Welcome to the new, improved B2B Marketing. Hopefully you’ll have already noticed that the website (and magazine, from the March 11 issue) has a new look, but it’s not just a redesign, or even a rebrand: it’s a fundamental change in how we operate and engage with our audience, underpinned by a totally new online presence.
This radical overhaul has been driven by you, our readers, and is our response to your changing needs and demands. In the almost seven years since we launched B2B Marketing magazine, there has been a profound change in the way that marketers (and, indeed, all business people) want to consume information and broaden their knowledge. Back in the days before Web 2.0 and social media, information flows were generally linear: something was published, it was read (or not, as the case may be!) and that was pretty much the end of it.
These days, however, professionals and consumers alike are increasingly demanding information flows that are dynamic and multi-directional. In other words: in the post Face-book age, they increasingly want to post their own content and engage with others regarding content that they have created.
B2B marketers, we’ve also discovered, are also keen to be part of a wider community, to engage with other marketers in similar or quite distinct B2B roles to learn lessons, ask questions and share challenges. One of our key missions back in 2004 was to provide a platform for B2B marketers to air their views, and a focal point for a disparate and often ignored community, and the social media revolution has brought this into sharper focus.
These new features complement our comprehensive content resource of articles, which is organised by Knowledge Bank subject area and portfolio of regular events (including seminars and training workshops) and our growing library of downloadable resources (including Best Practice Guides, Benchmarking Reports and Tech Evaluation Reports). It’s an integrated proposition that, for the first time, is linked under a common visual brand identity – the ‘sphere of power’ as it’s been christened internally, slightly irreverently.
These changes are just the latest phase in an ongoing development programme at B2B Marketing that will see additional new functionality and new products being released over the coming months. I’m very excited about these developments, as I believe they create a truly dynamic and compelling resource for marketers, both now and in the months and years ahead. It’s still all-change in B2B marketing, but rest assured that we will continue to change with you.
