B2B marketing insights for
those targeting a niche
Insights, learnings and stories from the world of B2B marketing and communications, direct from Velo’s B2B agency team
B2B marketing campaigns need a big idea and a theme now more than ever
B2B marketing teams now produce more material than ever, and very little of it gets remembered. The two are connected. The fix? A big idea and a theme strong enough to hold everything together. More content, more authors, more fragments AI has cut first-draft time from days to minutes. Sales teams personalise campaign emails for every account, regional teams […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Marketing in Professional Services
Found by AI: How professional services firms can turn thought leadership into AI visibility
Found by AI is a three-part Velo series on how B2B buyers now use AI to choose suppliers. Each sector is found in a different way. Manufacturers have to unlock what they already know. Technology firms have to prove what they claim. Professional services firms have to earn the right to be cited. With most professional services companies using thought leadership, how […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Marketing in Technology
Found by AI: What do B2B tech brands need to do to appear in LLMs?
Found by AI is a three-part Velo series on how B2B buyers now use AI to choose suppliers. Each sector is found in a different way. Manufacturers have to unlock what they already know. Technology firms have to prove what they claim. Professional services firms have to earn the right to be cited. Technology buyers have adopted AI faster than anyone. Forrester […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Marketing in manufacturing
Found by AI: From specification to shortlist: how manufacturers can lift their AI search visibility
Found by AI is a three-part Velo series on how B2B buyers now use AI to choose suppliers. Each sector is found in a different way. Manufacturers have to unlock what they already know. Technology firms have to prove what they claim. Professional services firms have to earn the right to be cited. A design engineer needs a seal rated to 200°C […]
How do you know if your B2B creative is actually good?
I’ve spent more than twenty years working across B2B and B2C in art and design direction. For me, the idea is at the heart of good creative. What are we trying to say, why should the audience care and how do we bring it to life? More of the client teams we work with are building […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Marketing Agency Selection, B2B Marketing Leadership
Governance of AI in practice
Anthropic’s Claude now embeds an invisible watermark directly into the text it generates using patterns of text it chooses, a requirement driven by the EU AI Act’s transparency obligations. Every model launched from that date carries it by default, and older models are being retrofitted. Image and file outputs carry a different mark: signed C2PA provenance metadata […]
B2B Sales Enablement, B2B Strategy
Conversation is the new conversion in B2B marketing
Trust matters in B2B, and it’s getting increasingly harder to earn and sustain. In our previous article on how B2B brands build trust, we split trust signals into two groups: signals about the company, such as credibility, reputation, expertise, stability and customer references, and signals about the people, such as chemistry, shared values, quality, responsiveness […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Advocacy, B2B Campaigns, B2B Search, SEO & GEO
What role do customer stories play in AI GEO?
Increasingly, prospects aren’t starting their journey on Google or your homepage. They’re opening tools like Gemini, ChatGPT or Perplexity and asking a simple question: “Who should I be talking to?” Gartner puts GenAI use at 45% of recent B2B purchases; G2 found AI chatbots are now the single biggest influence on software shortlists. The challenge for marketers now isn’t just about […]
B2B Audiences, B2B Campaigns, B2B Research, B2B Strategy
Can Reddit provide useful insights for B2B marketers?
Reddit conversations cover an enormous range of ground, from hobbies and politics to niche communities that have nothing to do with work. But only a narrow slice of that activity is useful for B2B planning. Reddit’s B2B activity is heavily concentrated. Analysis of 522 million Reddit mentions found that 67% of B2B recommendation activity happens […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Campaigns, B2B Content
Does LinkedIn’s “Seems like AI slop” button actually do anything?
LinkedIn has quietly added a button that lets users flag posts that “seem like AI slop.” The obvious question is whether clicking it actually does anything. I needed to take a closer look at what LinkedIn’s new flag really does, and what it means for AI-assisted content. Turns out that the answer isn’t to put ChatGPT or Claude back in its box. There’s a new option buried in […]
B2B Branding, B2B Marketing Leadership, B2B Strategy
How do senior B2B marketers tell if their B2B positioning is working?
If you’re the marketing leader accountable for how your business shows up, here’s a test that will tell you more about the campaigns you’re about to sign off than any positioning workshop will. Ask five people in your business “what is it we sell?” and see how many different variations come back. We use this test with marketing teams regularly, and the results […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Content, B2B Creative, B2B Strategy
When “good enough” stops being good enough
Somewhere in the country this morning, a marketing executive about eighteen months into their first proper job is being asked to plan a campaign, write it, design it, schedule it, report on it and brief three AI tools before tomorrow. They’re doing a decent job of it, all things considered. Nobody has ever shown them what a great job would look like. That, rather than […]
B2B Campaigns, B2B Creative, B2B Strategy, B2B Video
Why every B2B business should be thinking bigger about video
For years, we’ve talked about video as another marketing tactic: something to support a campaign, promote an event or sit alongside a product launch. I think that’s selling it short. One statistic recently caught my attention: pages featuring video are 53 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google than text-only pages. […]
B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Marketing in Technology, B2B Marketing Leadership, B2B Research, B2B Strategy
How do you track market share without a big market study?
