Perhaps the most fundamental thing that B2B marketers have learned through the pandemic is transformation is not only essential, it’s also urgent. It’s not something we can put off to a more convenient time. It needs to happen now, and it needs to happen fast.
That applies to everyone, and that includes us at B2B Marketing. The pandemic has both driven and enabled our latest transformation, which we’re delighted to unveil to the world today, after many months of hard work behind the scenes by everyone in the B2B Marketing team.
Today, we’re launching Propolis: a brand new and exclusive digital community for B2B marketers, where you can learn, share, connect, question, exchange and inspire – and much else besides. It’s an opportunity to collaborate with fellow B2B marketers from across the industry as never before, working together on shared problems to identify and develop best-in-class solutions. It’s a safe space to develop your skills, knowledge and competencies, and forge peer-to-peer relationships that will fuel your personal and professional growth.
At B2B Marketing, we know that the informal community we’ve constructed around our activities has been critical to our success over the past 17 years – if you’ve ever been to the B2B Marketing Awards, Ignite, or the ABM Conference, you’ll have felt that in action. Propolis now enables us to formalise and elevate that community, broadening and deepening the opportunity and potential. As such it’s a natural extension of what we’ve always done.
What’s in the name? Well, since you’re asking, Propolis is a resin that bees use to both build and protect their hives. That makes it a perfect metaphor for the buzzing, vibrant and productive community that it will contain. Within Propolis, there are eight separate Hives, built around the core pillars of B2B marketing, and each overseen by a recognised B2B Expert, where members can explore and expand their knowledge on their chosen areas of interest. If that were not enough, there are also areas dedicated to individuals of different areas of seniority, as we know CMOs have different community needs to marketing directors.
Changing times, changing channels
But as one door opens, another closes. After much consideration and consultation with our customers, we’ve decided to call time on B2B Marketing magazine – the winter 2021 edition will be our last. As our launch product, it helped us define and formalise B2B as a unique and distinct part of the marketing industry, and build both recognition and allegiance. But accelerating digitisation has resulted in print products becoming increasingly out-of-step with today’s marketing reality and information consumption needs.
Propolis is certainly not a replacement for a print product – it is so much more than that. It’s potential to continue the development of the industry that we all love is simply vast. I believe it’s nothing less than a game changer for B2B marketing as an industry, as a profession, and most of all as a community.
Welcome to the future of B2B marketing. Come and join us today.
