Blog posts Archives

Mention ‘the funnel’ to anyone in marketing, and odds-on they’ll know what you’re talking about. The marketing funnel has been a familiar model for decades, starting with awareness at the top and tapering down to conversion.

But does this accurately reflect the reality of modern B2B marketing?

It’s what’s inside that counts

Back in 1898, when the funnel was initially conceived, purchase journeys were relatively linear. Jump to 2026, and buying journeys are messier, longer and far less predictable than the funnel envisages.

People are engaging with huge amounts of content and information before, during and even after converting. It’s also rare for prospects to encounter and engage with your content in a strict ‘awareness to consideration’ sequence, most will move back and forth, looking over a range of content for many months while they consider a purchase.

And in the B2B context specifically, many purchases involve multiple stakeholders, extended research phases and long periods of inactivity that don’t map cleanly to predefined stages.

Overall, what’s happening inside the funnel is far from straightforward. It’s multiple buyers moving forwards, backwards and sideways, revisiting content, sharing it internally, disengaging and then returning weeks later with new questions.

In short, the middle is messy.

What really happens between awareness and conversion

The middle is also where the most important B2B marketing takes place.

This is where your prospects develop their understanding of your brand, its products and how well you can solve their challenges. It’s not linear, but plenty of high-quality content is key to help buyers shape their knowledge, see their challenges reflected in your messaging, explore how your solutions can help them and refine their understanding of what you can do for them.

Different stakeholders will engage with your brand in different ways, consuming different types of content at different times, each focused on their own priorities and pressures.

Inside the funnel, your marketing matters less for how quickly it moves people on, and more for how effectively you engage different members of your target audience with the messages they care about.

How confidence supports conversion

This is why producing a range of relevant, high-quality content is so important to build confidence in your brand and solutions. In complex B2B decisions, it takes more than a single asset or campaign to move all relevant stakeholders to conversion.

It’s vital that your content provides the information and assurance that will help a purchase decision stand up to colleagues, procurement and leadership, long before formal sales engagement begins. This is all work that happens in the middle of the funnel, as prospects look for clarity, consistency and relevance across multiple touchpoints.

It’s the type of progress that’s hard to quantify. Even though it doesn’t create a neat data point, content sustains momentum by maintaining shared understanding and facilitating internal discussions even when the conversion decision is paused. To support this, effective B2B content strategies should prioritise continuity across core themes, rather than stage-of-the-funnel based assets. Content must work in multiple contexts, be able to stand alone, be revisited and shared internally, all while speaking to multiple stakeholders at once.

Creating content that’s effective

Does your content convey the confidence your prospects need to convert? Get in touch to find out how we help clients elevate current content, create effective new materials and move diverse B2B stakeholders towards purchase.

So-called 'thought leadership' is a crowded space in 2026. Most B2B brands share opinions and predictions, but many don’t help their audiences make better decisions over time.

As more and more rapidly produced, easy-to-consume marketing appears, the brands that stand out will be those who take their role as thought leaders seriously, providing long-term guidance over short-term commentary.

Opinions aren't enough

We’ve talked before about the proliferation of AI-generated content, much of which follows trends rather than establishing them. Common examples include opinion pieces about this week’s news cycle or a host of opinionated social posts designed to spark debate.

These might be intelligent and engaging, but unless they come as part of a longer-term thought leadership presence, they don’t have the authority to resonate with B2B audiences. One-off insights don’t change behaviour. Today’s B2B buyers are deliberate, risk-aware and driving sales journeys to become longer, not shorter.

As your audience’s budget is squeezed and their marketplace rocked by an increasingly volatile world, they’ll become even more likely to look for repeated reassurance, consistent thinking and evidence that a brand understands their world beyond a single interaction. Without that consistency, even strong ideas and opinions won’t land in a meaningful way.

What modern thought leadership really involves

At its core, thought leadership is about taking responsibility for a topic over time. It means guiding an audience through complexity, rather than simply commenting on it from the sidelines.

That responsibility shows up in how brands return to the same challenges again and again, exploring them from different angles, updating their thinking as markets shift and being honest about uncertainty. Over time, this creates a connected body of work that stands apart in the market.

These brands don’t necessarily dominate the conversation or bombard their target audiences, but they become a trusted reference point.

How to build trust with your audience

In the B2B marketing space, trust is built gradually. The more your audience sees you address an issue with consideration and care, the more likely they are to take note when your next piece of content shows up in their inbox or on their feed.

