5 Award-Winning B2B Marketing Trends to Watch in 2025

When you asked again about how things have changed in b two b, back when we started, there was a genuine groundswell who would have believed that b two b should be logical and rational, and we asked how we made decisions. And it it’s just not. And what’s changed now is we can embrace that more. We can celebrate it. But behavioral science tells us that often we used to post rationalize our decision making for what sounded reasonable. Whereas I think, actually, we know that we don’t have to put up those pretenses anymore, and we can just embrace what’s good marketing, and we can revel in that. This is Revenue Makers, the podcast by Sixense investigating successful revenue strategies that pushed companies ahead. So, Saima, how is your closet doing? It’s doing great. Things are being added. Maybe not so many being purged. I don’t know if we’ve talked about this before, but there is an ongoing, conversation with Simon and I when we’re recording podcasts that we don’t wanna repeat outfits. I gave up probably four months ago. Simon has not. I probably will soon. Remarkable work. We could go off of that for a while. But the reason for that is today’s guest, Jill Harrison, who is the founder and editor in chief of b two b marketing. But that organization recently had a quite a fancy soiree of b2b marketing awards in the UK, and you were there. I was there. I was lucky enough to be in London in this gorgeous venue at a black tie event. It was an award ceremony and a celebration of b2b marketing and the best of b2b marketing over the past year. And Joel and his team were hosts and sponsors of that entire program. It was great. The Europeans do it right, I’m just gonna say. I don’t know if it’s the accents or the incredible architecture, but there’s something just very lovely. Yes. Lovely is the perfect word, actually. Of those, Joel actually, they’ve taken all of those awards, and there’s hundreds of them, and processed them or fed them through AI. They really kind of derive out of that what are some of the key trends of the campaigns and of the the different pieces that were submitted, and five emerged, which is a nice round number and a great topic for a podcast, and that is the Spark Topic. That’s what we’re doing. Pretty good. Right? I like it. We’re starting a new year. Right? So it’s a great way to kind of understand what the trends were last year, what’s working, what is a little bit unique and innovative as folks plan out their net new campaigns for the year. I hope people will take away some of these insights and maybe incorporate them or incorporate them all in one campaign like you suggested, Adam. Yes. That may not be the best approach. But if you can do it, kudos. So let’s jump in. Let’s do it. Alright. Joel, thanks so much for joining us. I think we normally don’t ask for someone to give their sort of full bio CV history up front. But I think in this case, it’s important, interesting, and kinda will set us up here. So can you tell us a little about just you and then b two b marketing in general? Thanks so much for inviting me on this. Really lovely to talk to you guys. So Joel Harrison, I’m editor in chief and founder of b two b marketing, which is b two b marketing dot net. We started as a magazine twenty years ago. We actually don’t have a magazine now because tons have changed and information consumption patterns have changed. These days, we run a big awards program. We have lots of conferences every year. We most importantly, we do training. We do content service. We have our own podcast as well. Most importantly, we have a community called Propolis. It’s a community intelligence platform where b two b marketing teams join to learn, to share, to grow, and to get expert resources and guidance to make them a better, more successful marketing team. So our business has evolved with the whole nature of it changing information consumption patterns, and that’s the focus of our business these days. And not just information consumption. I mean, twenty years of b to b marketing. Gosh. Even that’s changed so much. We launched because there was a massive hole in the market in the in the UK and Europe. In the US, b two b was something that was understood, and you’d had a magazine here for, like, seventy years or something like that. And we thought, well, why we have all these publication resources serving marketing, but not serving b two b. And if you read their marketing publications, why do they talk about Coca Cola and buying cars, but they don’t talk about buying professional services or technology or all of these things? And there was complexity said there. And I’m a geek, and I love that. You know? And I really thought this is something exciting. We can dig into this. So that we launched twenty years ago. And as you say, it’s it’s unrecognizable in in that time. I mean, the things that have changed that have kind of the ways of change that have come and have gone blown through the industry. You think back