Formal market studies cost more than most challenger brands can justify, and revenue comparisons rarely help either. This piece sets out three practical proxies, brand search volume, competitor invoice patterns and tender win rates, that give a genuine read on competitive standing a board will recognise.
B2B Marketing Leadership, B2B Strategy
New to the role as a senior marketer? A 9-step blueprint for successfully taking over a team.
Taking over a marketing team is as much about people as it is about a plan. This piece lays out a 9-step blueprint for the first 90 days: understanding what success looks like, learning how the business and its customers really see marketing, and building the credibility that makes bigger changes possible later.
B2B Marketing Leadership, B2B Strategy
Received investment? How to make sure your marketing operation is ready to scale your activities and your company.
When private equity invests, marketing comes under immediate pressure to prove it can deliver growth fast. This piece sets out a seven-part readiness framework across market-facing and internal factors, potential, proposition, pipeline, perception, process, people and priorities, plus a 90-day roadmap for finding out what needs fixing first.
ABM, B2B Audiences, B2B GTM, B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Strategy
How to build trust in your brand when targeting the defence sector
Most B2B marketing runs on proof: named customers, published outcomes, a case study for every objection. Defence marketing rarely gets that version of the game. Contracts stay classified. Customers stay unnamed. Case studies still exist, but they carry more weight when built to fit those limits rather than despite them, and the real competition usually starts before […]
B2B Content, B2B Marketing in Insurance, B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Sales Enablement
How B2B marketers can prepare winning sales decks
Most sales decks fail because they’re built like brochures: complete, generic and impossible to adapt mid-conversation. This piece sets out a framework built on SPIN selling and five fast-moving elements, context, clarity, contrast, character and call to action, for decks sales teams can actually flex in the room.
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Marketing Leadership
What skills do you need to future-proof your B2B marketing career?
AI has sped up marketing production, but it hasn’t replaced the judgement that makes campaigns work. This piece sets out nine skills that separate marketers who’ll thrive from marketers who just use more tools: curiosity, critical thinking, commercial acumen and the ability to know what’s actually worth doing.
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Marketing Agency Selection, B2B Marketing Leadership, B2B Strategy
How are we using AI across our marketing? A look behind the curtain
Velo doesn’t bolt on AI tools one at a time. It runs them as a connected ecosystem: brand-trained models, automated agents and generative tools working across research, planning and delivery. This piece goes behind the curtain to show how human judgement stays central to every layer.
ABM, B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Sales Enablement, B2B Strategy
How does running ABM campaigns in the defence sector differ from other B2B markets?
Defence buying doesn’t behave like other B2B categories: decision-makers are hard to identify, cycles run in years and switching a qualified component can cost more than it’s worth. This piece sets out what ABM actually looks like in defence, from manual stakeholder research to the trade-show playbook that gets you noticed.
B2B GTM, B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Strategy
If AI data centres are where the money is, how do you position your products and services as relevant?
The real AI opportunity isn’t the software, it’s the infrastructure behind it: the power, cooling, land, construction and compliance work that data centres depend on. This piece sets out how suppliers in adjacent markets can sell outcomes and technical proof to get noticed by infrastructure buyers.
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Campaigns
ChatGPT Ads are here! What B2B marketers need to know
ChatGPT Ads have moved from a closed pilot to a self-service platform, just as B2B buyers start using LLMs to research vendors before making contact. This piece covers how the platform works, what it costs to test and why niche B2B marketers should treat it as discovery, not scale, for now.
B2B Advocacy, B2B Audiences, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Strategy
How do you influence buying decisions before they’re even being made?
There’s an uncomfortable truth sitting at the heart of most B2B marketing right now. Recommendation is the most influential driver of revenue, but it can only be indirectly influenced – and it’s even harder to measure. The channels you can measure are rarely where the real decision gets made. The channels where it does – the peer conversation, the internal Slack thread, the industry […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B ESG, B2B Marketing Leadership
How do you balance a growing use of AI with the inevitable sustainability impact?
B2B marketers have become the fastest adopters of AI, but the environmental cost of casual use rarely gets examined. This piece argues that the question worth asking isn’t whether AI can do a task, but whether using it is proportionate and efficient, and sets out the workflow habits that make that judgement practical.
ABM, B2B Content, B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Technology
Why your technical team might be your best marketing asset
Sherlock Holmes may have been the smartest person in the room, but even he needed Watson to help make his conclusions shine – and it’s the same with tech teams and marketing. Like Holmes and Watson, Woody and Buzz or Jake and Amy (IYKYK), unlikely companions always make for the best stories. And so it […]
B2B Marketing Leadership, B2B Strategy
How to successfully integrate two marketing teams following an acquisition.