This confidence is a key point where B2C and B2B diverge, as B2B buying is typically far less impulsive. Buyers often engage with content over months, sometimes years, before they’re ready to act. Thought leadership, when treated as an ongoing commitment, supports that longer journey by reinforcing credibility at every stage, not just at the moment of first contact.

In 2026, focus on leadership, not output

For B2B marketing professionals looking to give their brand a boost, stepping back and focusing on what problems your brand should lead on is often the most valuable question.

Rather than chasing the market, lead with your experience and expertise, prioritising content that’s part of a series or campaign, giving space for in-depth discussions and collaborating with subject-matter experts (SMEs).

The most effective thought leaders bring lived experience, deep subject knowledge and a clear sense of where they can add value, making SMEs invaluable. By trusting SMEs to develop their personal voice and supporting their content long-term, brands can offer consistent, practical perspectives that build familiarity and trust around key topics.

Brand thought leadership is most powerful when it's built around real people who prioritise a small number of topics over shifting trends, showing up consistently with thoughtful or practical perspectives. For brands, this means trusting subject-matter experts to develop their personal voice and supporting them over the long term.

Measuring influence over attention

The impact of long-term thought leadership isn’t visible in short-term metrics, so it’s harder to quantify overall. But it’s commercially meaningful because you’re seen as a credible option to potential buyers who are more likely to understand your core propositions, making sales conversations easier.

We can help make your brand a thought leader

So, if you’re looking to shake up your marketing, reclaiming thought leadership could be the way to go.

Why not get in touch to find out how we can help your brand to show up consistently, with purpose, perspective and practical guidance for your audiences?

As we take stock of another busy year, 2026 is shaping up to be a time of reset for marketing departments.

With AI sweeping through the industry and leaving new ways of working in its wake, upheaval has been the watchword of B2B marketing for the past few years.

Few people like change. Even fewer actively move towards it. So, it’s been an anxious time for many of us working in marketing and beyond as we waited for this surge of evolution to settle.

A tremor not an earthquake

As we end 2025, a good way to frame AI’s influence is as a recalibration, not a disruption. The reality is we’re ‘just’ in the middle of another wave of media evolution. In the same way that blogging exploded the amount of content available to readers, AI is changing production and audience dynamics.

When the deluge of blogging started, industries like marketing and journalism were – briefly – at sea. Was there going to be space online for these industries amidst the endless hobby bloggers? In short, yes, there was. Why? Because great content rose to the top. And the same process is happening again.

How to communicate better than AI

1. Think: who are we talking to?

AI word-soup is now so commonplace that it’s easy for readers to spot and avoid. To make sure they don’t skip your latest piece of content, the best place to start is to ask, “Who is this for?”

Not just titles or market segments, but the people behind the job roles. What are their day-to-day pressures, ambitions, frustrations? What professional challenges keep them up at night? Can your sales team help you flesh out the details?

Once you know that, you can craft messages that resonate. Messages that feel real, trustworthy and pique interest.

2. Think: how are we talking to them?

The use of generic ‘business speak’ and vague buzzwords has boomed since AI-generated content entered the B2B space. (Not to mention semi-colons and hyphens.) Sometimes this corporate phrasing works, sometimes it misses the mark, so be careful not to let your content descend into ‘buzzword bingo’.

Use language that reflects your audience’s world. How do your audience members describe their everyday pressures and priorities? How can you use language in a way that shows you understand these and have solutions that address them? Be clear, honest, direct and human.

3. Think: what are we saying to them?

In B2B, clients typically care less about hype and more about clarity. They’re looking for genuine insights and relevant analysis. They want answers to questions like “what will my ROI be?” and “how will it solve my specific challenge?”.

Rather than chasing the next trend, the smart move in 2026 will be to go back to basics: know who you’re talking to, speak their language and offer solutions that resonate with their challenges.

Bringing B2B back to people

2026 is a chance to recalibrate. It’s a chance to become the human, common-sense voice that’s getting lost in AI-generated content.

With a strong understanding of your market and a clear voice, every marketing touchpoint becomes an opportunity to connect with your audience.

Here’s to a year of simpler, stronger B2B marketing!

Everyone knows the theory - when sales and marketing operate in silos, results suffer. Misaligned goals, inconsistent messaging and disjointed customer experiences undermine the goals of both teams.

At the extremes, marketing and sales stop talking and both operate in their own worlds. Marketing crafts content that looks and sounds great but may be wide of the mark in customer terms. Meanwhile, sales do their own thing. They pull together their own materials that are filled with powerful and effective messaging but are off brand, often ugly and may only work when delivered by a talented sales professional.

