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 Branding
B2B marketers are often balancing immediate lead pressure with the longer job of building preference, memory and trust. Branding is not just about logos or tone of voice. It is about helping buyers recognise you, remember you and feel confident choosing you in a crowded, low-attention market.
That means learning about positioning, value propositions, messaging, distinctive brand assets, brand salience, differentiation, emotional branding, consistency and the relationship between long-term brand building and short-term activation.
Our insight articles and Marketing Map explore what strong B2B branding really looks like, how brands grow and how marketers can create brands that are more memorable, more meaningful and more commercially effective.
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 […]
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 […]
B2B Branding, B2B Campaigns, B2B Content, B2B Creative
Defying perceptions: Why B2B brands need a little more Elphaba energy
We’re in full Wicked fever again, and while most people are debating Ariana and Cynthia’s weird relationship IRL or that Elphie & Fiyero scene, I keep spotting parallels with B2B marketing. Stay with me – I promise I’m onto something! Because under all the emerald sparkle is a truth every marketer knows too well: being brilliant doesn’t matter if your story isn’t being heard. There’s a […]
B2B Branding, B2B Marketing in Insurance, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Research, B2B Strategy
Does brand matter when selling into a B2B niche?
Like Brexit-era Boris, there are two short answers here: yes, and no. But in B2B, short answers rarely get you far. No: Specification trumps story In industrial B2B – whether you’re selling sensors, safety signage or software – brand often takes a back seat. Buyers are responsible for production lines, compliance officers and procurement frameworks. […]
B2B Advocacy, B2B Audiences, B2B Branding, B2B Campaigns, B2B Content, B2B Marketing in Technology
How Tech Marketers should prepare for 2026
Most B2B tech marketers are optimising for the wrong outcome. They’re chasing reach, perfecting attribution models, and testing endless variations of the same campaign. But when a prospect is ready to shortlist, when a customer is asked for a recommendation, when a board member needs a supplier, your brand either comes to mind, or it […]
B2B Advocacy, B2B Audiences, B2B Branding, B2B Campaigns, B2B Content, B2B Marketing in Professional Services
How Professional Services Marketers should start 2026
There is a hard truth. Nobody wakes up excited to hire a facilities management company. No finance director celebrates finding a new insurance broker. Building services, business services, B2B insurance – these aren’t impulse purchases. They’re considered decisions about who you’re going to trust with something important: your operations, your risk, your reputation. And when […]
ABM, B2B Branding, B2B Sales Enablement
What we learned about influencing LinkedIn’s algorithm with an unscientific test using SSI
TL:DR We ran a quick internal test to understand LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) and what actually drives influence on the platform. Our goal? To find out whether it’s worth the effort for B2B marketers, especially in niche sectors to invest time into personal posting. The headline takeaway: yes, personal posts often outperform company ones, […]
B2B Branding, B2B Content, B2B Creative, B2B Marketing in Technology
Is there a place for characters in B2B marketing?
Not quite a mascot. Not quite a metaphor. But definitely memorable. When we created U.ME for McGraw-Hill — a visual anchor for the next generation of doctors stepping into the world of work — we didn’t realise we’d started something. Then we used the same idea again, in early creative thinking for Bolt EU’s B2B […]
B2B Direct Mail is back. Did it ever go away?
“But is anyone in the office anymore?” This has been the standard objection to using direct mail over recent years. Mandated RTO policies are here. We know this as, in many places, it is causing conflict between management and employees. However, it feels like a one-way road, with some, like Publicis, going as far […]
How long is it since you refreshed your B2B logo?
For many B2B brands, their logo is sacrosanct and has been part of the business since its inception. Sadly, logos become outdated and no longer fit for today’s world. They’re often the only part of a business that is the same as the day it was founded, and yet the one part that everyone sees […]
B2B Branding, B2B Content, B2B ESG
How to calculate the footprint of your B2B website
At Velo, we’ve conducted a study into how to make a website as sustainable as possible. The reality is that carbon is emitted even just by hosting and serving your website. And, after all, we want people to visit our website and then engage with the content. It is not about zero emissions; it […]
How to measure your B2B brand strength
You might think your brand is powerful, but how can you be sure? Do you have a method for tracking it over time to effectively manage it? You might think your brand is powerful, but how can you be sure? Do you have a method for tracking it over time to effectively manage it? As a B2B […]
B2B Branding, Customer Experience
What storytelling process should you follow when building your B2B brand?
