Analysis of B2B Marketing award winners 2012

The B2B Marketing Award winners have been applauded and celebrated at a glittering gala event, but what can you learn from them? Maxine-Laurie Marshall reports

This year, judges for the B2B Marketing Awards had to work their way through a record number of entries to decide on the winners. Entries increased by almost 20 per cent in comparison to last year, but this hasn’t been the only change. A number of new trends have emerged from the winning entries, so it’s worth finding out what this year’s most celebrated B2B marketing campaigns had in common.

Marketing loves sales
The word ‘love’ may be a bit strong, but over the last year marketing has at least acknowledged the existence of its sales counterparts and, in the case of many of the winners, planned campaigns that actively took sales’ requirements into account. Peter Young, independent judging chairman and marketing consultant, noted, “Entries received due praise when sales’ needs were properly embraced in the communications planning.” He asks, “Are we seeing closer synergy between the two functions?”

The answer, it would seem, is ‘yes’. Air transport information and telecommunication provider SITA, winners of best brand initiative with the help of its agency DNX, made brand toolkits for its sales team to ensure consistent communication. Cable & Wireless Worldwide and its agency The Channel Partnership, winner of best use of content marketing, created content with the aim of providing its sales teams with ‘the relevant points-of-views necessary to engage with the target audience.’ Clear evidence that when sales and marketing pull together, success is guaranteed for the wider business.

Customer centricity
It’s not only sales people that marketers have been thinking about this year. Category winners British Gas Business (BGB), SAP and John Deere all involved customers in their campaigns. BGB and SAP both targeted SMEs because they felt customers would respond in a more positive manner if peers were used in campaigns.

BGB and its agencies – OgilvyOne, CHI, Carat, iProspect, Rufus Leonard and Blue Rubicon – felt business people were more likely to listen to their peers than a supplier so it let five real businesses demonstrate their story. DNX, meanwhile, worked with SAP to create a programme that enabled SAP’s partners to use their own customer success stories. Peer-to-peer engagement is definitely a rising trend savvy marketers should be utilising. Customer’s value the opinions of other customers so incorporating their voice into your campaign can clearly lead to great success.

Live events
Despite the plethora of digital channels and techniques at marketers’ disposal, live events were used by many of this year’s winners to either launch or support a campaign. Some industry face-to-face events have seen an increase in attendance this year. TFM&A London, for example, saw visitor rates grow by six per cent, and technology marketing agency, Marketing Options International (MOI), has seen close to a 10 per cent increase in its events attendance figures. Hannah Guyatt, head of events at MOI, said, “783 more delegates passed through our delegate management service compared to 2011. The increased level of attendance by delegates shows they perceive live events as a valuable investment of their time where they can experience new information first hand.”

As expected, the winner of best use of live-event marketing, ‘You’re on’ for John Deere by Gyro, made full use of a face-to-face event. It launched its campaign at the world’s largest construction show in Las Vegas.

Both Kings Cross (Argent) and its agency Billington Cartmell, Enterprise – winner of best use of digital techniques – and Iron Mountain with its agency Berkeley – winner of best PR campaign – also based campaign activity around industry specific events, securing contacts within a key audience. Despite many C-suite executives being time-poor, the assumption they never make it out of the office is wrong. It seems they still value attending live events, proving that really knowing your audience instead of working off assumptions is priceless.

The ability to better understand customers seems to be driving a comeback of these traditional channels. As well as using live events to target specific customer segments, highly targeted and personalised direct mail was also utilised by a number of this year’s award winners.

Traditional meets digital
MicroMedia Oy worked with Fujitsu to use telemarketing to screen its target group before sending a letter and DM to previously identified decision makers. DNX took personalisation a step further when it worked with SAP on its ‘Smart metering’ campaign. It created 17 personalised introductions (one for each decision maker) for a video that was incorporated into a DM piece.

Video has grown in importance and popularity for B2B marketers over the last 12 months. It seems to have moved from being a medium to experiment with, to one that is used in a more joined-up fashion with other techniques. Even cost proved not to be a barrier to using the channel, as demonstrated by Networks First, with help from MOI, who created four short videos for its ‘Dinoverts’ campaign, which won the best limited budget category.

Mobile, however, seems to be where video was two years ago. It’s a hot topic for discussion but most marketers are yet to dedicate time, money and campaign space to it. Interestingly, none of this year’s winners had a major mobile element to their campaign.

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