In organisations with outstanding results, a bursting business pipeline and a customer base that feels understood, sales and marketing make love, not war.

Why B2B sales and marketing alignment matters

Alignment is essential for sales and marketing to feel the love. It begins with everyone laying their preconceptions aside and acknowledging a fundamental truth:

Sales know what prospects are asking. Marketing knows how to tell powerful stories.

Collaborating to give target audiences the information, insights, products and services they want depends on the following four steps:

1. Creating unified buyer personas

Sales and marketing must agree on who the ideal customer is. Co-developing personas ensures both teams target and speak to the same audience with consistency and in the language they respond to best.

2. Jointly develop content

Start by talking to top-performing sales professionals to gather sales insights, find out what content they’d like and how they’d use it. Co-create content that addresses real objections and educates buyers in the context of their motivations.

3. Implementing closed-loop reporting

Establish feedback loops to get hard data on results, measuring how marketing activities influence sales outcomes. Use CRM data to refine strategies and optimise content and outreach.

4. Talking regularly

Target audiences’ pain points and motivations shift with the winds of financial, political and cultural change – and frontline sales teams will understand and keep pace. This means marketing and sales conversations must happen regularly so that marketing content always hits the sweet spot.

Create content that marketing AND sales love

Over twenty years ago, asabell began by creating marketing materials directly commissioned by a sales team [KH1] . Aligning the needs of both B2B sales and marketing teams means everyone benefits and both teams want to use the content. We’ve never forgotten our roots, and always champion getting the sales perspective during a briefing process.

Get in touch to talk through our tried-and-tested processes for delivering B2B marketing content that sales teams will be eager to use.

Humanising B2B marketing: Why the human touch still wins

Technology has transformed the way we work and connect. It’s given us efficiencies we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago and opened up new possibilities for businesses of every size. But if we’re honest, it’s also left some of us feeling a little… disconnected.

Because when every process is automated, customer conversations are routed through bots, and interactions are reduced to ticket numbers, something important slips away. The human touch.

We’ve seen this before

Technology trends can be circular, like fashion trends. Something shiny and new arrives, and we all rush to embrace it, but the cracks begin to show over time. Just as the world of desire moved from small mobile screens back to bigger, more immersive ones, we’re now shifting away from total automation thanks to a renewed appetite for genuine human connection.

We’ve learnt that technology can be brilliant, but it’s not the whole answer. People still want to feel understood and valued, not just processed – however efficiently.

Balance is everything

In the B2B marketing sphere, we believe in finding the sweet spot where technology and humanity work in harmony.

Let tech do the heavy lifting

Automate, but carefully. Use it to free up time by removing repetitive tasks and lean on its accuracy, scheduling, analysis and reporting strengths. Let it take these things off your plate to create more room for you to focus on the human side of business: creativity, empathy, big-picture thinking. There will be plenty of occasions where a CRM system can issue a templated response, and it will be absolutely fine. However, only a human has the skill to know when a relationship needs a unique reply.

Make time for real-time conversations

Sometimes a quick call or face-to-face meeting achieves more than an entire automated campaign. Generational awareness is critical here; you may need to train and encourage your younger employees to pick up the phone, and it’ll be essential to judge how each member of your high-value target audience likes to communicate. But the principle holds that direct, personal conversation can outperform nurture track programmes by miles.

Stay human

This isn’t about resisting change. It’s about choosing the right moments for a personal touch and making them count. In some ways, this means stepping up your vigilance for such moments and remaining alert for the times when you need to break free from the dictates of a marketing campaign structure to make a tailored move. For example, is your audience swamped with digital marketing to the extent you suspect they’re just deleting it unread? Could you break through this overwhelm with something unexpected, like sending some printed material with a hand-written cover note?

Humanising B2B marketing: What this means for us and for you

At asabell, we know our clients remember more than the results we deliver. They remember how we make them feel, which is why we combine the efficiency of technology with the warmth of human connection.

We stay vigilant and monitor marketing, sales and communication trends as well as the mood of your markets. And, although we use highly performing digital marketing strategies and tools in our campaigns (some of which lean on automation), we always start by asking ourselves how we can best get through to your targets. Sometimes the answer is as simple as helping your sales teams to make opportunities to speak to their customers.

This is how we earn trust. It’s how we help our clients grow. And it’s how we stand out.

If you want to work with a partner who can cut through the noise, tell your story in a way that resonates, and keep the human touch alive in a digital-first world, we would love to talk.

While your company page plays a central role in shaping your social media presence, the real power lies in activating the voices of your people.

