Highlights:
- Ignite B2B is the world’s biggest B2B marketing conference.
- It attracts over 500 marketers, 200 brands and 70 speakers.
- Chesamel attended with a team to build on their skills in the Marketing Services we offer.
- The conference included a range of sessions and networking events designed to help B2B marketers develop their brands and knowledge.
- AI was a major theme at this year’s conference, reflecting its growing significance as a marketing tool.
- Marketing is set to become an important part of any scalability strategy in 2024.
On July the 3rd “B2B Ignite” took place in London. It is the world’s biggest and most comprehensive B2B marketing convention, meaning it offers marketers and professionals in the B2B space an unparalleled opportunity to learn, network and get up to date with all the industry’s emerging and future trends.
The conference attracts over 500 B2B marketers from over 200 brands. There were 70 leaders and innovators sharing their wisdom and strategic ideas.
As a leading voice in the B2B marketing industry, a team from Chesamel attended the conference. We work with a range of brands and businesses to offer marketing transformation services and strategies tailored specifically to our clients.
Our strategies and solutions allow businesses to grow, evolve and adapt to their markets. We offer blended solutions that work alongside other areas of business transformation and a range of services including digital and e-commerce, ABM and direct to consumer services, which you can read more about here.
But we’re aware that it’s important to stay ahead of the curve and up to date with changes and trends in the B2B industry, so we’re always looking to build our knowledge and learn more to get the best results for our clients. So events like Ignite offer a perfect opportunity to broaden the skill set that we bring to our work.
So, what were the major learning opportunities at Ignite?
B2B Ignite is a major date in the international B2B calendar. Keynote speakers hail from big name brands and organisations including Virgin Media, IBM and O2 Business.
Ignite offers participants the opportunity to learn how to:
- Build your brand identity and find ways to stand out in the ever expanding B2B marketplace.
- Work more closely with your sales division in order to illustrate how your marketing work is driving figures and returns.
- Understand your customers and target market better.
- Use the most up to date marketing technologies.
This year’s highlights
One of the key marketing services that we offer is Marketing Performance work, in which we look at data, analytics and SEM. So Ignite’s session “Communicating the commercial value of marketing with the board” was hugely beneficial to our work in this area. Led by speakers including Joel Harrison (B2B Marketing, Editor-in-Chief & Founder) and Nimmi Bhalla (Virgin Media O2 Business, Marketing Director) the session looked at integrating these stats and figures into a marketing strategy. By combining marketing strategies with revenue and these metrics it’s possible to track how effectively your marketing campaigns are working. These types of data driven insights will then grab the attention of a company’s board.
We understand how significant brand identity is. The B2B market is estimated to reach an impressive £20.9 trillion in 2024, so having an identity that stands out in such a vast market is crucial [1]. Building a brand entails using a range of marketing techniques and methods. Successful brand identity relies on both B2B marketing and content marketing, this can involve methods such as content creation, lead generation, copywriting or branding identity. We combine all of these services to work effectively with our clients and help them build brands that stand out in their respective industries. The importance of brand identity was another major topic at this year’s Ignite. Lynzi Ashworth (Aon, Marketing Director) led the “Measuring what matters: The secret to tracking brand success” session which reflected the importance of these ideas and consolidated our understanding of how to measure the impact and success of a brand.
Another critical session we attended yesterday was “The power of full funnel campaigns B2B at scale”. This seminar used real world examples of how Moody’s shell company campaign generated awareness. Their campaign included major press coverage, paid and organic social, as well as other digital marketing techniques. By examining this in depth we grew our knowledge relating to measuring success in funnel consideration as well as understanding marketing tactics and strategies to create and grow effective campaigns.
Looking towards the future
B2B is always evolving, so it’s important to understand the future of the industry. Ignite was a useful forum for really considering what B2B marketers need to be looking at as we move into the coming months and 2025.
So, what are the key ideas you should be incorporating into your marketing strategy and campaigns right now?
There are few topics more pressing for many marketers than AI, in fact 54% of marketers have used AI in their work [2]. It’s becoming more and more apparent that understanding how to use AI in your marketing strategy will be a critical skill from 2024 onwards. It can be beneficial for aspects of marketing including analytics, content generation or ad optimisation. Learning how to integrate AI into your marketing work and practices is essential, in order to deliver campaigns that are artistic and in line with your brand’s unique identity but that also use AI effectively. We’re working to further integrate our AI and tech expertise into our marketing work, delivering services that are suited and designed for work in the Metaverse and Web3.
Scalability is another key take away from this year’s event. Marketing is a critical part of helping scale any business. It’s vital that marketers learn how to create marketing campaigns that are easy to scale, in turn this will increase market reach and make the best use of your resources. Which in turn will translate to greater revenue and maintaining a competitive position within your industry.
Brand and Reputation are an important tool in any marketer’s toolbox, and a service that we provide. We offer our clients PR and policy advice, as well as aiding them in forging partnerships with other brands and businesses. Consequently networking is an important part of our work, as it is for any B2B marketer. So Ignite was a prime place for us to expand our professional reach, meet like minded contemporaries and other individuals. Over the course of the day there were a range of networking sessions which allowed us to build new relationships and connections within the B2B space. Expanding your network is a significant part of building your marketing strategy and something that should continue to be on any B2B’s marketer’s radar as we move into the future.
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Overall Ignite provided a space in which to learn and grow, make connections and move firmly into the future. To find out more about how our work encompasses these growing trends, read more about our services here.
[1] Klizer, 2024
