Roses are red, violets are blue, for B2B marketers, here is the news.
St. Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us. The annual festival of romance/fear/resentment/bitterness (delete as applicable) that either sets hearts a-fluttering or teeth a-gnashing.
Perhaps you’ve been caught in a last minute rush to buy the perfect gift. Perhaps you’ve been planning an extravagant trip away. Perhaps you ‘don’t care at all about Valentine’s Day’ and you’ve been organising an entire weekend based around ignoring it.
Whatever the case, you may have missed out on the week’s top B2B news stories. So we’ve put together this digest, just for you. With love.
5. Twitter feature puts ad videos at top of users’ timelines
Twitter has introduced a new feature allowing marketers to place their ads near the top of people’s timelines.
Entitled First View, marketers will be able to place a featured video in the top ad slot on users’ timelines for a 24-hour period.
Twitter says the videos will be “premium placements” and the feature will be rolled out across the US before being launched globally.
The social network giant has undergone major scrutiny in recent months, with staff redundancies, volatile performances on the stock exchange and much publicised tinkering with its product.
4. Email marketing most invested B2B channel in 2016
Email marketing is set to be the most invested channel for B2B marketers in 2016, according to a study by ALF Insight.
When asked which marketing and advertising channels would receive the highest level of investment this year, 82 per cent of respondents cited email marketing as their top priority.
The next most important channels were the brand’s website (78 per cent), social media (71 per cent), SEO/PPC (53 per cent) and video (29 per cent).
Interestingly, although social media placed third in terms of planned investment, only 20 per cent of B2B companies cited it as a key driver for ROI.
3. Businesses forced to acknowledge gender pay gap
UK businesses will be required to reveal pay difference between male and female employees in new league tables announced on 12 Feb 2016.
The new rules will apply to companies with over 250 employees and will affect around 8000 employers around the UK.
The regulations will come into effect from April 2017, with the first league table set to be published 12 months later.
The plans were announced by Women and Equalities Minister Nicky Morgan, with companies required to publish the results each year on their own websites.
Keep an eye out for B2B Marketing’s B2B Salary Survey for analysis on gender pay gaps specific to the marketing industry.
2. Independent to end as print publication
The Independent and Independent on Sunday newspapers will no longer produce print editions from March, the group’s owner has said.
The move, which will lead to “some redundancies among editorial employees”, is part of a move towards a “digital-only future”, ESI Media has said. This move will be bolstered by 25 new “digital-content roles”.
The Independent was set up in 1986, but circulation as of December 2015 was only around 56,000 on average, a tiny figure compared to other national newspapers such as the Sun (1.8 million) and the Guardian (166,000).
1. Best digital marketing campaigns of 2016 revealed
B2B Marketing has revealed the top digital marketing campaigns from across the B2B landscape.
Brands from across the B2B spectrum, including Adobe, IBM and FedEx were awarded Digital Superstar status.
All winning brands had to demonstrate they had done something original in their sector, execute a new strategy for their company or generate some great results or interaction. The only rule was, it had to be digital.
See our winners in detail page to find out exactly why these brands made this year’s list.