When employees regularly share relevant industry news, offer expert commentary and speak authentically about their work, it adds depth, reach and trust to your brand. It also boosts visibility to new audiences - particularly important for scaling businesses looking to stand out in a crowded market.

Yet for many innovative organisations, particularly in fast-moving sectors like cyber security and quantum tech, managing consistent, strategic social activity can quickly fall down the to-do list.

That’s where a focused, low-lift social strategy that supports both company and individual accounts becomes a game-changer.

Take KETS Quantum Security, for example. This award-winning UK startup wanted to boost its credibility and industry profile online while staying focused on its core business. We partnered with KETS to deliver a streamlined, end-to-end LinkedIn strategy that elevated both its company page and employee voices - driving a 214% engagement uplift in just one month.

You can read our full case study here.

How the right marketing partner makes all the difference

For businesses operating at scale, a strong online presence isn’t just a nice-to-have - it’s business-critical. And for global organisations working across multiple industries, website overhauls can become an endless process where internal teams struggle to find the time to pin down a web vision, refresh content and turn complex messages into clear calls to action.

Whether you’re looking to refresh your website or build it up again from scratch, it’s important to bring in marketing experts who can help shine a fresh perspective on where your messaging and user journey is working, and where they could work harder.

That’s where the right agency can be a game-changer. A seamless extension of the team, ready to structure messaging, streamline user journeys and create content that speaks to diverse audiences - all while keeping strategy at the core.

In most web projects, early collaboration is key. But with an experienced agency, it’s possible to get a web project on track – or back on track – within weeks. From developing frameworks to guide website transformation, to navigation, messaging hierarchies and web copy – the key is to ensure every step of the online experience is intuitive, engaging and aligned with business priorities.

Keen to find out more about how to develop a site that reflects your organisation’s purpose while actively driving engagement and growth? Take a look at our case study to find out more about how we helped a global organisation redefine its online presence.

Winning an award isn’t just about gaining customer and industry recognition; it’s a strategic move that can boost your business in many ways. Whether you want to attract more customers, strengthen your brand or boost team morale, an award win delivers measurable benefits. Here’s why entering - and winning - business awards should be part of your growth strategy:

1. Boost sales and revenue

Awards don’t just look good on your website; they directly impact your bottom line. Businesses that win awards see an average 39% increase in sales, while SMEs have reported a 63% rise in income compared to non-award winners. That’s a serious return on investment.

2. Stand out and build trust

In a competitive market, credibility is everything; 80% of consumers prefer to purchase from ‘award-winning’ businesses, proving that an accolade can be the deciding factor when potential customers are choosing between you and a competitor.

3. Increase brand visibility and recognition

Winning an award gets people talking; 68% of businesses report better brand recognition after receiving an award. This helps you gain traction in your industry and opens new opportunities for partnerships and press coverage.

4. Motivate and retain employees

Your team’s hard work deserves recognition, and awards can be a powerful tool for boosting morale. With 84% of employees saying recognition affects their motivation to succeed, an award win doesn’t just reward your business - it energises your workforce, too.

5. Gain a competitive edge

An award sets you apart from the competition, reinforcing your reputation as a leader in your field. Whether you’re looking to attract clients, investors or top talent, being an award-winning business makes your brand more appealing to those who matter most. That's why SMEs note a 63% rise in income when compared to non-award winners.

Want to see your business take home the trophy? We can help you craft compelling award entries that maximise your chances of success.

Like many other industries, content marketing has frenetic times and quiet lulls – and December is often quiet. Campaigns are winding down as audiences focus on Christmas, the financial year may be ending, and everyone’s attention may drift a little.

Although it’s human to push back and take it easy in December, it’s also a clever time to do some thinking to get ahead for 2025 – to review, revisit and check you’re on course to stay on top of your game into the new year. Campaign activity for early 2025 is probably nailed down – but is it optimised for how prospects will think, feel and react in the new year?

This is where we come in. Here are some quick points that, if tackled now, could help your 2025 content marketing activity run smoothly and hit targets rapidly.

There’s no time like the present… to talk about what matters to your customers

How well does what you want to talk about fit with your audiences’ concerns?

You’ll have mapped out the next quarter’s strategy, but does it make sense in light of the trends likely to affect your audiences? There are a lot of predictive views on 2025 around right now, and some valuable market-leader insights and research available.

But dry facts don’t give the full picture of how audiences will react. As a content marketing agency, our success depends upon creating content that mixes a deep understanding of the audience’s operating environment and human factors. We fine-tune and freshen messaging to capture productive attention.

