As we navigate through the dynamic landscape of B2B Marketing, it’s essential to take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate outstanding achievements. Each year, the B2B Marketing Exchange team ends the conference with the Killer Content Awards, focusing on the best content in B2B! Curious on what you missed last year? Check out the 2023 winners below to see what content we think killed it.
Account-Based Marketing Campaign
Esquire Bank + Park & Battery
Esquire Bank successfully implemented a customer-centric technology stack for their ABM campaign, centered around Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Through strategic content development, segmentation with data vendors like ZoomInfo and the utilization of Salesforce Marketing Cloud for hyper-targeting, the bank achieved significant success, generating over 50% of law firm lending clients through digital marketing initiatives within two years of implementation and earning recognition as the No. 1 Top Performing Community Bank.
Account-Based Marketing Campaign
Mutiny
Mutiny’s ABM music video campaign elevated personalized outreach by identifying 30 target accounts based on specific criteria and partnering with a freestyle rapper known as “Sales Rapper” to create custom rap videos mentioning key contacts and their pain points by name. The campaign achieved a remarkable 72% conversion rate for meetings booked with sales, along with over 50,000 impressions of the music videos on LinkedIn.
Sales Enablement Content
Marketron
Marketron’s website, Aspire, provides content aimed at inspiring and empowering broadcast and media sellers, covering topics like sales ideas, ad categories, creative strategies and industry trends. With a consistent release of at least eight pieces of content per month across various formats, Aspire experienced impressive year-over-year growth, including a 63% increase in page views, 86% growth in visitors, and substantial boosts in subscribers, pageviews per session and average engagement time.
Sales Enablement Content
Qualified
Qualified introduced “Always Be Enabling” (ABE), a series of engaging and digestible weekly education sessions for its sales team, featuring Abraham Lincoln as the mascot and incorporating a storyline involving a villainous Teddy Roosevelt. ABE achieved nearly 100% attendance, produced 25 episodes, and implemented trackers in Gong to monitor the practical application of the learned information by the sales team.
Design Concept/Theme
AB Mauri North America
At the 2022 International Baking Industry Exposition (IBIE) in Las Vegas, AB Mauri’s booth, themed “London Calling,” recreated Baker Street and featured attractions like appearances by Duff Goldman, a changing of the guard with photo opportunities,and a Union Jack Coffee & Twinnings Tea bar. The exhibition garnered over 20,000 attendees from 100 countries, with AB Mauri generating more than 10,000 impressions through the sponsored mobile app, attracting over 700 attendees to the happy hour concert and delivering the most unique experience on the baking show floor.
Influencer Campaign
Questex + Park & Battery
To revitalize the International Beauty Show (IBS) New York, Questex collaborated with Park & Battery on an omnichannel strategy, leveraging targeted influencer campaigns on Instagram and TikTok, as well as digital display, streaming audio and podcast advertising on Spotify. The initiative resulted in tens of thousands of attendees at IBS, driven by nearly 9 million social media impressions, record engagement, and millions of digital and streaming impressions.
Influencer Campaign
Drift
Drift’s free virtual event, The GTM Lab, featured B2B influencers sharing insights on go-to-market (GTM) strategies, attracting 381 live attendees and generating 2,502 leads. The subsequent E-book, “Game Changing GTM,” produced an additional 807 leads, resulting in 130,000 in pipeline revenue and a remarkable 983% ROI for Drift.
Packaged/Bundled Content
Manheim Express + The Mx Group
In collaboration with Manheim Express, The Mx Group orchestrated a cross-country campaign, the Viper Voyage, showcasing Manheim’s Concierge Service using a custom-wrapped Dodge Viper. The campaign, which started as a pilot in California and expanded to 27 locations across the U.S., garnered the highest impressions and likes among social-focused channel campaigns, resulting in 43 testimonials, a charitable auction of the Viper, and over $115,000 raised for partnering charities.
Packaged/Bundled Content
NetApp
NetApp introduced the NetApp TV (NTV) platform to establish its cloud-first position, providing an on-demand video destination for executives, business leaders and IT decision-makers to learn about the brand and explore technology perspectives. NTV has set a new standard for corporate “edutainment,” amplifying NetApp’s thought leadership and building new audiences, contributing to greater awareness of the brand as a leader in cloud and data management technology.
