Headley Wrapped 2024: A B2B Fairy Tale Based on True Events
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December 7, 2024
- 8 min read
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Before you begin, it’s important to know this isn’t another LinkedIn satire type of ‘Wrapped’ (Exhibit A!). We have genuinely looked at some data here, although ChatGPT did throw us a laugh or two…
Now, this story doesn’t begin as a fairytale—it starts more like a marketer’s worst nightmare: with a bold public promise we weren’t entirely sure we could deliver.
Specifically, this came in the form of my boss, Freya Ward, Global Sales Director, publicly committing Headley Media (specifically me, our Head of Marketing) to deliver our own version of Spotify Wrapped.
And, did I mention that Freya was on stage as part of a keynote panel at the B2B Marketing Expo in London when she made the suggestion?!
The idea was to use the intelligence in our CRM system, in combination with AI, to draw conclusions
and insights on the content preferences of those lucky enough to be somewhere in our own funnel.
To give you some context, Headley Media’s CRM is mostly made up of B2B technology marketers interested in topics such as B2B lead generation and content syndication, across a wide variety of marketing related job titles and regions.
So, Where to Begin?
As a B2B business, unlike Spotify, we soon realized the task of creating a personalised review for everyone was:
- a) highly unnecessary
- b) a little beyond our delivery capabilities
However, there was still life in our challenge yet.
Undeterred, we got stuck into extracting the data of those that had viewed blog pages on our resources section and started delving into the findings. Removing all personally identifiable data, of course.
This is where AI came in and of course, we turned to ChatGPT hoping an Excel application could help.
The first thing to remember when using a GPT is to set parameters and know what you’d like to achieve.
We had our data set so we knew the data input was high quality, and then focused on what insights would be useful to the B2B marketers in our audience.
The Interrogation
We knew we wanted to learn some insights about marketers. Specifically, we wanted to know what kind of content was the most popular among which audiences.
To do this, we looked at their job titles.
We started simple without too much of a lengthy prompt and naively asked ChatGPT to provide a summary of top trends in the data.
To which we were given the following:
“ABM-related job titles are consistently present among the engaged users, accessing content like guides to ABM strategies or comparisons between ABM and traditional marketing.”
To summarize, those with Account Based Marketing in their job title were likely to read content about Account Based Marketing… Back to the drawing board!
What We Truly Learnt: Differences in Content Preferences by Marketing Job Title
1. Senior-Level Titles (CMO, VP, Director)
Interest Areas: Strategy, high-level frameworks, and comprehensive guides
Popular Content:
- Resources focusing on industry trends and marketing strategies
- Guides offering frameworks for outbound and account-based marketing (ABM)
Engagement Behavior:
- Senior titles consume fewer but highly strategic resources
- Likely to download comprehensive materials for organizational planning
2. Mid-Level Managers (Manager, Senior Manager/Head)
Interest Areas: Practical guides, campaign optimization, and performance metrics
Popular Content:
- Tools, templates, and actionable guides for team management.
- Resources on improving campaign ROI and audience targeting
Engagement Behavior:
- Higher engagement frequency, reflecting hands-on involvement in campaign execution
3. Demand Generation Titles
Interest Areas: Demand generation frameworks, audience engagement, and lead generation tactics
Popular Content:
- Overwhelming preference for The Complete Guide to Demand Generation
- Some engagement with campaign-specific content and email marketing materials
Engagement Behavior:
- Focused consumption, primarily centered on demand-gen-specific topics
4. Specialists & Coordinators
Interest Areas: Specific skills, tools, and execution strategies.
Popular Content:
- Step-by-step tutorials, checklists, and niche technical insights
Engagement Behavior:
- Broad engagement with diverse content types reflecting execution-level tasks
In Summary:
- Senior roles prefer strategic insights – but also don’t have a lot of time so are likely to consume less, but more thorough, content.
- Execution roles lean towards operational and technical materials – they need to keep their expertise up-to-date and understand the how-to of key topics.
- Topics such as ABM (Account-Based Marketing), demand generation, and marketing automation are popular across all roles.
- Campaign-specific resources are more appealing to those managing tactical marketing efforts.