There’s no time like the present… to find your customers where they are

Do the comms channels you’re planning to use work for your audiences?

It’s easy to get caught in a cycle of repeating what appears to work – without giving enough consideration to trend shifts, viewer fatigue and ever-shrinking attention spans. Video, for example, has delivered excellent results in 2024. It’s proved incredibly effective on social media, as longer webinar-style thought-leadership discussions and general campaign promotion.

You could carry on as you are into 2025, or you could get an external view on your plans to see if there’s anything you could try to get even better results.

We’ve spent 2024 experimenting with video: let’s chat through the possibilities.

There’s no time like the present… to get ready to talk with authority

Is your thought leadership ready to stake a claim in 2025?

You’ll have 2025’s direction sorted, but do you have the thought leadership content ready to help your content cut through the clamour of ‘new year, renewed activity’ messaging from your competitors? It’s notoriously hard to get time in the diary of the C-suite and senior leadership. Yet, they may also be susceptible to the December lull, making it an excellent opportunity to capture their views to use in Q1 campaigns.

We’re experts in planning and conducting interviews with senior management, turning them into compelling thought leadership content. If you can secure the time in their diary, we can rapidly translate that into meaningful inputs. Let’s talk.

There’s no time like the present… to make sure you talk so your audience listens

Is your tone of voice pitch-perfect?

It’s so easy to get your communications wrong when a single, off-tone phrase can shut down a sales opportunity. The turn of the year is full of ‘break out’ words (demure, manifest, brat…) that don’t seem immediately relevant to the business sphere, but they flag that language, buzz-words and cut-through communication terms change.

Is it time that ‘innovative’ and ‘market-leading’ are retired because they’ve lost impact? What might work better? We craft written communications day in and day out, and we’re across the language that will drive action into the new year. Get in touch, and we’ll talk you through it.

There’s no time like the present… to squeeze value from what you’ve got

What content have you got that you can re-purpose for 2025?

Budgets are tight, particularly for content marketing. It’s wise and realistic to work with this rather than fighting against it. Your organisation probably has a wealth of existing content that can be repurposed to 2025’s requirements at a relatively low cost.

Now you’ve done the planning for January and February, December is the ideal time to review this content and refresh what you’ve got, ready to push it out in 2025 to augment your new material.

We have a strong track record of taking existing, valuable content and ‘topping, tailing and refreshing’ it with future-focused messaging. Ask us how.

There’s no time like the present… to get your technology tone right

Are your planned 2025 technology messages going to land right?

It’s likely you’ll be talking tech in the new year, but it’s far from a generic task. Customers are increasingly sophisticated and have a growing knowledge of technological intricacies. However, there’s a distinct danger that technology companies assume or misread what their target audiences understand. Are you close enough to your customers’ thinking?

Talking technology and making complex messages simple is what we do. Get in touch, and we can compare notes to find the best way forward for your organisation.

Think like a scout; be prepared for 2025

Our purpose is to be the source of fresh ideas behind your content campaigns – whether they are yet to be formulated or have a structure that can be refined.

Get in touch for a chat with one of our experienced project directors to scope out the possibilities with no obligation.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that your target audiences are bombarded with content trying to persuade them to buy – and it’s tough to cut through with your offering.

Headlines using overused words like ‘innovative’, ‘ground-breaking’, ‘revolutionary’ and ‘game-changing’ can wash over potential clients.

An effective alternative hook is crafting content that links your message with market events or interesting breakthroughs. This approach is variable, relevant, and much more likely to get your target audience to notice and read further.

Last month’s Cyber Awareness Month is an excellent example of an effective ‘in’. Although not everyone might be aware of it, a simple reference to the importance of internet security or cyber attacks is enough to get attention because it’s widely relevant on a personal level. It’s then simple to broaden it out to how it can affect companies – and you’re in.

In every industry, there are events relevant to customers or thought leaders that have said something striking that can be quoted and shared more widely. If you keep your finger on the pulse and look for relevant commentary, you’ll have a continual stream of effective openers.

If you’re searching for openers along these lines, consider identifying the leaders in your industry, people who have influence and gravitas. For example, in October’s Cyber Awareness Month, quotes from the National Cyber Security Centre can hit hard. They’re less likely to be queried or considered biased and can be a ‘soft’ in.

We help clients avoid over-used and trite words every day, crafting content that hits hard and gets your message across. For many clients, we assess their industry’s events calendar and use key times to create effective hooks for their content.

Why not give us a call or a message to get our take on how your industry’s calendar landmarks can become client attention attractors?