Crafting creating and engaging storytelling for B2B marketing Part 2: The process of storytelling In a three part blog series, agency strategist Rene Power looks at why storytelling in b2b marketing has become a go-to approach for so many marketers and how to start doing it effectively. This second post outlines the concept of the […]
How to roll out new brand communications without damaging brand strength
If you target a B2B niche, your brand becomes one of your most crucial assets. It can both help you and harm you. What we often see is that it can lose potency as it is rolled out. The hero assets are brilliant, creative and hard-hitting. By the time the roll-out is covering product brochures, […]
B2B Branding, Customer Experience
Why do B2B marketers need to go much deeper to understand their customers? Making the case for expanded Buyer Personas.
Answering this question is where Velo, and any self respecting marketing professional should, start with all clients. When was the last time you read a blog, an article, a social media post, watched a video or listened to a podcast and thought – wow that really spoke to me? It wasn’t just a case […]
B2B Branding, B2B Marketing in Insurance, B2B Marketing in manufacturing, B2B Marketing in Technology, Customer Experience
Why should B2B Customer Advocacy Programs be more than just stories?
We know customer stories are powerful. Customer experiences engage, influence, educate, and entertain others like them far more than promotional content. In a world where more and more buyer research is conducted online, success stories are a valuable part of the B2B marketer’s tool kit, offering tangible authenticity to a company’s claims when developed […]
How does brand awareness in a B2B niche lead to growth?
Over the years, there have been many B2B marketing studies that changed the industry’s thinking. You’ll be familiar with their headline results but often keen to know more – and to review the original source. This series of articles provides an overview of the research and how they apply for B2B marketers targeting a niche. […]
B2B Branding, Customer Experience
How to create a B2B podcast series – and why you should
The article is about the why, what, how and where of creating a B2B podcast. Using our experience of producing Creative Covenant’s Marketing for Cybersecurity series, we are sharing our specific tips and learnings for making podcasts an essential component of your wider marketing strategy. Podcasts are huge – and ubiquitousLet’s start with some stats: […]
B2B Branding, B2B Marketing in Professional Services, B2B Marketing in Technology, Customer Experience
What does best practice brand communication look like in the technology sector?
The Velo team looks at five technology brands implementing good marketing practice and where they could be improved further. In a post at the start of 2022 – What are the top marketing challenges facing technology businesses and how to fix them? – we outlined five key challenges we see technology companies confronting when it […]
B2B Branding, B2B Marketing in Technology, Customer Experience
Is there a place for WhatsApp for Business in B2B marketing?
Marketing communication becomes more fragmented every year, with more tools and technologies emerging that are taking community and communications into private channels. The pandemic forced even the most security conscious B2B operations to recognise they needed to open up to using third party software to streamline their operations, and improve the customer experience. B2B companies […]
B2B Branding, B2B Creative, B2B Marketing in manufacturing
What are the best resources to help B2B marketers keep up with the latest developments in the industrial sector?
An essential resource list of news sites, blogs, podcasts, trade associations and more for marketing professionals working in industrial marketing. Staying up to date with all the changes and developments in the industrial and B2B manufacturing space can be a real challenge for marketers. To help, we’ve pulled together a list of the best resources […]
What can B2B Marketers learn from those using social media well? | B2B social media best practice
“90% of the B2B purchase process is completed before contacting a vendor”
B2B Branding, B2B Marketing in Technology
What are the best resources to help B2B marketers keep up with the latest developments in the technology sector?
An essential resource list of news sites, blogs, podcasts, trade associations, events and more for marketing professionals working in the technology sector. Staying up to date with all the changes and developments in the technology space can be a real challenge for B2B technology marketers. With that said, we’ve pulled together a list of the […]
B2B Branding, B2B Content, B2B Creative
Creative takes the spotlight! What B2B marketers need to know…
This is the third and final post in our trend-watching series of posts looking at some of the important trends that are going to impact B2B marketing strategy and implementation in 2022. This post focuses on the creative side of B2B marketing. B2B steps into the creative spotlight The newly launched Creative B2B Lion […]
B2B Branding, B2B Content, B2B Marketing in manufacturing
How industrial b2b companies can attract more sales ready leads through more effective marketing
We’ve written previously about how industrial B2B marketers need to be more structured in their thinking, developing content and communications that arouse, attract, engage, and inform prospects to take positive action. This process involves thinking more like a publisher, being much more open and being present in the right places at the right time when […]
B2B Branding, B2B ESG, B2B Marketing in Technology
B2B technology companies should include sustainability messaging as part of your brand positioning. But how?
