15 Successful B2B Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Next Campaign

The marketing world moves fast. 

There are no guarantees that what works today will still work in a month – never mind in a year.

Take Facebook ads. Four years ago, brands across the world spent a combined $3.2 billion on Facebook advertising – big money, but just a fifth of the amount spent on Google ads. Today, that figure has increased to more than $16 billion, with 92% of social marketers now using Facebook for advertising. In other words, it’s practically ubiquitous.

But how can you ensure you don’t miss out on the next big thing in B2B marketing?

It’s not always easy. The internet is overflowing with articles predicting up-and-coming B2B marketing trends, without giving any practical tips on how to tap into those trends. I’ve written similar articles in the past, and whenever I do, people ask me for examples. They need to see it “in the wild” to understand how it works, and whether it’s applicable to them.

That’s why I’ve put together this list of 15 kick-ass B2B marketing examples to give you a dose of inspiration ahead of your next big campaign.

1. Couchbase uses ABM to generate $1.5m of sales pipeline

Couchbase aspires to revolutionize digital innovation by enabling rich, personalized customer experiences.

That’s an impressive-sounding goal, right?

But it had a problem. In fact, it had more than one.

Firstly, Couchbase’s product – despite offering substantial business benefits – had relatively niche appeal because it’s built on NoSQL technology, which has traditionally been marketed to a highly technical audience.

Secondly, to grow market share, it had to go toe-to-toe with big incumbents like Oracle, not to mention smaller but better-established NoSQL rivals.

The solution? Account-based marketing (ABM). Couchbase knew that ABM could help it tap into bigger accounts. But it also realized that turning those accounts into customers would require a much deeper level of insight, centered around appealing to a more strategic, higher-value audience.

Having run persona workshops to understand the roles, pain points, buying cycle relevance, and content preferences of each individual involved in the decision-making process, Couchbase used social persona data and keyword volumes to eradicate the guesswork from its content strategy. This allowed it to create laser-targeted content for each persona, as well as informing where and how to deliver it.

The result? Couchbase was quickly able to build a sales pipeline of $1.5 million, confident in the knowledge that it could create the content necessary to move prospects down the sales funnel.

2. Drift blows email conversion rates out of the water with live chat

Imagine if I told you that you could never use another lead capture form in your life.

You’d probably break out in a cold sweat, right? “Creating content with no CTA or data capture … how am I ever going to generate any leads? My sales director’s going to leave a horse’s head in my bed!”

Take a deep breath. 

For one thing, I know a lot about marketing, but I don’t have the power to confiscate your lead forms. And for another, Drift has categorically proven that you can capture leads without using forms. In fact, it pioneered the #NoForms movement, geared toward highlighting alternative approaches to lead gen.

Importantly, Drift was prepared to practice what it preached. The company ditched its website forms and bet big on live chat – and the results have been impressive, to say the least.

As an example, 63% of people who open the chat box on Drift’s pricing page choose to start a conversation with a sales rep. In comparison, its typical email campaigns – fueled by addresses gathered from lead capture forms – generated click rates of 2-3%.

3. Carpathia proves referral programs aren’t just for B2C

There’s a common misconception that referral marketing only works for consumer-y campaigns.

In fairness, I can understand why it exists. Most of the best-known referral programs are consumer-facing – think Airbnb, Amazon Prime, Uber, and even Tesla.

But that doesn’t mean referral marketing is only applicable to B2C, as Carpathia – which sold large-scale enterprise cloud solutions, before being acquired by QTS Realty Trust in a $326 million deal – has proved.

Ultimately, it makes no difference whether you’re selling holiday apartments, taxis, or cloud services – you’re still targeting people. And referral marketing is a fantastic way to reach those people.

While Carpathia’s products were relatively complex, its referral program couldn’t have been simpler. 

It only took three short steps to become a Carpathia Referral Partner. Having registered, partners gained access to case studies, white papers, and other sales tools, and were paid a commission upon referring new customers.

The company also leveraged social proof to highlight the strength of its offering – crucially understanding that in the world of B2B, a familiar name can go a long way.

4. Mailshake spent six months creating one piece of long-form content that drove six-figure sales

Long-form content.

10x content.

Kick-ass content. 

Whatever you call it, the theory remains the same: stop writing 700-word, keyword-targeted blog posts and spend your time creating something brilliant. Something that really pushes the envelope. Something that’s better than everything else out there.

One of my companies, Mailshake, is fully invested in the philosophy of “quality over quantity.” In fact, we spent six months creating our Cold Email Outreach Playbook, following an intensive process that involved:

• Identifying a topic area
• Fully researching the subject matter 
• Finding relevant keywords
• Building a detailed outline
• Contacting relevant influencers to ask for their input
• Writing and designing the playbook
• Launching and promoting it

Six months is a long time. With an estimated 4.4 million blogs published every day, that means an astonishing 803 million posts were published in the time it took us to create a single playbook. Was it worth it?

