Better B2B South

About this event

Agenda

09:30 AM – 10:00 AM

Arrival, welcome breakfast and networking☕

Enjoy a welcome breakfast upon arrival, giving you the opportunity to get to know fellow attendees and speakers and get settled in for the day.

10:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Welcome to Better B2B

10:15 AM – 10:45 AM

LinkedIn personal branding: How to go viral, scale influence and skyrocket pip

Shoaib Ahmed

Learn how to turn your LinkedIn presence, profile and posts into an opportunity-generating engine.

10:45 AM – 11:25 AM

Is organic traffic dead? Rethinking B2B marketing metrics in the AI era

Jake Third, Freya Ward, Giorgia Guantario, Karen Allsopp, Safyah Aktar

How AI is reshaping the B2B buyer journey, and what marketers should measure when traffic and MQLs are no longer enough.

11:25 AM – 12:00 PM

Unlocking the creative dividend

Beth Marchant, Strategy Director, System1

In a world where marketing budgets are increasingly scrutinised and short-term metrics often overshadow long-term growth, marketers require a playbook that addresses challenger brands and category leaders alike. The Creative Dividend from System1 and Effie offers a practical guide for making advertising predictable, effective and a priority investment.

12:00 PM – 12:45 PM

Lunch ️️️️️

12:45 PM – 01:25 PM

The great re-coupling: When search and brand collide

Ben Wood, Performance Director, Hallam

Search and brand used to run on entirely separate tracks. AI search has forced them back together. Ben Wood breaks down why, and shares a practical framework for building brand authority that AI systems now reward.

01:25 PM – 02:00 PM

Beyond SEO: Winning visibility in the new search landscape

Radina Ivanova, Flo Guerrouani, Rejoice Ojiaku and Billie Geena

From Google to AI, communities and social platforms, discover how B2B marketers can adapt their search strategies for a changing landscape.

02:00 PM – 02:30 PM

RIP to static personas (they were boring anyway)

Hayley Phipps, B2B Marketing Manager, Samsung Europe

If I see one more “Marketing Manager Mark, age 34, likes coffee”” slide, I’m going to scream. Your audience isn’t a stock photo, so why is your strategy built like they are? We’re going to talk about what the new world order of B2B buying looks like and how using AI to create synthetic personas can help predict your next move and validate your campaigns. If your strategy relies on assumptions made in a 3-hour brainstorm session, this is your intervention.

02:30 PM – 02:45 PM

Coffee and a sweet treat☕

02:45 PM – 03:30 PM

Let’s do it: how to win support for brave B2B campaigns

Brian Macreadie, Head of Marketing, Addleshaw Goddard

Sharing a few worked examples of creative campaigns and a bit of brutal honesty, in this session we’ll take a look at the art of the possible when it comes to B2B creativity, and how to make it possible.

03:30 PM – 04:00 PM

Ask Better B2B

Bring your biggest B2B marketing questions to the table as our speakers come together to share practical advice, fresh perspectives and honest answers.

View the details details of the event, the agenda & FAQs on eventbrite

Speakers

We are announcing the full lineup of speakers over the coming weeks. So far, we’ve announced the following:

Beth Marchant

Beth helps the world’s biggest brands, agencies, and media owners turn creativity and emotion into measurable business results.

As Strategy Director in System1’s Global Partnerships team, she runs the research, analysis, and partnerships behind projects with TikTok, Effie, ITV, Aardman, and JCDecaux, fusing System1’s emotion-first creative measurement with partner data to show which creative choices actually move brand and business outcomes across media.

Before System1, she spent six years agency-side making bold, entertaining work that didn’t take itself too seriously. She also produced Call to Action® – a top marketing podcast that Mark Ritson called “a genuine highlight”.

Shoaib Ahmed

Shoaib is a 4x award-winning LinkedIn Growth Coach, personal branding expert and keynote speaker. He has helped more than 250 founders, executives and creators build influential personal brands that have generated over 325 million organic LinkedIn impressions, $15M+ in revenue and 450+ inbound media opportunities.

Alongside advising high-growth founders, Shoaib is Head of Content at Limelight, a venture-backed tech startup that recently raised $3.2M. He specialises in helping leaders turn their expertise into influence, build audiences that trust them and generate high-quality pipeline through LinkedIn.

Known for his practical, data-led style, Shoaib’s talks blend real-world case studies, social psychology and proven content frameworks, leaving audiences with actionable strategies they can put into practice immediately.

Hayley Phipps

Hayley is a B2B marketing leader who has committed her entire career to B2B. She cut her teeth agency-side at Ogilvy and now client-side in the European Mobile Brand Marketing Team at Samsung, where she helps shape B2B marketing that is as sharp as it is human. She drawn to the space where strategy, psychology and storytelling meet, to create work that doesn’t just land, it lingers. She has a soft spot for smart thinking with a little edge, always with a point of view. With an agency-trained eye, a client-side mindset, a healthy dislike for bland B2B, and a love for colour-coding and spreadsheets, Hayley tries to keep one eye on the commercial goal and a finger on the beating pulse of real B2B buyers.

