Are industry trend reports worth the marketing investment?

Last week, I wrote about creating a 30-page industry report for a B2B brand I'm working with.

It took me ca 55h to research, write, design, and promote it, plus report on results.

Was this enormous undertaking worth it?

Many B2B software behemoths (HubSpot, Adobe, Salesforce), by launching and promoting "X Year Trends in X" reports seem to validate the strategy.

But what about the small B2B brands just entering the market?

Based on my experience, the strategy indeed does work. But there are also many caveats, lots of IFs.

Before you decide whether trend report is something to test out in 2025, there are many aspects to take into consideration. By the end of this newsletter, you've read my two cents on the subject.

But first, let's continue from where the previous newsletter stopped. We covered the full creation process from initial idea to final design.

Now, we've ended up with a PDF-format 2025 Sales x AI Trend Report.

What's next?

Before kicking off the promotion strategy, there's an important question to answer...

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What's our end goal?

Let's start by what should not be the end goal:

1) Having a beautiful trend report to add to the blog / website. Nobody will find it unless you go out of your way to promote it (the same goes about your blog articles, guides, and case studies...)

2) Spending $0 on getting new leads from downloads. Calculate your team's salaries and agency fees for 100h+ work hours.

3) Getting leads from downloads to add to your blog newsletter list. There are many many cheaper (and efficient) ways to do it.

Ugh, so what is the goal of investing in a trend report? Or let me rephrase... What is the goal of any marketing activity?

Getting new customers and $$$, ideally at a positive marketing ROI.

Perhaps it helps to see this graph I stole from the internet.

Getting new leads won't matter if you're unable to convert them into customers.

Getting lots of readers (if not gating the trend report download) won't matter if you're unable to convert them into customers.

Getting lots of LinkedIn engagement won't matter if... Wait, this actually turned out alright for us. But there's also a but here which we'll get to later...

Just be honest with yourself here, and focus your marketing resources on things that drive growth, i.e. revenue.

This could be a trend report! This could also be paid ads or...

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Trend report promotion strategy: the goals

Let's start from the 2025 trend report marketing strategy we took with Sera's team.

As we're in marketing experimentation stage, the project was one of our experiments. And it wasn't just a whim: I've seen it work for other B2B brands over years.

So, our initial strategy was to create an attractive industry report on 2025 sales x AI trends that:

1) Helps to establish Sera as an industry thought leader in the AI SDR space.

2) Have an endless resource for 20+ future blog posts, guides, and social posts

3) Get new leads from downloads to convert into paying customers.

The third one, of course, is the most important one.

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Trend report promotion strategy: the channels & budgets

As our ICP (ideal target customer) was decision-makers in small to mid-size B2B companies, the obvious channel for promotion was LinkedIn.

Note that you should already know who your ICP is, although you can also use an e-book promo campaign for ICP discovery. A rather expensive way to acquire the knowledge that founders should have knows from Day 1...

So, LinkedIn ads it was.

And not just LinkedIn ads but LinkedIn Lead ads.

I won't tell you the exact budgets but we tested on several markets, and started out rather small, planning to optimise / increase budgets after initial results came it.

As to LinkedIn Lead ad campaign setup, we tested both the new Accelerate campaigns and the good old manual setup.

The Accelerate campaigns, not to speak of horrible UI trying to push AI-written ad copy – not good – this campaign type took way too long to start delivering reach. So after 24h, I changes all campaigns to regular Lead Ad campaigns.

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As with any paid social ad channel (and display ads), the campaign's success is 20% setup (keep it broad) and 80% creative.

As to the ad creative itself, it's success depends 10% on text 90% on image. Nobody reads ad copy these days, unless it's in the image.

So let's talk about...

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Trend report promotion strategy: the ad creatives

How to design ad visuals that convert?

The first thing I did was spy on competitors' LinkedIn ad creatives, as well as see what well-established brands in other B2B industries are doing.

As a result, I had my desktop full of 50+ screenshots. After filtering out the best ones, we had a Figma file with 15-20 ideas to copy.

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Good marketing isn't about reinventing the wheel but having enough experience and knowledge (and common sense) to distinguish the best examples from stuff you know doesn't work.

I designed 10+ different ad creatives for the campaign, and chose 6 final ones to experiment with. Below is one example.

The must-have elements I wanted to have in all ad visuals:

1) Huge text in image, immediately communicating the value and subject.

2) Download CTA with pointed arrows in the visual to draw the eye to the obvious action.

3) Sneak peek visuals of the report to convince the viewer it's insightful and has high-quality design >> is trustworthy.

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Trend report promotion strategy: organic social media

Of course, paid advertising isn't the only way to promote a trend report (or blog post or e-book or newsletter, etc.)

Perhaps, it's not even the most efficient channel...

The day we launched paid ad campaigns, I helped to create several LinkedIn posts for Sera's team to share.

We tested LinkedIn posts with just one image, as well as a carousel-style PDF post. See the full PDF post here.

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You've probably seen some LinkedIn carousel posts get hundreds of likes, comments, and shares.

However, the LinkedIn post by Sera's CEO didn't reach the viral effect.

Why?

Because building up a LinkedIn personal account with lots of followers and high engagement takes time. We'd only started working on this (an important project!) a few weeks ago and he had can 1,000 followers at the time.

Now, compare this with the results of the LinkedIn post I did to hail the trend report – which received so much great feedback from my network. Thx you all you know who you are! ʕ•͡-•ʔ

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The post got 119 comments and reached 17,912 people.

I spent some good hours responding to all the comments and DMs from new and old contacts that wanted to get the trend report.

And it was absolutely worth it. As to date, at least one lead that came via this post has become a customer.

Also, another takeaway I'd like you to, well, take away: One LinkedIn post about a quality report isn't all you can do.

You can reformat the content into 20+ posts over time, and keep the leads and reach coming.

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Trend report promotion strategy: landing page + newsletter

Sorry peeps!

This is where I'll have to leave off this time.

I had no intention to extend the trend report project into another newsletter but...

1) I'm on a Tartu-Tallinn train and it's hitting the station in 10 minutes.

2) It's Thursday evening and I'm on my way to Xmas dinner with my two most important people in the world: sister and mom.

3) I really wanted to send the newsletter this Friday morning as promised.

So after a Christmas break, I'll be back with Part 3 that covers the full landing page + automated newsletter setup process and advice, as well as the final results and takeaways.

Have a lovely, giving, kind, surprising, restful holiday season! ☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°

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Merci! 🐿️

In other news, I've closed all marketing projects for January 2025.

... but might have some availability from March. Get in touch if you've got ideas or want to discuss how we might work together.

Reach out on LinkedIn or at marketing@karolakarlson.com. Mention your brand + product, stage of business, and what you'd need help with.

Thanks for reading!
Karola