Undoubtedly. But don’t just take my word for it – look at the numbers.

In the year since our guide was published, it drove over 50,000 visitors to the Mailshake website and enabled us to sign up more than 590 customers. Without giving too much away, it’s public knowledge that our product pricing starts at $29 per month, so you can pretty quickly work out what sort of impact the playbook had on our bottom line.

Six months doesn’t sound like such a long time now, does it?

5. Double Your Freelancing used personalized email campaigns to grow conversions 250%

How many email marketers have attempted to create messaging that appeals to everyone, rather than drilling down to a specific niche? I know I have.

That’s why I know it doesn’t work.

The average person doesn’t exist. If you try to speak to them, you’ll end up resonating with no one.

Double Your Freelancing, an education company that helps thousands of freelancers to run their business, understood this problem. Its customers include everyone from agencies, developers, and designers to writers, consultants, photographers and marketers.

Originally, the company planned to hone in on just one of these audience groups. However, founder Brennan Dunn soon realized that his product didn’t need to be more specialized – but his marketing messages did.

That’s when Double Your Freelancing began building out personalized email campaigns, tweaking marketing copy, subject lines, and CTAs to resonate with each persona. Specific offers and testimonials were inserted into the emails using “if/then” liquid conditionals, and a dedicated landing page was created to ensure that new subscribers received the right messages.

To recap, Double Your Freelancing didn’t change its product at all – it just personalized its marketing communications more effectively.

The result? A 250% upturn in conversion rates.

6. Dropbox achieves ROI of 25:1 with thought leadership

Thought leadership. It’s a bit of a vague term, isn’t it? Hard to define, and even harder to prove its effectiveness.

Actually, that couldn’t be further from the truth, as the next two examples demonstrate.

First, let’s take a look at Dropbox. 

The file hosting service wanted to get in front of a new audience – marketers. So it built a secure, interactive microsite featuring an assessment tool that enabled users to find out what type of marketer they are. The results were heavily personalized and highly shareable, prompting entire agencies and marketing departments to get involved.

The assessment tool was only the tip of the iceberg. The B2B content marketing campaign also incorporated psychometric research, infographics, blog posts, and a 20-page ebook – another example of a brand investing time in content to create something that blows the competition away.

It’s fair to say the results were impressive. The campaign achieved 220% of its lead generation target and delivered an initial ROI of 25:1.

7. Adobe uses thought leadership to shift market perceptions

Next up is Adobe. Sure, it’s a huge business, with revenues exceeding $9 billion. But it cut its teeth in the world of desktop publishing and needed to reach a whole new audience after acquiring marketing analytics company Omniture.

Again, thought leadership provided the solution.

Adobe took advantage of one of its newly acquired assets – specifically, the Omniture-owned website CMO.com – to reposition the Adobe brand. 

Today, it’s recognized as one of the best content marketing hubs on the web, attracting more than 100,000 visits a month. With vast resources of original and curated content that’s highly relevant to marketing chiefs, it has kept Adobe firmly top-of-mind among businesses looking for marketing solutions.

8. Philips invests in influencer marketing to cut costs

Think “influencer” and you inevitably picture a travel Instagrammer snapping pictures of sunrise yoga sessions and infinity pools.

But influencer marketing has a big part to play in the B2B marketing mix, too – you just need to find the right influencers.

When Philips, one of the world’s biggest electronics companies, made the decision to move to a fully-digital marketing model, it placed influencers at the forefront.

The first part of the process saw the creation of a digital command center serving its ASEAN market, dedicated to monitoring and participating in social commentary about the company, its products, and categories related to its product group.

Philips established a set of keywords that allowed it to track down the most relevant accounts within three groups of social users:

• Media
• Influencers
• Advocates

This gave the company an active list of social users to reach out to for engagement and content sharing opportunities. Damien Cummings, CMO of Philips ASEAN, said he expected the command center to have a “net neutral” impact on the company’s marketing spend, while reducing costs in the long term.

9. Drift ditches press releases in favor of authentic storytelling through employee activation

I’ve already included Drift in this article, but if you’ve ever looked into its content, amplification, and lead gen strategies, you’ll understand why the company full deserves a second mention.

Drift prides itself on ripping up the rulebook of standard B2B practices. I’ve already discussed how it waged war on gated content and lead capture forms, but that’s only the start.

When it comes to product launches, Drift decided press releases were no longer fit for purpose. I couldn’t agree more – they’re boring, long, and they all sound the same.

Instead, the company went down the employee activation route. It built a Shipyard landing page to showcase new features the second they become available, and put its employees front and center in its amplification efforts by building up the profiles of its executives and their teams.

Drift is fanatical about sharing knowledge directly with its customers, cutting out the need for tired corporate communications channels. Take a look at the company’s social accounts and you’ll see that it’s more like an influencer than a corporate marketer.

