The 2020 B2B Marketing Trend Tracker

Our third annual Trend Tracker, conducted with Savanta, pools global feedback from over 250 B2B marketers at both agencies and clients. It reveals the hottest marketing trends for 2020, which trends are rising or falling and whether agencies share the same priorities as clients.

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Let’s look at the top three trends this year

1. Top trend:  Marketing Automation

(+2 places YoY)

Last year, marketing automation (MA) rose from the third to the second spot – now its steady climb puts it at the top of list.

Sure, marketing automation is about delivering the right message at the right time in the right way – but it’s so much more. Great automation allows marketers to harness multiple channels, automate multiple tasks and deliver insight into the customer journey. Marketing automation is a business’ central nervous system, so it’s no wonder it’s seen as a strategic priority.

Yet there’s a lot to consider – costs, training requirements, whether it integrates well with your existing tech stack, whether it’s scalable to your future requirements and whether the vendor’s roadmap for the platform matches your own. Hence it requiring 33% of the average marketing team’s focus for the year ahead.

Benefits of marketing automation:

  • Saves time (and money)
  • Allows you to scale your efforts
  • Improves productivity
  • Delivers more and better leads
  • Improves experimentation (supporting A/B testing and iterative improvements)
  • Delivers better data analytics
  • Centralises data
  • Allows you to improve your customer experience
  • Improves segmentation
  • Supports personalisation and better engagement
  • Improves sales and marketing alignment

2. Second place: Growth Marketing

(New entry)

Growth marketing is a new entry for 2020, added to the mix following growing interest from B2B marketers. It was right to make that addition, as it’s shot straight in to take the second spot.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘growth marketing’ you may misinterpret it as non-descript. After all, we’re all trying to grow our business through marketing, right? Actually, the term is more nuanced than that. Derived from lean start-up principles, it uses traditional marketing but with the application of A/B testing, data-driven thinking and speedy adaptation thrown in.  It’s about quick hacks for big growth.

Often closely linked with product development and looking at the entire customer journey, growth marketers improve anything from acquisition to retention, engagement or advocacy – so long as it’s targeted, measurable and adds revenue to the bottom line.
The most renowned example of growth marketing is from Dropbox. It delivered 3900% growth in 15 months with practically no marketing spend. Applying lean principles it analysed a regular flow of customer feedback, made continuous product improvements and introduced an incredibly easy but effective referral programme that had customers signing up in droves.

3. Top trend: Customer experience

(-1 place YoY)

Customer experience (CX) was set to take the top spot according to last year’s predictions, having come in a second place (after GDPR) in 2019. While it’s not in this year’s top place it’s still a big issue for B2B marketers.

So what does CX comprise? It runs from customer journey mapping, to persona building and personalisation with a whole lot of other elements to boot. In short it’s knowing and pleasing your customer – increasingly through ‘always-on’ customer intelligence.

While everyone wants to improve their CX (in fact 79% of B2B marketers say it’s a significant priority, our recent annual CX survey has shown) most are unsure who should do what, or how it all ties up. Actually many don’t have a CX plan of any kind, and for most it’s tackled in a piecemeal approach with each department doing what it can with the information and stretch it has. The impact that disjointed approach has on the customer means it’s a big area of focus for marketers in 2020.

The biggest blocker to great CX in B2B is a lack of strategy (only 3% of marketers are aligned to a cohesive, operational plan) followed by a lack of clarity regarding who bears the responsibility. Yet those who make improvements here are putting themselves ahead of the game in an area crucial to modern marketing.

Do agencies share the same priorities as clients?

Are client and agencies aligned on their focus areas? Not always. The biggest variance we see is regarding emotional engagement, where agencies describe their teams as 33% focused on the area, versus clients, which put themselves at just 13%. This is likely due to the nature of agencies being hardwired to engage audiences at an emotional level – after all, it’s what they do best. A variance here is to be accepted, just as long as agencies are aware of it.

The other area of significant variance is customer experience, which agencies place at 39% (number three  in their chart) versus the 27% stated by clients (joint fourth place for them). It’s important to consider here that agencies will be thinking about both their clients and the clients’ end user, making it a double-whammy for them. Again, such is the nature of agency life that customer experience will be front and centre.

It’s also worthy of noting that influencer marketing saw a fair bit of variance with agencies placing 15% of their focus on it and clients just 9%.

year on year

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