Ben Wood

Ben Wood is a senior performance marketing leader with a track record of shaping how brands drive measurable growth in complex digital environments. As Performance Director at Hallam, he helps organisations navigate the intersection of brand, data, and technology. Ben has delivered keynote and expert sessions at major industry stages, including the Future of Media Conference, B2B Marketing Live, LinkedIn, Microsoft, SMX, Brighton SEO and Hero Conference, where he delivers practical guidance on navigating the evolving media landscape.

Karen Allsopp

Karen has 20 years in B2B marketing leadership, not advising from the sidelines but doing the job. Leading teams at FTSE 100, PE-powerhouses and smaller AI and Technology organisations from start-up through international expansion.

Across all of these organisations there was a common theme, building value and she’s worked in and around frameworks spanning hundreds of product lines with diverse teams in countries across the globe. Navigating acquisitions, integrating disparate data sources, and having plenty of difficult board conversations along the way. She now helps Marketing leaders step back and get clarity on what’s actually driving value and build the frameworks to prove it.

Jake Third

Jake is CEO of Hallam, a marketing partner to some of the world’s leading brands. Hallam brings together strategy, creative, and media to help organisations grow in a way that lasts. Since becoming CEO in 2020, Jake has led Hallam’s transformation from a regional SEO business into an internationally recognised agency. During this period, Hallam has been named in The Sunday Times Top 100 Best Companies, recognised as a Google Top Partner across EMEA, and awarded Best Large Integrated Agency for three consecutive years. Jake speaks about how marketing actually drives growth. His work sits at the intersection of marketing, culture, and commercial decision making, with a particular focus on B2B brands. His talks are grounded in original thinking, primary research, and real experience leading a top UK agency through change. He has spoken at events and organisations including Google, LinkedIn, and the NDS, and is consistently rated highly for clarity, relevance, and practical insight. Alongside his professional work, Jake has been recognised as the Institute of Directors’ Young Director of the Year and awarded the Dean’s Prize for Academic Excellence during his MBA.

Giorgia Guantario

Giorgia Guantario is Global Head of Marketing at UpSlide, where she leads global marketing across positioning, product marketing, demand generation and customer insight. A former journalist turned B2B marketer, she’s passionate about helping technology companies tell clearer stories, understand their customers more deeply and use AI to make marketing more effective. She regularly shares practical insights on marketing strategy, AI and go-to-market with audiences across the B2B SaaS community. 

Brian Macreadie

Winner of the Marketing Week, Campaign Magazine and The Drum B2B’s Marketing Team of the Year; twice-winner of both the Grand Prix and the Creative Gold at the B2B Marketing Awards; and named the Most Creative Individual Working in B2B Marketing, Brian Macreadie is the Head of Marketing at international law firm, Addleshaw Goddard. His 30-year career in B2B marketing spans media, telecoms, and professional services industries. And to build brands and drive sales, his campaign work has ranged from launching a computer game set in a London taxi through to using 3D light shows to engage real estate VIPs, and even haunting hundreds of the world’s most senior lawyers.

Safyah Akhtar

Safyah Akhtar is a Growth Marketing Manager with more than 13 years of international experience delivering growth strategies across B2B SaaS, education, financial services and regulated industries. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Medical Biology from the University of Huddersfield and an MSc in Digital Marketing Leadership from the University of Aberdeen. Alongside her industry role, she serves on international advisory boards and is a regular speaker, delivering keynote talks, workshops and panel discussions across the UK and internationally. Her work focuses on growth marketing, AI, marketing technology and digital transformation, bringing together strategic insight with practical experience from high-growth organisations.

Freya Ward

Freya Ward is Associate Managing Director at Headley Media, with a background in B2B marketing and sales across both agency and publisher roles. As an accomplished business leader, Freya is dedicated to helping technology companies achieve their lead generation and demand marketing objectives through strategic, results-driven campaigns. She is a trusted advisor to her clients, known for her ability to align campaign tactics with business goals to maximise performance and ROI.

In addition to her client work, Freya is a respected industry voice, regularly speaking at events and serving on expert panels. In 2024, she earned a First in Artificial Intelligence from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, adding further depth to her insights in AI, Sales and Marketing, and Revenue Operations (RevOps). Freya brings both practical experience and forward-thinking innovation to the evolving world of B2B demand generation.

Flo Guerrouani

Flo Guerrouani is a Search Performance & AI Lead at Cushman & Wakefield, where she leads SEO & AI visibility strategy for a global domain across 35 international markets. She combines technical expertise with creative insights to elevate digital performance and visibility across search platforms. Flo specialises in AI-driven workflows and has deep knowledge in international SEO, hreflang implementation, and indexation strategy, ensuring one domain performs effectively across diverse markets and languages. A recognised voice in the industry, she has spoken at Uberall, Previsible and B2B Better roundtables and events, and has appeared as a guest on the Voices of Search podcast.

 

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