We’re awash with statistics and ‘facts’ in B2B marketing campaigns, but which ones really matter? Which sources can you really trust as being objective? Too often, published research is self-serving, based on flimsy evidence with outputs that amount to thinly-veiled sales pitches. This was always true to an extent, but content output is rising exponentially and the sheer amount of noise increasingly confusing or overwhelming, or both.
So which sources should you trust? Which sources and studies about B2B marketing can genuinely lay claim to providing insight that’s authoritative, objective and worth paying attention to, in order to help define your future marketing strategies?
Providing such a source of insight is a challenge we’re addressing at B2B Marketing.
As you may know, for 20 years B2B Marketing Awards has been the gold standard in excellence for B2B campaigns, with hundreds of entries per year from brands in all sectors, large and small, addressing a bewildering array of marketing challenges.
This year, for the first time, we’re using AI to mine this vast pool of knowledge to create unprecedented insights on B2B marketing campaigns in 2024, and focusing in particular on effectiveness, what enables it and what it looks like. The insights that we’ve already mined through this project is, frankly, incredible – and we’ve only just got started.
Why is this data so compelling? Because it is based on hundreds of detailed submissions based on marketing work that was actually completed – including (critically) results. It isn’t based on information on what campaigns people might like to run, or what they feel they ought to be running, but on what they actually ran. In other words, it’s reality.
How are we sharing this information?
In the run up to the B2B Marketing Awards ceremony on November 27, I’ll be posting each day about one compelling data point, providing a little context and opinion and inviting further comment. I hope you’ll tune in and follow me for these posts – and as ever, dear reader, I look forward to your perspective!
Then, once the ceremony has happened, and the winners announced, I’ll be hosting a webinar with Shane Redding on December 5th, where we’ll reveal the campaign and creative trends that are driving the future of B2B. This will focus on how and where brands are innovating, and which trends are cutting through. If you’re interested in how B2B is evolving, don’t miss this session!
Following on from that, we’ll be slicing and dicing the insights from The B2B Marketing Awards over the coming months, making much of it available to Propolis members, and the wider B2B marketing world (to a lesser extent) in due course. David Rowlands and Robert Norum (Propolis’s ABM Expert) are recording a podcast on ABM trends, using data from awards entries, which will be published imminently.
Given the depth and richness of this data pool, we’re confident that the insights from the B2B Marketing Awards will provide much needed authority and integrity to insight in the field of B2B marketing. We’ll be sharing the insights that we feel are most compelling soon!