in those days, it was about advertising. It was about direct marketing. It was about exhibitions. Those were the email email wasn’t really as kind of utilized as it is today. You know, it was even in those days, it was before social media got invented. It was before marketing automation. It was a we’re well before AI. So we’re in a living in a different world now, but it’s a fascinating and so much richer world and that’s and, you know, and I and it fascinates me to continue to watch the evolution and kind of comment on it and be part of it going forward. It’s such an amazing space. That was actually sort of where we wanted to go because as part of the organization you’re running, you have big conferences and the big just recently had conference and awards around b two b. Adam, I have to talk about this for a second because I was lucky enough You were there? To be yes. I was there in London. I was lucky enough to be part of this gorgeous evening as the Brits do. Right? A beautiful location, black tie event, and it was a celebration of b to b marketing across such a wide variety of categories representing so many great brands doing interesting innovative things. So it was just a treat for us and and as a team and and myself personally to be there. I wanna thank you for that. But coming out of that, to Adam’s point, now you can go back to your prompt. It’s such a rich, rich area for us to explore when you’re looking at such a wide variety of b to b marketing and the best of it over the past year. Clearly, there’s some trends that’s gotta emerge. And I guess on the awards, you said there were hundreds and hundreds of submissions. So I guess if we could break it down. Right? And you actually there’s an article that you put out on LinkedIn that sort of talked about those key trends, which I think were great. So let’s go there. Well, let me tell you let’s just say about the program. Okay. So we’ve been doing the program for almost as long as the awards have been going, not quite as long but almost as long, and we get hundreds of entries every year. It waxes and wanes a little bit depending on how the agency sector’s done particularly, you know, when there’s the economy’s not as brewing as it has been over the last year or so in Europe has been a little bit of a headwind, so it’s been a little bit slow, but we still get hundreds and hundreds of entries. We split across thirty categories and they’re designed to reflect kind of channel usage, objectives, and audience. So you split them up in three different ways. Some categories are are better entered than others. We kind of churn them. So if something starts to decline interest, we kind of pep it up. Last year, for example, we brought an AI category because obviously you gotta have one of those. Right? Because that’s where all the future’s going. And then we have a really rigorous judging process of two rounds of judges. We have over a hundred judges. They’re all client side marketers, no agencies, also brand marketers, you might say. So typically CMOs, head of marketing, marketing directors, they judge digitally at first, and then we get a shortlist, then we bring a load of marketers together in a room, and they debate it and discuss it, and they love that. No one gets a chance to to sit in a room with your peers and really go into the minutiae why this campaign won and what was better about this one. Everyone comes out of that those sessions so incredibly empowered. And then this last room, the long part of the year, November, we announced the winners. And like you say, it’s a Simon, it’s a funny evening. It was so wonderful to have you there. And, after everyone gives away the prizes, you know, it’s a bit what like they say about the nineteen sixties. If you can remember it, you weren’t really there, you know, because it kinda goes on quite late and bits of excitement overflowing into too much to drink sometimes. So but everyone has a good time. It’s a lovely evening. We always wanna celebrate the best of b two b, so that that’s the plan. And, Adam, I totally digress there. Should I tell should you wanna talk to you about the things we identified? Would that be helpful? Yeah. So I read the article, and I was looking through. I thought these were great. So I don’t know if you wanna maybe talk about the five, and then we can dive into them. So this is what I captured out of that. Right? One is just, like, kind of the resurgence of long form content. I think for a while, it was, like, the longer the better, and then and then it wasn’t. But you’re starting to see, like, you know what? Maybe it is. And there’s, like, all sorts of interesting thing happening there from a content perspective. Influencers, which, I mean, we could do an entire episode on influencers. And then the one that I really thought was interesting was kind of around visualization and around, like, campaigns that are visualizing data and things in different ways. Gamification and then audio, which here we are right now doing, well, audio and video. But