2023 B2 Awards Categories

The 2023 B2 Awards categories are listed below. 

Please note that much of the work you are considering submitting may fit into multiple categories. When preparing entries, please review all the categories to find the ones that best apply to your campaign.

General Awards

Account-Based Marketing

Exceptional use of ABM strategy and tactics (individual prospect or customer programs) to drive significant results.

Agency Promotion

Exceptional creative campaigns deployed with the intention of elevating agencies among new and existing clients.

Brand Purpose

Best use of brand purpose to drive an exceptionally positive impact on the market position of a brand, product, or service.

Channel Partner Program

Programs that support channel partners with the necessary training, tools, and resources they need to positively affect sales and drive revenue.

Content Marketing

Branded content programs deployed across a wide variety of media channels.

Corporate Branding Campaign

Organizations, teams, or brands that put brand positioning at the center of a comprehensive campaign to drive business growth and elevate its branding. U.S. and global efforts are eligible. Communications and PR strategies that included the creation of strategic messaging playbooks that demonstrate a brand's key value proposition, competitive differentiation, and creative storytelling are a fit for this category.

Corporate Identity Program

Organizations that put design at the center of their business messaging to stand out from the competition and drive business growth. Work in this category may include brand standards/guidelines, corporate logos, and corporate taglines.

Corporate or Brand Website

Exceptional work in creating and executing corporate or brand websites that drive results.

Customer Experience

How did your brand transform to become more customer-centric? Tell us how you changed your approach, offered a more seamless experience, and reached key metrics that made a clear impact on your business by leveraging customer insights and data. From cross-selling to upselling, do you have CRM case studies that showed how you retained customers, increased revenue growth, and helped reduce churn?

Demand Generation: Small or Medium Business

Programs designed to generate awareness and attract new people to your business, or drive growth among existing customers, targeting brands/enterprises with less than 999 employees.

Demand Generation: Large Enterprise

Programs designed to generate awareness and attract new people to your business, or drive growth among existing customers, targeting brands/enterprises with more than 1,000 employees.

Digital Marketing Tools and Programs

Exceptional use of digital tools to offer the best possible user experience.

Digital Transformation

Organizations, teams, or brands that successfully transitioned in a more digital direction and improved marketing performance as a result.

Direct Mail, Flat or Dimensional

Targeted communications, delivered by a physical delivery service, that used creativity and data strategy to deliver measurable results.

E-Commerce 

B2B e-commerce is new compared to B2C and projected to grow exponentially in a few years. Tell us how you and your company embraced e-commerce — about your data practices, digital work, website, and/or accompanying marketing that achieved success. We’re looking for entries that spotlight innovation and creativity, user experience, functionality, and conversion/engagement.

Email

Outstanding email marketing programs that optimize data, strategy, and creativity.

Employer Branding

Communication initiatives that engage and inform employees, fostering collaboration, innovation, better understanding of brand values, and positive work cultures. This can include programs that drive positive results for talent recruitment, retention, and development.

Event Marketing Campaign

No form of marketing has been more transformed by the pandemic than events, whether trade shows, conferences, or smaller business events. Tell us about how you’ve responded to this once-in-a-lifetime experience. How did you adapt your programs, and what are the positive business results you achieved?

Influencer Marketing 

Influencer marketing reflects the rapid rise of this strategy and tactics within B2B. Did you leverage a global celebrity or a local expert in your industry in 2022? If your program or campaign utilized a group or individual who had special credibility with your audience and that advocacy led to boost your business objectives and/or sales results, this is the category for you.

Integrated Marketing Program: Small to Midsize Business

Small to midsize businesses with up to 999 employees that delivered a coordinated message to a target market and produced a powerful synergistic effect while achieving and/or exceeding objectives and goals.

Integrated Marketing Program: Large Enterprise

Businesses with more than 1,000 employees that delivered a coordinated message to a target market and produced a powerful synergistic effect while achieving and/or exceeding objectives and goals.