The acquisition has closed. Two businesses now sit under one roof – and so do their two marketing teams, running two sets of campaigns, two martech stacks, and two cultures. A senior leader now has a choice to make: keep both teams running as they are, or blend them into a single, reshaped function. That decision shouldn’t be made on instinct, or on whoever argues their case hardest. Get […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
When is the right time to wrap an agency around your in-house team?
In many B2B organisations today, the question is no longer whether to use an agency. It’s if and followed by when. In-house teams are close to customers, more embedded in the business, and increasingly capable across strategy, execution and performance. In-house teams bring clear advantages, but they also come with trade-offs that are easy to miss when you’re in the middle of it. On the one hand, they’re more cost-effective, but […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Why choosing a B2B agency should come with a guarantee
Choosing a B2B agency is still, in most cases, a leap of faith. You review credentials, assess chemistry and compare proposals, but ultimately you are making a decision based on limited information and a degree of trust. That would be fine if the stakes were low. But they are not. Marketing is expected to drive growth, influence revenue and stand up to […]
B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Marketing in Technology, B2B Search, SEO & GEO
Fancy a brew? LinkedIn’s 360Brew algorithm is why your content reach has changed
For months, our company posts have been pulling 75–80% less reach than they were, and personal posts swing from solid to invisible with no obvious pattern. We’re not alone. AuthoredUp’s analysis of three million-plus posts found 98% of users saw reach decline year-on-year, with median impressions falling around 47%. For larger accounts (50K+ followers) the drops hit 62% on reach and […]
Sales and marketing alignment in ABM is a myth
If you’ve been to any B2B marketing event in the last few years, you’ve likely sat through more than one session on the need for sales and marketing to be ‘aligned’. It sounds like progress. Two teams working in harmony. On the surface, it feels right. But the very idea of alignment creates a problem. Alignment implies separation. It assumes […]
How does an automated LinkedIn outreach programme work, and how effective is it?
We ran our own automated LinkedIn outreach programme for four weeks to test whether value-led, well-targeted messages could beat volume. The results split: strong connection acceptance rates, passive engagement once people connected, no proposals and real lessons for anyone considering automation on LinkedIn.
Is search still important to B2B marketers?
I don’t think ‘SEO is dead’ rhetoric is a useful place to start, because it’s not really what’s happening. Search isn’t disappearing, but the word might not stretch far enough any more for what’s actually going on: it’s spreading out across more platforms as AI tools, answer engines, and discovery surfaces join the mix. A […]
Why B2B Marketers need to reclaim the revenue conversation and how to do it
Marketing has a credibility problem. And it’s one of our own making. Being a senior marketer in B2B has never been harder — or lonelier. Stress levels are high, scrutiny is constant, and the pace of change is relentless. Just keeping current with AI and martech developments demands a level of curiosity and energy that leaves little room to pause […]
Do you feel like the lights have gone off on your B2B marketing?
B2B marketing influence is getting harder to see, not less important. Explore how AI, recommendations and private buyer journeys are reshaping attribution, brand and demand.
B2B exhibitions cost money – evaluating them on leads alone will cost more.
Exhibitions are expensive. There is a stand to design and build. The travel to organise. The logistics to manage. The time out of the office. The follow-up that needs to happen afterwards. It is understandable that, once the event is over, the first question is usually commercial – how many leads did we get? The badge scanner has been out. The spreadsheet was […]
B2B Events, Customer Experience
5 ways B2B exhibitions have evolved. Have you?
B2B exhibitions are becoming increasingly important and increasingly central to how specialist markets connect. We know because we’ve been there. Across 2026, Velo has participated in the major exhibitions that matter to our sectors, including Utility Week Live, MACH, Fire Safety Expo, The Health & Safety Event, The Workplace Event, BIBA and more. These are not fringe moments in the marketing calendar. […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
When the heat is on, does your agency rise to the occasion? Are they there when it actually matters?
Choosing an agency is rarely a capability problem. Most can show impressive work, strong credentials and a confident pitch team. The real question is simpler: when the pressure is on, or when a larger client becomes demanding, will you matter? That’s where agency relationships are genuinely tested. And it’s worth finding out before you sign anything. The size paradox Agency size cuts […]
Does ABM work in long, complex buying cycles?
There is a common belief in certain sectors. “Account-Based Marketing does not work here.” You hear it most in markets with long sales cycles, complex procurement and heavy reliance on industry frameworks. The thinking is simple. Decisions are slow, structured and often predefined. Marketing cannot influence them in the same way. Or can it? What makes these markets different These environments are […]
B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Technology, B2B Marketing Leadership, B2B Sales Enablement
Sales and marketing alignment is a myth. Here is what works instead.
Why the real goal is empathy, and the practical approaches that reduce friction. Let’s start with the word itself. Alignment. It sounds sensible. Two teams moving in the same direction, not interfering with each other, broadly coordinated. The kind of language that fits neatly into strategy documents. But that is not how B2B buying works. B2B […]
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