Each year, B2B Marketing conducts a survey to understand what marketers will be focusing on for the year ahead.
Conducted with Cogniclick, the survey presented 19 topics to participants, and asked them to consider how focused they will be on each one in 2021. For each topic, the participant could select one of the following: very highly focused; highly focused; somewhat focused; slightly focused; or not at all focused.
For the purposes of this feature, we will be looking at those that replied ‘very highly focused’ to gauge what’s really got the attention of B2B marketers this year. With more than 300 client and agency-side respondents, we can see which areas are grabbing the limelight, and which are fading into the background.
How have the trends changed from last year’s report?
Last year, the top four trends were: customer experience (CX); growth marketing; account-based marketing (ABM); and revenue operations.
This year, growth marketing has jumped into first place, with 37.5% of our audience saying they are very highly focused on it this year. As many of us will know, the exact definition of growth marketing is not always clear, so, for clarity, we defined growth marketing in our survey as: “strategies and positioning of marketing as the engine-room of business growth.”
It appears, therefore, that marketers are continuing to assert themselves as a driver of real business goals, and totally distance themselves from the ‘colouring in department’ of yesteryear.
CX, meanwhile, has fallen to fifth place, with 26.6% of our survey participants claiming it’s something they are going to be very highly focused on this year. However, it is interesting to note that customer success – a new entry into the Trend Tracker – has taken second place, with 35.2% very highly focused on it. Ultimately, customer success and CX are closely linked, so, despite CX’s slight decrease in share of attention, the focus on the customer first remains front and centre of marketers’ minds.
To add to this point, sales enablement and personalisation – both of which are new entries – came joint third place (28%).
Despite having the word ‘sales’ in the terminology, at the heart of sales enablement is a need for marketing to understand what the customer requires, and then provide sales with the tools they need to win their continued business. Personalisation, of course, also necessitates a deep understanding of what the customer is interested in.
With this in mind, it’s interesting to see that three of top four trends for 2021 include a much greater focus on the customer than the product, channel or martech.
Revenue operations has, of course, dropped out of the top spots. Although we did not include this exact trend this year, we did include ‘marketing and revenue operations’, which now sits at 11th place. It is also crucial to note that ABM, although sitting in seventh place in this year’s report, would be fourth place, were it not for the new entries. It’s also worth noting that sales enablement, growth marketing and personalisation are core tenets of ABM, and so, although the term itself may have dipped in popularity, its key marketing DNA remains as fundamental as ever. Perhaps we are simply seeing a shift away from account-based marketing, and towards account-based everything. Do agencies and clients share the same priorities?
Unsurprisingly, agencies – who’s bread and butter is the ability to deliver world-class marketing campaigns – were more highly focused on nearly trends, with two exceptions: marketing automation and channel marketing. However, due to the fact that agencies will undoubtedly be more focused on each of the trends, the key thing to compare is positioning. Growth marketing remains in number one spot for both client- side and agency-side, suggesting a sincere desire to position marketing as a business driver on both sides of the coin. Interestingly, sales enablement, for all of the hype, is seventh place amongst agencies, but third amongst clients.
Customer success, however, remains in second place among both agencies and clients, so customers, rejoice! There’s even more reason for buyers to celebrate, as CX is fourth among agencies and sixth among clients. It is also interesting to note the rise of emotional engagement in our Trend Tracker. It has risen two places overall since last year’s report, ranking fifth amongst agencies, but still ninth amongst clients. Either way, it is not a stretch to suggest that 2020, a year in which striking the right tone with your customers was even more crucial than ever, has led to B2B marketers thinking in a more emotionally intelligent way. Regardless, it appears agencies are leading the way on this front, with client-side marketers needing to play catch-up.
Unsurprisingly, influencer marketing has continued its descent amongst both client side and agency-side marketers, ranking bottom for both.
Top three trends this year
First place: Growth marketing (+1 place YoY)
As discussed earlier, growth marketing is the concept that marketing should be positioned as a key driver of business growth. It is more philosophical than, say, performance marketing, which focuses more on the methodology to drive conversion (and typically on a short-term basis).
As with anything philosophical, it is broad by nature, and arguably encompasses many of the other topics listed in the survey.
Regardless, its rise indicates a continued perspective-shift among marketers. Whilst marketers of 20 years ago may have received a marketing budget from a siloed member of the leadership team, and considered what interesting and engaging campaigns they could run with it, growth marketers put the business first, and ask themselves: ‘how can marketing position itself to deliver business growth?’
The fact that both client-side and agency-side marketers have seen growth marketing as the thing they’re most focused on 2021 is fascinating, especially when compared to something more conventional like, say, the martech stack (15th place in the combined agency/client results
Second place: Customer success (new entry)
Although it would be interesting to see how every topic compares YoY ad infinitum, it makes sense to simply remove some topics and enter new ones each year. After all, I doubt anyone would be all that surprised to see fax machines at the bottom of any marketer’s priority list.
With that in mind, the award for second place in this year’s Trend Tracker goes to customer success – another new entry. We defined customer success as: “Ensuring your customers achieve desired outcomes when using your products or solutions, and are less likely to churn.”
In short, there is not much fun to be had generating 10 new customers each year, if you also lose 10 existing customers. With prospective buyers often carrying out their own research online for weeks or months before revealing themselves to an organisation, making the sale can be difficult. Ensuring existing customers are happy is, therefore, crucial to long-term success.
It is not rocket science to understand that if a customer doesn’t get what they paid for, or is underwhelmed with the product or service, they’re unlikely to renew or recommend your solution. Fortunately, marketers are in the perfect position to ensure customer success, and so it’s reassuring to see this topic has landed in second place.
Third place: Sales enablement (new entry)
Although sales enablement is by no means a new topic, it took real strides forward in 2020. As the number of martech solutions tailored for sales enablement has grown steadily, marketers now have a host of tools at their disposal to implement this optimised approach to marketing and sales.
In addition to this, Covid-19 ruled out face-to-face events and meetings, and generally made prospective buyers harder to reach. As a result of this, marketers – armed with banks upon banks of data – have had to step forward with solutions to help their sales colleagues get deals across the line.
Given that it was not even deemed a worthy entry in last year’s report (and yet voice search was, would you believe), the fact sales enablement now sits boldly at third place suggests it has now broken through from ‘interesting background topic’ to ‘serious marketing strategy’.
Of course, whether or not sales enablement will become a widespread marketing strategy remains to be seen. There’s reason to be optimistic, however, as our report on sales enablement last year indicated 28% of marketers already had an agreed and documented sales enablement programme, and 45% were in the process of developing one.