Followers love this commitment to authenticity and transparency. It’s a fantastic way to drive engagement. So it’s no coincidence that Drift saw an 800% increase in customer conversations in 2018.

10. Automizy uses automation to nurture leads

Email marketing automation is Automizy’s business, so it’s no surprise that the company is so good at it. 

Automizy relies heavily on automation to nurture the leads that it works so hard to capture. As part of this process, it created a lead nurturing workflow geared toward educating the prospect, raising awareness of its products, and building trust:

The email nurturing campaign implemented by Automizy around its 2018 Marketing Automation Challenges Report is a good example of how this process works in practice. The campaign nurtured leads through four steps:

1. Leads opt in to download the report on the dedicated campaign landing page.

2. This action triggered an automated email thanking the user for opting in and providing a link to the report, followed by a brief sales pitch about Automizy’s software.

3. Two days later, a second email was sent to the user, featuring links to useful educational resources.

4. By this point, Automizy believes it has built a friendly rapport with the prospect, meaning it won’t feel inappropriate to send a more detailed sales pitch with a “Free Trial” CTA.

It all sounds so simple. But it just doesn’t work without the right software and a clear workflow.

11. Microsoft uses paid social to build trust and authority in Office for Business

Facebook is another platform that’s often dismissed as too “consumer-y” for B2B. 

But it shouldn’t be. In fact, B2B social marketers say ads on Facebook drive the same ROI as LinkedIn, and more than any other social platform.

Recognizing the clear benefits of social media to B2B marketers, Microsoft used ads on Facebook to promote Office for Business as an authoritative voice. Check out this Facebook audience Shopify app.

It used key statistics from independent reports to promote its content …

… as well as leveraging ads to amplify the reach of its own research reports.

There’s nothing overtly salesy about these ads. Instead, Microsoft is happy to offer valuable, relevant curated and original content to its audience, helping it to grow brand awareness and build stronger relationships.

12. Hubspot uses event marketing to promote new product features

Hubspot is often seen as the benchmark for inbound B2B marketing campaigns that deliver real results. Not surprising when you consider that inbound is Hubspot’s whole business.

But the company also utilizes more traditional, offline methods to foster stronger relationships with its existing user base. Perhaps the best example of this is the annual INBOUND conference, which Hubspot uses to release details of its latest product features.

Of course, there’s also a packed roster of expert speakers, workshops, and networking events. But at its heart, INBOUND is about highlighting the benefits of Hubspot’s software. It’s an ingenious way to gather a captive audience of customers and give them the knowledge to make the most out of the Hubspot feature set, thereby encouraging retention and growing lifetime value. 

In other words, INBOUND is proof that when it comes to building relationships, the old methods are sometimes the best.

13. FedEx subverts expectations to gain followers on social media

FedEx is mostly known for being a dry, traditional logistics company. It doesn’t get much less exciting than that, so ideas around how to market the brand are limited — supposedly.

The billion dollar behemoth has made a big splash on social media, expanding its reach to 209,000 followers. To keep followers engaged, FedEx changed its page to be an immersive travel experience.

Various photos show FedEx planes and other vehicles in exotic locations and top tier cities like New York, Quebec, and London. Of course, each post includes a FedEx logo for free advertising by associating the brand with these exciting destinations. The end result is turning their social feed into a travelog.

14. Slack uses animal humor to highlight their market’s pain points

Slack is a useful platform for team collaboration. You can share files, communicate quickly, and organize workflows in a breeze. And it’s had a big rise in the last few years, reaching over 10 million daily active users. 

Solving business productivity problems isn’t something usually seen as humorous. But Slack decided to change that perception. They created a video campaign to market their B2B product in a way that is quite unusual.

The video features various animals in a workplace, all with their unique traits. For instance, the sloth is a slow typer and the lion is the team leader. By using a little bit of humor and metaphor, Slack makes its point more powerfully than simply stating it outright. 

15. LinkedIn lets it loose to expand its audience

If LinkedIn were a personality in high school, it would be the hyper focused no-nonsenses overachiever. But the major business social network which connects professionals (we can even automate LinkedIn) all around the world decided to spice things up

In order to  do that, they created a campaign called “In It Together.” It highlights the idea that success can occur in any industry and any profession. It’s not just CFOs and salespeople who can benefit from LinkedIn, but bakery owners, boxers, and anyone else too.

By stating that any profession is welcome, LinkedIn widens its potential customer base. The campaign made a lot of waves, getting featured at the Golden Globes. It helped break down the barrier of poele feeling like they weren’t serious enough to have LinkedIn.

Have you seen any fantastic, must-share examples of inspiring marketing campaigns? Perhaps you were blown away by an influencer campaign, or wowed by a brilliant piece of content or something you saw at a conference? Let me know in the comments below: