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 Agency Selection
Choosing a B2B agency can feel high stakes. Marketers are trying to find a partner that understands their sector, works in a way that suits their team and can deliver more than a polished pitch. The challenge is separating genuine fit, capability and chemistry from generic agency promises.
That means learning about briefing, agency evaluation, specialist expertise, processes, chemistry meetings, scopes of work, pricing models, onboarding and what to look for in a long-term agency relationship.
Our insight articles share advice, guidance and practical thinking to help marketers choose an agency with more confidence and build a relationship that is productive from the outset.
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 […]
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.
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 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 […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Why the recommended choice is never a shortcut. It is a quality standard.
When marketers describe how they select an agency, the process sounds structured. Long lists. Formal briefs. Credentials reviewed. Pitches compared. In practice, the journey usually begins somewhere much simpler – with the agencies people have already heard of. A recommendation from a peer. An agency someone used in a previous role. At first glance, this looks like a shortcut. It isn’t. It’s how complex purchasing […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Future-proof or already obsolete? How to assess an agency’s shelf life
Appointing an agency is meant to make your life easier. You bring in expertise, fresh thinking and additional capacity. Someone who understands your market, challenges your assumptions and helps move things forward. Yet many agency relationships quietly drift into something else entirely. Instead of shaping strategy, they wait for instructions. Instead of anticipating change, they react to it. Instead of driving results, they produce assets. When […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection, B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Marketing in Technology
Why use a pitch when selecting an agency? It puts too much pressure on a client’s brief.
When looking for a new agency, common practice is to invite selected agencies to generate initial ideas, explain their approach, and share relevant experience around the problem you’re seeking to solve. Typically, most pitches involve an initial brief. This brief is crucial for the agency, as it provides the basis for deciding whether to participate […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
How should B2B marketers select a new agency that targets a niche? A comparison scorecard
When you’re considering appointing an agency, a bit of preplanning will make it much easier to select the right partner. For B2B marketers who target a niche, this is a harder process than it looks. Similar case studies are hard to find or rarely celebrated (when was the last time you saw a true niche […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection, B2B Sales Enablement
Why is it called “winning” a new client when a good client-agency relationship is a partnership?
The vocab is just wrong. If someone wins, someone else loses. To apply this vocab to starting a new business partnership exemplifies how the pitch process is broken. Most clients talk about appointing a new agency. Never winning a new agency. Why? In day-to-day life, you rarely speak this way. You don’t “win” a new member of […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Is well-being in an agency the responsibility of the company or the individual?
Working in an agency can be hard, particularly at specific times of the year. We do our best to manage workloads and timelines at an organisational level, but with varied and challenging work, there is always room for improvement. Everyone has different needs and tolerances. Operating in a world where change is a constant simplifies […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Absolutely (Christmas) Crackers!
2023 was crackers! We wanted to end it by putting a smile on all B2B marketers faces, with our Christmas Cracker hunt! The Velo team has hidden 12 crackers in our very own Christmas London festive scene for you to find. Each one contains some B2B marketing wisdom to help you in 2024 and hidden […]
AI & MarTech for B2B, B2B Marketing Agency Selection
How is Velo approaching AI? We’re proceeding with caution, and so should you!
Change is afoot, but not for the first time. History repeats itself. AI isn’t the first shift that’s forced agencies, media and marketers to adapt. For instance, during the 80s, the introduction of computers and accessible software reinvented desktop publishing and photo editing. It replaced manually laying out paper and photos on a desktop and […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Velo recognised in Campaign Magazine’s Best Places to Work
It is particularly pleasing to be recognised in Campaign’s Best Places to Work awards in April 2023. This is a major achievement for Velo as this award considers everyone in Adland. Fellow winners include media companies like Channel 4, massive advertising groups like Havas, technology platforms like Stackadapt and Taboola and industry associations such […]
B2B Creative, B2B Marketing Agency Selection
How to stay creative in B2B marketing – highlights from our Gallery visit
When you’re in the business of creativity, it’s critical to garner all the inspiration and stimulation you can. To do this, sometimes you have to step outside your usual environment, immerse yourself in other ideas, and look at life from a different perspective. And what better place to channel such creativity than an art gallery? […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
B2B Agency of the Year finalist!
They say good things come in threes… We’ve just been shortlisted as B2B Agency of the Year in the UK Agency Awards – for the third consecutive year! They say good things come in threes… We’ve just been shortlisted as B2B Agency of the Year in the UK Agency Awards – for the third consecutive […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Built by recommendation – why specialising in three core sectors makes Velo a B2B marketing agency to trust
After 10 years of growth, Velo has become an award winning, full-service B2B marketing agency. Although our values are the same as at the start, our team, our clients and our knowledge have grown more than I ever dared dream they would. We now serve and specialise in three core sectors – technology, industrial and […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Being the best, not the biggest agency for our sectors
Over the past decade, the Velo team has changed in size and shape to be unrecognisable from where we started. In the beginning, the team worked from home and comprised young parents looking to enjoy the perks of a better work-life balance alongside the challenge of diverse and wide-ranging work, team and clients. And all […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Compassion conquers all
What is a ‘culture of compassion’? While we have endeavoured to achieve this from the start, this week we truly put it into practice. We’ll be honest: we’ve been having a hard time keeping motivated this week. Maybe it’s because the sun has been shining. Maybe it’s because we still haven’t hit a rhythm […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection, B2B Marketing Leadership
Lessons learnt from 10 years of working from home
Yesterday, Velo was established 10 years ago. Incredible. Our growth and success are down to the individuals who work here, the clients we’ve retained and the working environment we’ve created. Thank you to them all. Back then, working from home was the default, so we learnt some lessons about how to do it well without […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
How we create value for our clients
Even back in 2010 when the agency began, one lesson has been constant. We see examples of it in our twice-yearly client feedback survey commissioned through an independent research firm, The Drum, so we know we’re on to something. Particularly as benchmarking us against other agencies of our size has seen us continuously ranked in […]
B2B Marketing Agency Selection
Introducing the Velo Voice
The Velo Voice has been a long time coming and has one obvious intention – to share the Velo team’s expertise! Since I established Velo back in 2010, we’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best B2B companies in the tech, buildings, industrial and professional services sectors. Companies like Cisco, Sage, Troup […]
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