International B2B Marketing Campaign NEW

Whether your marketing effort was focused on a single geographic region or global in scope, this is the category to have your international efforts celebrated. Submissions will need to share insights into the diverse geographic audience profiles, marketplace conditions, competitive landscapes, etc. To enter this category, your marketing effort/campaign must have run in at least two countries worldwide in calendar year 2022.

Lead Generation: Small to Midsize Business

Campaigns designed to attract and capture qualified leads, targeting brands/enterprises with less than 999 employees.

Lead Generation: Large Enterprise

Campaigns designed to attract and capture qualified leads, targeting brands/enterprises with more than 1,000 employees.

Marketing on a Small Budget 

Big results with limited resources! This category will showcase B2B teams that implemented clever and strategic marketing campaigns or communications projects that met objectives and delivered impactful results that cost less than $50,000 (all in) in 2022.

Media Strategy

Campaign plans that include any mix of relevant media including digital, search optimization, pay-per-click, cross-device measurement, print, TV, radio, or out-of-home to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message and generate a desired response within a designated budget.

Metaverse/Emerging Technologies

Showcase how you generated growth and drove results via the use of emerging technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more. Demonstrate how the emerging technology drove the growth of a brand, enterprise, product, or service.

Microsite or Landing Page

Auxiliary website with independent links and address or standalone web page designed to support your marketing or advertising campaign.

Out-of-Home Advertising

Best use of advertising that is seen or heard outside of the home.

Podcast

Any recorded talk episode or series made available in digital audio format for on-demand listening.

Print Advertising

Best use of advertisements (half-page or full-page, single or campaign) placed in print media such as magazines and newspapers to reach business customers and prospects. 

Pro Bono

Marketing offered to a brand, organization, or nonprofit for free.

Product Launch or Relaunch

Strategic marketing programs that introduced or repositioned a B2B product and/or service in the market.

Proprietary Company Event (Single/Series)

Virtual, in-person, or hybrid events that drive customer or employee engagement to a brand and strengthens relationships.

Public Relations

This category is dedicated to work that delivered a strategic cultivation of a positive public image of a brand/enterprise including messaging, positioning, competitive differentiation, and talking points that resulted in outstanding outcomes such as earned media placements, speaking opportunities, and in content venues such as bylines and blogs.

Regional Spotlight Award: United Kingdom NEW

This specialty category will celebrate the region’s innovators. Any business or agency based in the UK is invited to enter their most impactive, results driven B2B marketing of 2022.

ROI/Growth

Top marketing initiatives that produced exceptional bottom-line financial returns or extraordinary business results.

Sales Enablement Program

Marketing initiatives designed to assist and/or empower sales teams to be more successful in their selling efforts to potential buyers and/or retention of existing customers. Tactics could include data, brochure capabilities, product, equipment or parts catalog, technical bulletins, or product/service demo (online/video/presentation).

Social Media

Best use of social media in marketing strategies and campaigns to achieve marketing objectives.

Sponsorship Program

Innovative use of sponsorship and partnership campaigns. Includes planning, supporting, and efforts to leverage sponsorship.

Thought Leadership

Content marketing strategies and/or tactics that specifically leverage the talent, experience, and opinions of industry leaders or insight as a result of extensive research in a specific area of study.

Trade Show or Conference

Demonstrate how a specific event (e.g., trade show, corporate event – either virtual, in-person, or hybrid) reached a large-scale target audience and was maximized for the brand’s benefit enabling alignment of key messaging as well as resulting in related coverage and tie-in to the event itself, enabling a successful customer or prospect experience, that met objectives and drove positive results.

Video Marketing

Marketing that drove measurable results through video content (individual video or campaign) that exceeded expectations and had clear objectives such as brand awareness, engagement, or lead generation.

