience, front-end development, and ongoing maintenance. A well-built calculator might cost $5,000–$15,000, and a sophisticated assessment can run $50,000 or more. The best tools keep bringing in traffic and leads for years.
What strong interactive content looks like
HubSpot’s Website Grader has brought in traffic and leads for years by offering immediate, personalized value. Enter a URL and get an SEO score with recommendations. It attracts the audience most likely to buy HubSpot’s products without a sales pitch.
Typical conversion path
Users complete the tool and get their results. A gated version asks for an email address before showing the full output, and the user then enters a nurture sequence or gets an invitation to book a call from the results page.
How to measure it
Track completion rate, leads captured, time spent, and the conversion rate of users who completed the tool compared with those who didn’t.
11. Webinars: best for lead generation and mid-funnel education
- Goal: Lead generation, education, and conversion
- Funnel stage: Middle and bottom
- Typical cost: $1,000–$5,000 per webinar
- Key metric: Registrations, attendance, and pipeline
A webinar is a live or pre-recorded online event that combines a presentation, a demonstration, and Q&A. It’s one of the few formats that creates a real-time connection between a brand and a group of prospects.
Fewer people register for a webinar than read a blog post, but the people who register have committed their time. They’re further along, more engaged, and more likely to convert.
What it takes to produce
A well-run webinar needs content planning, slide design, promotion, hosting, moderation, and a follow-up sequence. Promotion is the part teams underestimate, which leaves them with strong content and weak attendance. Many registrants never attend live, so the follow-up to no-shows matters as much as the event.
What strong webinars look like
AirOps runs events and webinars for marketers working on AI content workflows, the audience most likely to buy its product. The sessions teach tactics attendees can use while showing what the platform can do.
The biggest waste in webinar programs is delivering a product demo to people who registered to learn. That breaks trust before the relationship starts.
Typical conversion path
During the event, attendees see a call to action to book a demo, start a trial, or download a resource. Afterward, registrants get the recording and a follow-up sequence, and the 30–90 days after a webinar are often when the pipeline closes.
How to measure it
Track registration rate, attendance rate, engagement during the session, and pipeline from attendees in the 30–90 days after the event.
12. eBooks: best for lead capture and deeper education
- Goal: Lead capture and authority
- Funnel stage: Middle
- Typical cost: $3,000–$10,000
- Key metric: Downloads, MQLs, and pipeline
An eBook is a downloadable guide, typically 15–50 pages, that covers a topic in more depth than a blog post while staying more accessible than a whitepaper. B2B companies use them mainly as gated lead magnets.
The difference between an eBook and a whitepaper is mostly tone and format. Whitepapers are evidence-heavy and analytical, while eBooks are more visual and practical and tend to attract an earlier-stage buyer. They work best when the topic is specific enough to attract qualified leads.
What it takes to produce
Strong eBooks need research, a clear structure, good writing, and a professional design pass, and the design matters more than people expect. The writing alone typically takes 15–25 hours, and with design, reviews, and a landing page, the total usually lands between $5,000 and $12,000.
What strong eBooks look like
HubSpot’s library of practical guides on inbound marketing helped build its audience early on, and its Resource Library still offers eBooks, templates, and tools by topic. Each resource delivers what its landing page promises. The eBooks that fail over-promise in the headline and under-deliver in the content.
Typical conversion path
A reader shares an email address to download the eBook and enters a nurture sequence that moves them toward a demo, a trial, or a sales conversation. The landing page should set clear expectations. Vague or sensational headlines attract unqualified downloads and inflate MQL numbers without improving pipeline.
How to measure it
Track downloads, the MQL conversion rate of eBook leads, nurture email engagement, and pipeline from leads who entered through the download.
13. UGC and testimonials: best for trust, social proof, and conversion lift
- Goal: Trust, conversion lift, and retention
- Funnel stage: Bottom and post-purchase
- Typical cost: $500–$2,000 per program
- Key metric: Conversion lift, review volume, and NPS
User-generated content (UGC) and testimonials are created by customers, including reviews, social posts, quotes, and video testimonials. Unlike every other format on this list, your company doesn’t write it.
The value is credibility. A claim a company makes about itself is inherently suspect, while the same claim from a customer with nothing to gain is far more persuasive. That makes UGC one of the most cost-efficient types of content marketing.
What it takes to produce
UGC programs need systems for collecting reviews, curating the best of what customers produce, and placing it where buyers will see it. The work is outreach, curation, and design, not writing.
Testimonials follow the same rule as case studies: specificity is everything. A generic quote from a happy customer is nearly worthless, while a quote with a name, title, company, and measurable result is valuable.
What strong UGC and testimonials look like
G2 built a large business around peer reviews because buyers trust them more than vendor content. On category pages like CRM software, reviews are summarized into what users say and the most-mentioned pros and cons, which is the kind of specific detail that moves buyers.
Typical conversion path
Testimonials and reviews appear on landing, comparison, and pricing pages to reduce friction at the moment of conversion. UGC on social media supports awareness, while reviews on third-party sites reach buyers who are researching their options.
How to measure it
Track review volume and ratings on third-party sites, the conversion lift on pages with testimonials, NPS over time, and how often customers mention your brand unprompted.
How to choose the right types of content marketing
Start with the job you need content to do this quarter. If you need pipeline, begin with bottom-of-funnel blog posts, comparison pages, and case studies. If you need authority and links, invest in original research. If you need an audience you own, start a newsletter and support it with founder posts on LinkedIn.
Then check what your team can sustain. One format done well every month beats four formats started and abandoned. If you’re not sure where to start, a content strategy project maps the searches and AI prompts your buyers use and turns them into a prioritized plan, and I write the bottom-of-funnel content and expert-led articles that tend to drive pipeline first.