Clare Leighton is a senior marketer who has been in B2B technology for over fifteen years. Always passionate about charity and the environment, in her most recent roles at Vodafone and Citrix, she began to focus, firstly on how the work of Vodafone Foundation can be brought to life for Business customers and latterly, how […]
B2B Branding, B2B Content, B2B Creative
Brand marketing is back! What B2B marketers need to know…
As an agency and trusted partner for clients, it’s important we stay up to date with the latest thinking and influences on B2B marketing. Continuing a series of short posts looking at the some of the important trends that are going to impact strategy and implementation this year, this post looks at brand for B2B. […]
Privacy and the attention economy – What B2B marketers need to know
As an agency and trusted partner for clients, it’s important we stay up to date with the latest thinking and influences on B2B marketing. In this first in a short series of posts, we’re looking at the some of the important trends that are going to impact strategy and implementation this year. What does […]
B2B Branding, Customer Experience
Social media sharing is about the who, not the what: An advocate marketer’s perspective
Against the backdrop of the new Sage Boss-It campaign and the success of the supporting TikTok campaign which was one of the first B2B uses of this channel, we’re seeing customers of B2B brands are playing a huge part in marketing and amplifying the company’s message in volumes never seen before. This campaign shows it […]
Building a B2B brand identity to be proud of – the importance of clarity, coherence, relevance and consistency
Building brands doesn’t stop because of pandemics and major market upheavals. Whilst many brands have had spectacular pandemic success, skillfully pivoting and navigating to a more online execution, a large number have at best survived rather than thrived – and a fair few have in fact “languished” (the inevitable word of 2021) somewhere in between. […]
B2B Branding, B2B Campaigns, B2B Marketing in manufacturing
What are the 5 main challenges for B2B industrial marketing?
Industrial manufacturing still forms a dominant part of most national economies. Including food, drink, transport, and pharmaceuticals, it can be as high as 70% in GDP terms and is responsible for millions of jobs. Although markets are currently buoyant in terms of demand, many are facing unrivalled challenges in terms of raw materials shortages, price […]
B2B Branding, B2B Creative, B2B Marketing in Technology, Customer Experience
Are changes in the HR space evolving the way products and services will be bought and sold forever?
We’re recognising significant changes in how buyers research, select and procure B2B services and none-more so than around HR services where roles, responsibilities, priorities and challenges have changed completely in comparison to pre-covid times. HR as a problem solver Following the pandemic, the importance of the HR function within organisations has been elevated. […]
Brand and storytelling agency Creative Covenant is joining Velo. What does this mean for Velo’s clients?
Ever since I started the business in 2010, Velo has and always will, operate as an extension of our client’s teams. My mission was to build a committed team of experts with one common goal – to craft B2B marketing to be proud of in partnership with our clients. It is a rare philosophy, but […]
B2B Branding, Customer Experience
Want to know what the new Google Page Experience ranking algorithm means for you as a B2B marketer? Read on…
At the end of May this year, Google provided advanced notice of a shake-up in how it ranks search engine results to penalise those with poor user experience. However, unlike previous updates, this time Google has provided more details and tools to allow B2B marketers to evaluate and fix any aspects of their sites so […]
B2B Branding, B2B Campaigns, B2B Creative, Customer Experience
Creative thinking is at the core of B2B marketing. Never more so than now.
What’s been your highlight of the lockdown easing – a visit to friends and family? A trip to the local? Getting back in style with a haircut? As we emerge and are finally able to go out again, see people and re-establish ourselves within our communities, B2B marketers are already questioning what the impact is […]
Wassup?’ Lessons in brand storytelling
TBT to 1999 and a group of friends ‘watching the game, having a Bud.’ Gayle Kennedy, our Director of Storytelling, explains what brand storytelling lessons we can glean from this iconic advertising series. Our #tbt this week goes back to 1999, in which one question was asked: ‘Wassup?’ On the face of it, this […]
You are not the protagonist
Writing a brand story can seem frivolous, but it’s a crucial reminder of your product’s role in your customer’s everyday life. Writing your brand story can feel like one of the more esoteric moments in crafting your positioning. Destined to stay within the confines of your brand guidelines, the more hardened and cynical amongst a […]
The 12 Year Window – Why Now is the Time to Invest in your Brand
Regardless of if you’re a FTSE 100 company or a start-up, a well-defined brand will give you a competitive advantage. How? People are drawn to brands that look and sound confident about who they are. Potential customers believe that choosing a strong brand reduces the risk in a decision. The success of a defined brand, […]
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