The title says this is about data insight so let’s start with some hard numbers. We delivered 3 B2B brand strategy projects in the last quarter of 2023; a review, a refresh, and a complete redefinition… a micro trend at the very least? And in each case we, or the marketing team, had a job to bring their sales colleagues and exec members on board at a time when growing customers and revenue is as critical as it is challenging - making more immediate lead-gen and measurable sales-driving investment more attractive.

OK, cards on the table. I’ve spent decades working with B2B brands and their content and I have come to hate the term ‘thought leadership.’ I get it, and I use it, everyone’s doing it and everyone knows what we mean by it but to be honest, if everyone’s trying to be a thought leader doesn’t that devalue the idea? I mean, we can’t all be thought leaders. (And to be clear this blog makes no claims on that front!)

Almost every conversation we have with B2B marketers eventually gets round to the topic of “Content Creep".

Content creep is the gradual growth in the volume of content that firms are producing, often without a clear strategic focus (or in clear support of business goals), which means money wasted and (even worse) wasting the time of the intended audience.

These days it’s extremely rare to find a business in any B2B sector that isn’t ‘thinking like a publisher’ and pushing out content on their own channels and social. The problem is that there’s loads of it and increasingly it’s not delivering value for the time that it asks of the intended audience. “Thought leadership”’ is often anything but.

In B2B markets facing volatility from global economic headwinds, regulatory challenges and ever-increasing competition, management teams are constantly searching for innovative strategies to drive growth and maintain a competitive edge. A catch-all term for a range of strategies that do just that is Experience-Led Growth.

The term ‘thought leadership’ is certainly over-used, and often misplaced, but in the case of Venture Capitalists (VCs) for the most part it’s clear how their content can add value for the two audiences critical to their growth: businesses seeking funding from the right partners to power their growth, and investors or Limited Partners (LPs) looking for the right investment opportunities.

We have started to see examples of cynicism about ‘community’ in our feeds in recent weeks.  We’ve been here before though; remember how ANGRY some got about ‘content’ and dismissed the idea that people would want to create content with, for and about a brand? (Pre TikTok of course...) 

The good people at Guild asked us to contribute to their annual Community Based Marketing guide and we were happy to oblige. Happily, a lot of our thinking made it into the final report (which you can read here) but we thought we’d share the full version here…

Measuring RoI tends to focus on things that are simpler to measure. The value of investment in relationship building is complex but we're experimenting to find a way.

The World Economic Forum reports that the way we interact online is driving a shift from the creator economy, to the ‘community economy.’

We’re not going to argue with that, but we’d really like to add a few things…

Across 2021 the team at VOLUME has been developing community strategy for a diverse range of businesses in the B2B space, with our radar set to identify and analyse the most interesting community-based business models in the UK and across the world. So we’ve pulled together our insights in a new deck - The Business of Community,

We launched VOLUME last year in direct response to the growing demand for building community among businesses and brands; from community-based marketing to developing community as a product or community-driven business models. And because there are relatively few practitioners, consultants or agencies with hands-on experience out there (and in the spirit of community) we’re sharing a few empirical insights on community building from our projects in the first half of the year:

Demand, ambition & brand