so if you have a favorite or one you kinda wanna go into, then we can we can roll from there. I think the long form thing’s interesting because I feel like we’re in a short form world. All the great culture on YouTube, you stop having the patience to sit down and watch a program for half an hour or something like that. All this social media messaging, is it bite sized? Do we we’re consuming things, we’re dodging between channels. And so we’re in this world where we’re programmed to think that short is good. I’m not sure I’m necessarily wrong because I think if you can distill something, a marketing message into the simplest, shortest form, then that’s great. That shouldn’t preclude and clearly doesn’t preclude the importance of the long form content to to develop the arguments. In categories like b where b two b is typically about complexity, I think you really need that. I’m not sure it necessarily ever went away, but I think it’s what this report’s done and what the analysis did has highlighted, that is the importance of it. And it’s no longer just around thousands of word reports. Right? There’s different formats for that, and this does overlay with the audio thing as well, but it also overlays with video. And you’re seeing things like brands actually investing in kind of feature film quality, feature movie quality, video to tell that story or to to make that argument. So, you know, we it’s about a mixture, I suppose, about having that the depth where necessary, but it’s also about being able to optimize and slice that up to utilize it. You can’t have one without the other. The video piece is interesting. Like, when you talk about, like, feature film level documentary con even, like, outside of b two b two, I’ve been seeing, like, was it Chick fil A has a TV show now? Like, it’s just, like, crazy things that are happening with longer form content anyway. In a world where everything had become so bite sized and snappy, everything started to sound the same. And so it’s refreshing when a brand is leaning into that longer form content, talking about the complexity, and really setting themselves apart. Absolutely. And and I think that it does come straight into a topic which is close to my heart. And I’ve I’ve said publicly on LinkedIn that I’m gonna write a book on thought leadership. So if I’ve said it on LinkedIn, I’ve got to do it because otherwise, people are gonna ask me, Joel, you you promised something. You bottled it. So I’ve gotta do it. But I think what this plays into is that the long form is typically oriented around the thought leadership. It’s that it’s that developing that trust, which, you know, in this fragmented world where we have AI, we can generate things really quickly on the fly to a terrifying level of quality. Having something that is that really demonstrates the depth of your argument proves it over a period of time is really important towards trust, and I think the trust is an absolutely critical battleground going forward. So long form is really vital in that in that place. But in the other other side of the spectrum, and we’ve actually sliced the data, these awards in multiple ways, and this this five trends we looked at here is more around marketing channels or techniques. We also looked at them kind of creative theme. One of those that came through there was around kind of consumer grade levels of entertainment. People wanna be entertained, and the video stuff replaced that entertainment piece and the humanization of b two b marketing, which we’ve been seeing for a number of years, but I think it’s just gradually ratcheting up a gear every year. It’s a great segue into the next one because the rise of the b two b influencer. I mean, that’s been a new thing this past year. And and what are you seeing in terms of the trends, both of your submissions and winners, but just across the board? Well, I mean, I think that influencer seems to hit that tipping point. I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve lost count of the number of years where people have gone, this is it. It’s gonna be the year. Influencer marketing and b two b is gonna break through this year. And yet, really, what they’re doing is just kinda, like, trying to apply consumer techniques to b two b and it and it’s never quite worked. So as well as seeing a number of really strong entries in the awards, more widely than that, and this is why this resonated with me, I think you’re seeing a kind of supply side ecosystem developing around this. You’re seeing consultants setting themselves up, calling themselves b two b influencer consultants or or or experts or something like that. But, probably, most importantly, if you’re using LinkedIn, they’re really piled in on this one. And LinkedIn, that’s what it’s always done. I think all they’re doing is recognizing what it’s always done and and kind of productizing that and they create these things called partnership ads. So that really just takes it to a different level when you can just go and buy something which is, you know, there is a thing. Otherwise, it was a bit intangible, a bit hard to understand. And I think we’ve recognized also that in b two b that actually influences more about depth and of understanding rather than about breadth of audience, and that’s the difference in in b two b. I think it’s still early days. I think we’re gonna see a lot of development happening on it, but but I really think this is a technique. And, also, I guess, as you said just now, Sarah, just place that point about trust as well. You know, you can leverage the trust of a third party even if your parameter store doesn’t have that trust itself. So all sorts of reasons why it’s breaking through, but I think this is a it’s hit that tipping point. Yeah. I think the only comment I’d make is there’s a lot of angry people on LinkedIn, which I hope that’s not where this b two b influencer marketing ends up devolving into. I hope not to. A lot of them are flying to my post as well. Well, whatever you wrote about is dead. That’s kinda like the theme. B two b marketing is probably dead. As we’re recording this, it probably died maybe five, ten minutes ago, so we should see what what LinkedIn said. Yeah. I could go off about being about angry people being angry because I’m angry at those angry people, but I won’t go. No. Don’t be angry, Adam. Let it be. Okay. We’ll go to the third trend. No anger. Okay. Visualization. This one was interesting to me, and I get it because data is is everywhere and people are trying to, like, a, show authority, show expertise, and their own, like, research that they’ve so it’s talk about some of the entries there and what you’re seeing. I think that there was a real standout in this category, which is a campaign by GE Aerospace. I put a link to the the creative board and my blog, so have a look at that and explains it. Give some data. They were talking about the noise that aircraft make when they’re taking off. And this is something which is so such a classically b two b thing because the aircraft engineers and people who build engines for a living, they love this stuff. Right? It’s it’s deeply technical to them. It’s deeply, interesting to them. It’s deeply critical as well because you’re gonna buy a fleet of planes. You want your your fleet of planes to be the quietest ones possible. You know, aircraft noise is a big deal. They showed the data on this slide. They showed them the the kind of decibels. They made it a beautifully, illustrated campaign that took all this data and and pulled it apart. And that’s a great example of how you you play to that that audience. But I think another aspect of this, which is really important, which we which kind of got to understand is the role of that data. It actually is part of the sales process as well, how campaigns succeed so much better when they can provide tools which should have that level of interactivity and compellingness of of communication in that conversation. It comes all the way through from thought leadership. That can be tremendously powerful. So I think this is something which we’ve seen for a while, but, again, we’re starting to see platforms emerging that can do this. I’m working more a company called Cognite Click who created this. So it’s exciting times for this trend, I think. There used to be a very clear difference between b to c marketing and b to b marketing. And as, you know, the b to b buyers have continually gotten more customized experiences in their b to c side of the world, in their real life, that expectation’s almost carried over into b two b. And gamification was an interesting one because it really has been now about involving the audience and making them part of an experience with your brand. What are you seeing on that side? As I was saying, when they expect a consumer style experience or engagement. They want to be engaged and entertained in that way. They don’t want to risk kind of consumer content passively. Marketing in b two b started to become social capital in a way that it perhaps it has been for a long, long time in in the consumer world. And I think we’re all just more cynical. So if you’re gonna entertain somebody, then you’re gonna catch someone’s attention, then do it in an entertaining way. Do it where they actively and we all also talk about particularly in kind of big ticket, considered purchase b two b. You want people to share this internally. So so, of course, they’re gonna do it much more. Let’s do it if if it’s got that competitive element, it’s got that creative element, it’s got that immersive, engaging element. There’s much many more examples of this here. Again, I think we’ve been talking about this for a long time. I don’t think this is something new in itself, but it feels like it’s something which, the technology has reached a point where you’re able to have more a variety of creative solutions in this regard and you can pick it up. But the one one that actually we, we cited in the blog was a kind of, an example of, you know, it’s it’s just an old fashioned visual where you’ve got to identify the individuals. I I don’t know if you’ve had this in the States or in North America where where’s Wally and you gotta find where’s it was a play on that. Right? And that’s fun. We all understand it. We know how it works. You easily abandon your kind of bias cynicism and go, oh, right. This is fun. I’ll I’ll have a go at this. And, you know, I’d actually wrote another blog on on the awards today and on kind of your role of emotion. I mean, it seems extraordinary that, you know, when you asked again about how things have changed in b two b, Yeah. When back when we started, there was a genuine groundswell who would have believed that b two b should be logical and rational, and we asked how we made decisions. And it it’s just not. I think but I think we what’s happened and what’s changed now is we can embrace that more. We can celebrate it. I think behavioral science tells us that often we used to post rationalize our decision making for what sounded reasonable was I think, actually, we know that we don’t have to put up those pretenses anymore, and we can just embrace what’s good marketing, and we can revel in that. That makes a lot of sense there. The gamification, we actually did a little bit of that ourselves this year. It’s a little self commercialized. We had a webinar. Little for it, Adam. Literally, the webinar itself was a game. We had a lot of fun with it, and we got a lot of really, really strong response to it. It was called level up. It was like a video game motif and people you know, there was different levels, and it was just a lot of fun. And, you know, that type of thing also opens up, like, really interesting things visually to do as well. So seen a lot of really, really great things coming from a lot of different brands. So Always ahead of the trend, Adam. I mean, well, I mean, that’s why we’re here. Right? Come on. Like but the next one, audio. So this has been going on for a little while, especially in, like, podcast. Now I think that the argument over b to b podcast is over, at least in terms of which is the best one ever. I’m kidding. I’m sure that in the in the entries, it was more than just straight up podcast. Because, again, like, that’s almost I don’t wanna say it’s table stakes, but there are so many d to d brands that are podcasting now, and it’s becoming video in short form. But anything outside of the box audio that you saw? And I go back to the GE example again. I hate to just cite one example of the podcast, but they were using the audio for of their products, and they’re making that available as part of the experience, the auditors experience. I mean, there were other examples of, a kind of audiobook. It wasn’t so much a podcast. She was seeking to take people on a journey there as well. There’s creating your own podcast, and there’s investing other people’s podcast for sponsorship as well. So there’s a different there’s a slight variation within that. I’m not gonna pretend that podcasts, to your point, Adam, weren’t the center point of this analysis. But we’ve seen podcasts to kind of a everyone’s gotta have one, do we really know what impact it’s making, that kind of thing. And and, by the way, I’m fully important so we have one with which is pretty which is was great and we really enjoy doing it and it has all kinds of benefits. I feel like it’s going from this kind of tinkering at the edges solution to being something which is really, really central and critical. And I feel like some of the understanding how to centralize this with your marketing function and utilize the the the resources and the insights that come from there. Again, this trend of humanization comes in. Now when you’re listening to something, personally and potentially you’re not in a work environment, that is a statement of your commitment to that brand. By nature of your consumption of that, you’re more likely to consume that in a more open framework. So it’s the embodiment of personalization. It’s the embodiment of humanization. And I think we just we kind of I guess, we’ve gotta double down on it. But then the world doesn’t need necessarily more more podcasts. It needs more better podcasts, I suppose. This one being obviously the top five percent in the world, if not the top one percent. Obviously. Well, I mean, that’s yeah. And, actually, the thing that I love too about a podcast is being central to content strategy. It’s just the flywheel that it creates. Right? Especially now you talked about AI earlier. Like, we could take an episode now. I mean, it’s it’s kind of ridiculous. Take the transcript, take the recording, and get blog posts generated, short social clips generated, long form content. Even now, like, there’s one tool that Google has where you just type us say, go look at this web page, and it records the podcast too. So Simon and I could go off for forty five minutes about ICP, and then we have content for four months. So it’s really it’s pretty remarkable. It is extraordinary. And I’m thinking about writing a book again. My aim is, well, I’m gonna podcast the episodes. I’m gonna use AI to help me. I don’t know yet. Ask me again in six months. I don’t know how much actual sitting and writing like an old fashioned author I’m gonna need to do, because I’ve always got a got a long way without doing that. So it is really exciting. It is it is really fabulous. I think that connection as well with your with notable people in your market that you get with a podcast interview, you can’t understate the human nature of that and the and the the brand affiliation that comes with that. Absolutely. I mean, it’s a great summary and I think you have such a unique vantage point of these channels and techniques and trends that are emerging on the b two b side. How do you balance the new and the innovative with safety and limited budgets and needing to prove ROI and just, you know, the reality that is the b to b landscape today? That’s probably the kind of the central question for the success for aspiring b to b marketer, isn’t it? Because there’s all these wacky ideas out there, and yet at the same time, marketers need to show results. There’s no silver bullet to it. I think that you have to allocate a certain amount of your time and resources to experimentation. It’s really as simple as that. Even though you need to get the stuff done that proves your case, improves your worth, improves your value, and gives the sales team what they think they need, even if it’s not what they actually need. You’ve gotta keep pushing at the boundaries of what’s possible. And making mistakes, I think, is as much we have to keep remember as a wonderful Winston Churchill quote, which is success is defined by moving from one failure to the next day, lack of enthusiasm, which I personally love. Just having that that kind of experimental mindset, remembering that done is better than perfect. And I think embracing a little bit of, imperfection or candidness in our execution and marketing, I think is I think is really important. It makes us more human, more relatable. And so there’s a combination of things there. You can’t just get I think the crux of it, though, Sam, as you say, is you can’t get stuck in your kind of in your groove and do the same thing forever because it ain’t gonna work in six months’ time. So we have a question, which I didn’t prep you for this, so I apologize in advance. We have a question that we ask everybody. What is the most ridiculous thing you’ve been asked to do in your career? And it could be ridiculous good or ridiculous bad. And we’ve gotten, you know, answers from, you know, smuggling swag into foreign countries to sunsetting products three days before for a hundred customers to working with NASA on a b two b campaign. So the bar is high, sir. I’m kidding. When you spend your time as a as a print journalist, most of my career was in, you cultivate the aura of a don’t mess with me kind of, person. Right? Don’t don’t ask me to do that stuff because I won’t do it because I’m a very important print journalist. But I’ve actually had to to abandon that positioning for the sake of pragmatism and, and my mental health. What ridiculous things have I been asked to do? It sounds dumb, but just even public speaking always have always felt like something if I if you said now that I would do that, I would I would be very surprised. My twenty year ago self would be super surprised that I could do that that I did do that. And going around the world doing that is exciting things. And having had lots of experience in my previous career around lots of exciting trips to to exotic places around the world, I guess the whole just starting up a company was the most outlandish thing I’ve done in my career because I never expected intended to be an entrepreneur. I’m the least likely entrepreneur in the whole world. And then to say I’d be running it twenty years later is pretty, pretty scary or pretty bonkers, but but it’s been a hell of an enjoyable ride. So I’m sorry that probably wasn’t the answer you’re looking for. If you give me another half an hour, I can maybe think of a better one. No. That’s perfect. That’s great. Those are all really great. So your the bar stays high. So thank you for that. We thought about this as a as a great way to approach it to talk to you about it, and it proved that it was great because it just brought through some really great conversation on these trends and some things for folks to look at, to think about, and go and create a campaign of long form content that you use an influencer to promote that visualizes some data that you’re doing and gamify it and do it via audio, and you’ll be good to go. So Got it. That’s it. So, Joel, really appreciate you joining us. Thanks so much. You’ve been listening to Revenue Makers. Do you have a revenue project you were asked to execute that had wild success? Share your story with us at six cents dot com slash revenue, and we might just ask you to come on the show. 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