What do this year’s B2B Marketing Awards winners reveal about the current state of the industry? Victoria Clarke investigates
The B2B Marketing Awards attract organisations from a wide range of industries – demonstrated by the mix of brands that successfully scooped this year’s top prizes. Each of these organisations have faced their own set of business and marketing challenges, the crux of which has been the key driver behind the various campaigns. But while every brand has its own story to tell, many of the award-winning campaigns reveal striking parallels. These similarities and trends are particularly useful for capturing the current state of marketing play in the B2B arena – not only in terms of tools, technologies and techniques but, crucially, how best-in-class brands are leveraging these to meet their business objectives, drive ROI and achieve competitive advantage.
So what were some of the recurring themes to emerge from 2014’s winning brands?
Customer centricity
Use of customer insight, segmentation and personalisation were possibly the most common shared characteristics of the winning campaigns. Arco, TCMI, Gibbs & Dandy, Iris, RS Components, Standard Life and O2 Enterprise all revealed that gaining deep customer insight during the initial stages of their campaigns was crucial to their success. This research enabled far more effective segmentation and subsequent personalisation, which in turn led to greater engagement by the target audience.
Accountancy software provider Iris, who scooped winner of ‘best website’, worked with Earnest to leverage extensive user profiles and journey planning in its ‘On the money’ campaign. The campaign sought to better position the brand, engage and inform a forward-thinking target audience, and grow its ecommerce offering. It achieved this by harnessing customer intelligence to drive decision making throughout the planning, design and execution of the relaunched website.
While extensive customer research and analysis may necessitate more time and cost resources during planning stages, this rigorous approach pays dividends later by enabling better lead nurturing and higher conversion rates, as demonstrated by the numerous winners.
Creating a conversation
In recent years the ‘content is king’ mantra has been followed by an increasing number of B2B brands and many of this year’s winners are no exception. Rather than rely on traditional sales-led messages, brands worked hard to introduce context around their products and services in order to create or lead a conversation. Arco, TCIM, IBM, O2 Enterprise, Miele Professional and Iron Mountain brought their stories to life using topical issues, pertinent debates or other themes relevant to the target audience. Clever use of content around wider issues rather than simply ‘the brand’ helped create a sense of shared values and community, which ultimately drove engagement levels.
Miele Professional, a manufacturer of professional laundry, dishwashing and sterilisation equipment and winner of the ‘best use of content marketing’ award, created a calendar of content to complement its advertising and PR activity. The ‘Content with a cause’ campaign, created with agency Really B2B, saw a content programme developed around interesting and relevant topics to the target audience, as opposed to just Miele products. This content was segmented by sector to ensure maximum impact and engagement. Ebooks, whitepapers, infographics, emails and video were just some of the content types leveraged, which provided effective talking points for telemarketing activity.
In IBM’s ‘Data driven souvenirs’ campaign, which won the ‘best use of digital techniques and technologies’ award, the tech giant worked with OgilvyOne to use its partnership with the Wimbledon Championships to give context to its data analytics offering. IBM used the popular sporting event – attended by many of its hard to reach c-suite customer and prospect base – to demonstrate its analytics capabilities in a tangible and highly engaging manner. Combining match and player data with 3D printing technology helped IBM create a buzz around what could have otherwise been a very dry or technical proposition message.
Iron Mountain’s ‘Soldiers’ wills’ campaign is a great example of storytelling in B2B. In 2013, the storage and information management provider completed the digitisation of Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service’s (HMCTS) historic archive of 278,000 World War I soldiers’ wills. Soldiers’ personal notes, letters and messages included in the pocket books that carried the wills were also part of the digitisation project, which HMCTS and Iron Mountain completed in time for the 2014 centenary of the Great War. With the help of Berkeley PR, the ‘Soldiers’ wills’ campaign leveraged the powerful human story behind the digital archive, including the actual words of fallen soldiers, to not only create awareness from a historical and cultural point of view, but crucially raise brand awareness about the capabilities and offerings of Iron Mountain and HMCTS.
Plugging a knowledge gap
While there were many examples of content marketing, a further recurring theme within this area emerged: content for the purpose of education. DHL, WorldPay, Miele Professional and EY’s campaigns all had elements of helping the target audience plug a knowledge gap or improve their understanding of a particular business issue. In doing so, the winning brands portrayed themselves as not just a provider of a service or product but a trusted resource.
Identifying resource gaps in the market, as well as staying on top of industry regulations, can provide a lucrative opportunity to engage an audience who may otherwise not be aware of the impact it can have on their business. It’s a way of leading an intelligent and engaging conversation and differentiating a brand from its competitors.
In DHL Express UK’s ‘Leading the export conversation online’ campaign, the international shipping organisation saw an untapped opportunity to be seen as an export and shipping expert to its SME customers. Working with its agency, Something Big, DHL used social media, as well as other channels, to lead the export conversation, share its know-how and demonstrate the brand’s value as a provider of practical help and advice.
EY’s internal campaign, ‘Risk management – Don’t just tick. Check’, also sought to increase awareness and educate the target audience – this time on the importance of risk management activities. It succeeded by actively promoting and sharing industry best practice. Working with its agency Chaos Design, EY succeeded in inspiring its staff to adopt higher standards in risk management.
Joined-up marketing
Despite the fact much of the awards are made up of numerous categories relating to specific marketing channels, almost every winner – regardless of category – demonstrated an integrated approach to their campaign activity. Even where a campaign featured a dominant channel, this was supported by cohesive use of other communication mediums both digital and traditional. It’s worth noting here that despite growing digitisation having a huge impact on the marketing landscape, many of the winners leveraged direct mail, live events and other face-to-face marketing to great effect. In terms of lead nurturing – these traditional channels proved highly effective – particularly with a business audience which may otherwise be constantly bombarded with email and social media communication. In particular, a number of winning brands had success with leveraging traditional channels in order to engage early adopters.
Nokia (now Microsoft devices) and its agency The Marketing Practice generated huge engagement in its ‘Nokia LumiaBizTrial’ campaign through use of an innovative DM pack. The pack incorporated a seven-inch video screen, personalised mail, positioning statements, customer testimonials and practical user guides. The DM pack was supported by PR, email marketing, telemarketing, content marketing, video marketing and paid media. Although Nokia won the ‘best use of direct mail’ award, it’s clear that a joined-up approach to the campaign played a crucial part in its success.
Joined-up marketing is not just about integrating channels, however. It’s also about integrating relevant business functions – particularly sales, which has traditionally always had a fractured relationship with marketing. Successful lead generation and nurturing depends on sales and marketing working together to improve business performance.
While the similarities and themes identified among this year’s winning campaigns are not especially new, they do serve to highlight why such techniques and approaches are increasingly successful in the B2B marketing arena. Customer centricity, storytelling, integration and alignment are all contributing to a shifting marketing landscape, and it’s encouraging to see that more B2B brands are recognising this and adapting their activities to stay relevant.