Research-Based Content
Splunk + TechTarget
Splunk’s “What’s Your Data Really Worth? Economic Impact of Data Innovation” campaign aimed to showcase companies’ successful data innovation and quantify the economic benefits. In partnership with TechTarget, the year-long campaign included a global report, custom landing page, executive summary, data self-assessment calculator, infographics and a webinar series, culminating in Splunk’s highest-performing campaign, demonstrating thought leadership and brand acceleration.
Research-Based Content
NetLine Corporation
NetLine’s “2022 State of B2B Content Consumption and Demand Report” consolidated 4.6 million first-party registrations and 115 million buyer attributes to provide marketers with actionable insights for optimizing content-centric lead generation programs. The report, featuring key findings such as the increased demand for E-books and a rise in C-Level engagement, generated over 1,400 leads and influenced $1.54 million in opportunities year-to-date.
Buyer-Focused Content
WHOOP Unite + The Mx Group
In collaboration with The Mx Group, WHOOP Unite launched its B2B customer experience strategy targeting D1 athletics, business, healthcare and public service. The website, introduced in June 2022, achieved significant early success with 12,830 site visits in the first 15 days, 113 leads captured, and 179 form submissions, demonstrating increased engagement and traction with core digital assets.
Channel Partner Marketing
The Channel Agency — Purechannels
Carahsoft, in collaboration with The Channel Agency — Purechannels, successfully generated leads for three U.S. federal partners, exceeding expectations. Purechannels developed targeted audience profiles, crafted engaging content, and achieved the goal of generating 100 leads for each vendor partner, resulting in sales opportunities and a low cost per lead of $300.
Interactive Content
Arvig + Content4Demand
In 2022, Arvig utilized an interactive, hockey-themed content piece created by Content4Demand to announce its expansion into 25 data centers across five states. The engaging campaign successfully changed perceptions about Arvig, highlighting its growth and regional presence through informative content and strategic interactivity, resulting in high engagement levels and increased understanding of the company’s expanded reach.
Nurture Campaign
RollWorks
RollWorks introduced the ABM Play Campaign to address the challenges faced by audiences initiating their ABM journey, offering a multichannel program with actionable account-based marketing (ABM) plays. The ABM Play of the Day series provided proven ABM plays, facilitating RollWorks’ thought leadership and accelerating sales opportunities through video demos, leading to the launch of the ABM Play Generator microsite for continuous engagement and segmentation of interested audiences in the ABM solution market.
Short-Form Content
Stord
In 2022, Stord leveraged its untraditional personality for a series of announcement videos, incorporating pop culture and meme culture elements to make their significant news engaging and shareable. The videos, highlighting achievements such as Series D funding and new partnerships, resulted in 1,330 reactions, 61 comments, and 92 shares, contributing to the growth of the company’s social media presence and inspiring other supply chain companies to revamp their marketing tactics.
Multi-Touch Campaign
Blue Yonder
For the Blue Yonder ICON 2022 conference, the company employed a comprehensive multitouch campaign strategy, combining direct mail, digital strategies, sales tactics, industry-specific events and more to re-engage its customer base and prospects. The hybrid event attracted over 1,400 attendees, with an 8% registration rate from direct mail, a 10.1% open rate and 21% click-through rate for emails, and an average of 470 page views with a 57% bounce rate for 11 blog posts.
Video Content
Uptempo
Uptempo created a five-video series featuring Beth, a fictional CMO facing challenges with her dysfunctional marketing team, addressing common problems in marketing operations. With a focus on brand awareness, the series successfully doubled impressions on social channels from 18,601 to 37,475 over a 10-week promotion period and also doubled the number of visitors to the company’s website from paid ads.
Now, it’s your turn to shine the spotlight on exceptional content creators within our community. Nominations for the 2024 Killer Content Awards are now open, and we’d love for you to participate by nominating outstanding campaigns who have made a significant impact in the world of B2B Marketing!
Whether it’s an engaging video series, a thought-provoking podcast or a groundbreaking social media campaign, we want to recognize and celebrate the diverse talents within our community.
Nominate your fave content campaigns here to see if they have what it takes to take home a Finny at the upcoming 2024 B2B Marketing Exchange! Early bird nominations close on November 30, so don’t wait!
