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Reading list: Grow your audiences and drive engagement

Welcome to a curated collection of inspiring and insightful reads and podcasts to help you grow your audiences and drive engagement.

1. The Audience Architect Podcast

Why it’s useful: This podcast provides practical insights into how media brands and event organisers can build, engage, and monetise their audiences effectively. It explores strategies for increasing audience retention, leveraging data, and adapting to changing content consumption habits.

Key takeaways: Expert discussions on audience development, data-driven marketing, and sustainable engagement strategies.

2. How Can AI Help Build Audience Engagement and Loyalty – LSE Report

Why it’s useful: AI is transforming how publishers and event organisers understand and connect with their audiences. This report explores how AI-driven tools can enhance content personalisation, automate audience interactions, and improve loyalty metrics—critical for businesses looking to sustain engagement in a competitive digital landscape.

Key takeaways: AI can improve audience retention by offering personalised content recommendations, predicting user behaviour, and automating engagement processes.

3. The Power of Marketing Agility to Scale Virtual Events – Bright Innovation

Why it’s useful: The event industry is rapidly evolving, and virtual and hybrid events have become an essential part of audience engagement strategies. This resource explains how agile marketing methods help teams quickly adapt their event strategies, optimise performance in real-time, and drive higher engagement.

Key takeaways: Agile marketing enables continuous testing and iteration, improving virtual event outcomes through data-driven decision-making and audience responsiveness.

4. Minisode: Alyssa Peltier on Cutting Through Digital Noise with Event Marketing – Cvent

Why it’s useful: With the rise of digital events and online content saturation, it’s harder than ever to capture audience attention. This episode shares actionable strategies for event marketers to craft compelling campaigns, differentiate their events, and ensure their messaging stands out.

Key takeaways: Effective event marketing requires clear messaging, differentiated positioning, and strategic use of digital channels to maximise audience engagement.

5. The Global State Of B2B Events – Forrester

Why it’s useful: Understanding emerging trends in B2B events is crucial for staying competitive. This report highlights data-backed insights on how event formats, attendee expectations, and marketing strategies are shifting, helping businesses refine their event planning and investment decisions.

Key takeaways: Hybrid event strategies, personalisation, and ROI measurement are central to the future of B2B events, shaping how companies allocate budgets and resources.

6. Agile Marketing Training Drives 123% Revenue Increase for Informa Pharma Showcase Event – Bright

Why it’s useful: This case study demonstrates how agile marketing can drive significant business impact, making it particularly relevant for event marketers looking to improve efficiency, audience engagement, and commercial outcomes. It provides a real-world example of how agile methodologies can be applied to enhance marketing performance for large-scale events.

Key takeaways: Agile marketing helped the Informa Pharma team rapidly test and refine their event strategy, leading to a 123% year-on-year revenue increase. The approach focused on continuous learning, real-time adjustments, and cross-team collaboration.

March 12, 2025 Alaina Roberts Engagement, Marketing Effectiveness, Publishing, Media & Events

Reframe cards: Publishing, media and events edition

Download your cards to re–frame conversations and spark fresh perspectives.

Reframe Cards are an easy-to-use tool intended to stimulate conversations within teams, encouraging them to reconsider strategies and tactics by prompting thought-provoking discussions.

This edition, created especially for marketing teams working in publishing, media and events, are designed to challenge thinking and uncover key learnings, to help refine strategies, optimise performance, and drive audience development for greater engagement and business impact.

They aim to foster transparency and collaboration by prompting team members to share their thoughts and ideas openly, and can be used in various settings such as team meetings, workshops, or planning sessions to focus on goal-oriented actions and results.

The cards can infuse creativity and agile thinking into team communication, aiming to drive discussions towards actionable solutions.

Complete the form below to download the Reframe cards

March 12, 2025 Alaina Roberts Agile Marketing In Practice, Publishing, Media & Events

Why traditional marketing fails – and how agility future-proofs your team

Markets shift. Budgets tighten. Stakeholder expectations change overnight. And just when you think you’ve nailed your strategy, something new disrupts your plan. Sound familiar?

For B2B senior marketing leaders with good sized teams, the challenge isn’t just about keeping up; it’s about staying ahead. The ability to pivot quickly, effectively, and with minimal waste is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s a commercial imperative. And that’s where agile marketing skills make all the difference.

Why traditional marketing models fail under pressure

The problem with traditional marketing approaches is that they rely on long-term planning, rigid execution, and an often-siloed structure. That’s fine when the world is predictable. But in today’s climate? Not so much. When a competitor makes an unexpected move, a customer need shifts, or a campaign underperforms, legacy processes don’t allow for quick shifts without major disruption.

Agile marketing: your built-in pivot system

Agile marketing flips the script. It’s not about having a set plan and sticking to it no matter what. It’s about creating a framework that allows your team to move fast, test ideas, and adapt based on data and insights.

Here’s how agile marketing enables your team to pivot effectively and efficiently:

Sprints keep the team focused and adaptable – Instead of rigid annual plans, agile teams work in short cycles (sprints) with clear goals. If a market shift happens mid-sprint, you assess, adjust, and course-correct without derailing everything.
Data-driven decision-making – No more ‘gut feel’ marketing. Agile marketing prioritises experimentation, with continuous A/B testing, real-time performance tracking, and data-informed tweaks that help teams respond to what’s actually working (or not).
Collaboration breaks down silos – When cross-functional teams work together in agile marketing hubs, communication improves, and pivots happen smoothly. No waiting for a ‘sign-off process’ that takes weeks. The right people are in the room, making decisions in real-time.
Fail fast, learn faster – One of the biggest mindset shifts with agile marketing is that failure isn’t the enemy—stagnation is. By rapidly testing small-scale experiments, teams get insights quickly, double down on what works, and ditch what doesn’t before major budget is wasted.
Flexibility without chaos – Some worry that agility equals disorder. In reality, agile marketing operates within a structured framework of prioritisation, backlog refinement, and sprint planning. This means you can pivot without panic and adapt without losing sight of business goals.

The commercial impact of agility

For senior marketers leading teams in complex B2B organisations, agile marketing isn’t just about ‘working differently’—it’s about delivering better business outcomes. When done right, it results in:

Faster go-to-market – Marketing teams get campaigns out the door in weeks, not months.
Higher ROI – More frequent testing means budget is spent where it has the most impact.
Stronger alignment with sales & product teams – Agile structures foster collaboration between marketing, sales, and product, ensuring alignment on commercial priorities.
Increased team engagement – Marketers feel empowered and energised, with clearer visibility of impact.

Are you ready to pivot?

If your team still operates with lengthy campaign cycles, rigid plans, and a fear of failure, it’s time to rethink your approach. Agile marketing gives you the tools to navigate uncertainty with confidence—and drive better results while doing it.

So, how agile is your marketing team right now? Are you set up to pivot, or are you stuck in a structure that slows you down? Let’s discuss how to make marketing agility your competitive advantage.

February 20, 2025 Alaina Roberts Agile marketing mindset, Marketing Effectiveness