Top Awards 

B2B Agency of the Year

Open to agencies of all sizes driving growth for B2B brands and enterprises that have demonstrated a sustained high level of excellence, a diverse portfolio of expertise, and the effective implementation of business marketing solutions and thought leadership in B2B marketing.

Submissions need to showcase a comprehensive collection of B2B marketing. At least three areas of expertise need to be showcased, and you will need to submit three case submissions in the B2 Awards General Categories.

A sample form is provided so you can prepare all the needed information for this category:
B2B Agency and In-House Agency Sample Submission Form

• Small Agency: Under $10 million annual revenue
• Midsize Agency: $10 – $25 million annual revenue
• Large Agency: Over $25 million annual revenue

B2B In-House Agency of the Year

This award is open to any team within a brand/enterprise that plans, creates, and executes creative B2B marketing focused on internal/external communications or the advertisement of their own brand, product, or service. Only one single team will be awarded. There is no second or third place in this category.

Submissions need to showcase a comprehensive collection of B2B marketing, and you will need to submit three case submissions in the B2 Awards General Categories.

A sample form is provided so you can prepare all the needed information for this category:
B2B Agency and In-House Agency Sample Submission Form

Individual Marketer of the Year

Nominate your client, your colleague, or even yourself! Open to individuals at marketing solutions providers, advertising agencies, or client-side marketers working for brands of all sizes who are driving growth for their business while elevating B2B marketing. This award is intended for those who demonstrate excellence in marketing strategy, leadership in corporate culture and/or brand purpose, and thought leadership in their respective industry.

A sample form is provided so you can prepare all the needed information for this category:
Individual Marketer of the Year Sample Submission Form

Industry Sector Spotlight Award: Banking and Financial Services NEW

This specialty award puts the spotlight on B2B companies in a specific industry sector. Previously, this award featured companies in the Technology and Manufacturing sectors; this year we are focusing on Banking and Financial Services.

The winners of this award will represent marketing efforts that delivered a coordinated message to a target market and produced a powerful synergistic effect while achieving the objectives and goals for their product and/or services.

Multi-Year Impact 

This award will represent B2B champions of sustained growth — those companies that have experienced three or more years of positive results with their B2B communications efforts.

Submissions need to represent efforts that ran in the market between 2020 and 2022, and may have maintained select core elements like theme, spokesperson, and/or tagline, but ultimately achieved positive impact each year.

A sample form is provided so you can prepare all the needed information for this category:
Multi-Year Impact Award Sample Submission Form

Specialty Awards 

The LinkedIn B2B Icon Award

This specialty award presented by LinkedIn recognizes entrepreneurial, story-centered work focused on long-term value creation and brand building.

Contenders for this award are determined and selected based on scores achieved in the main round of judging. This is not a category you can select at the time of entry.

Members' Choice: Best in Show Award

The top scoring entries from the General Categories are submitted to the Top Awards Jury, composed of active ANA client-side marketer corporate members at the highest levels, for consideration for the program’s top honor: Members’ Choice: Best in Show. The winner of all the winners will demonstrate exceptional insight and creativity, extraordinary business growth, and results. In this category, effectiveness is just the beginning.

Contenders for this award are determined and selected based on scores achieved in the main round of judging. This is not a category you can select at the time of entry.

B2 GEM® Award NEW

Spotlighting the industry's change makers and influencers committed to the authentic, accurate portrayals of women and girls in their marketing efforts.

Gender inequality is the one inequality that is truly global in scope. Yet, we know that marketing and media can create impactful change by addressing how women and girls are portrayed in advertising and marketing content. Given this, the ANA’s SeeHer initiative, whose mission is to drive the accurate portrayal of women and girls in media, advertising, marketing, and entertainment, has created a unique opportunity for all B2 Awards applicants – The ANA B2 GEM^® Award.

The ANA B2 GEM^® Award will honor the top creative and impactful work that exemplifies the best in class accurate and authentic portrayal of women and/or girls in B2B campaigns.