I hope you’re having a great weekend!
Marketing news this weekend
B2BMarketing.net shared some interesting findings from their latest B2B Marketing Trends report. One interesting thing about this report is that it is based off of award submissions, so I doubt it accurately reflects most B2B marketing strategies as a whole. The kind of campaigns that get submitted for awards would usually be something new or cutting-edge, and not the foundational campaigns that I’m sure they are running all the time. The fact that they shared that 50% of the campaign themes were around ESG or sustainability also shows that the kind of campaigns submitted weren’t the full spectrum of what is out there as a whole. There were still some good insights though, like trust-building being a key objective for 65% of the campaigns. I also found it interesting that proprietary research was the most popular format to build that trust, beating out customer testimonials. The article also shared they thought it was unexpected that 45% of the campaigns included some physical (in-person) element. I am also surprised but in the opposite way. Conferences and in-person events are still a cornerstone of many B2B companies’ marketing, and this highlights to me that we need to do better at showcasing the amazing work our content teams are doing when we are face-to-face with our customers.
Podcast I’m listening to this weekend
I’m 3.5 hours into Lex Friedman’s podcast with Dylan Patel and Nathan Lambert, and there’s still an hour and a half to go! This incredibly in-depth episode covers a ton around AI, AI hardware, DeepSeek, OpenAI, NVIDIA and more. Although I try to follow AI news, I’m not super technical and this was a great ‘101’ course on tons of topics I hadn’t heard about or only had a vague idea of before. Both guests seemed very objective and provided fantastic background on these complex and politicized topics. What impressed me most was all three of their abilities to explain things in a way someone like me could understand, which shows how deep their understanding really is. I’m sure there will be clips around or hopefully even an AI summary if you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, but if you have the time and are at all confused about these topics, I think it is worth a listen!
Update on Before We Get There podcast
First of all, if you’ve listened to the podcast at all, thank you! If you haven’t you can check it out here. I’m biased, but I do think you’ll enjoy the episodes, especially if one of the guests’ backgrounds has something in common with you. This week I decided that, at least for the time being, I’ll be switching to releasing episodes every other week. In the end, this is a hobby for me, and I need to balance it with the other priorities in my life. Rather than trying to do too much and burning myself out, I think it is better to slow it down a bit and give myself less time-pressure to have a new episode ready. I’ll be continuing to reach out to people I find interesting and record episodes as they are available, so if I end up with a big backlog in the future, I may change the schedule again or release some bonus episodes. But for now, I want to focus on continuing to get guests I’m really interested in and not just anyone who is willing to come on the show just to have something to release each week. So there won’t be a new episode this coming week, but the week after that I already have an amazing guest lined up, so stay tuned!
Last but not least, here’s a friendly reminder to make a reservation for Valentine’s Day next Friday if you haven’t already! Have a great week!