Our annual survey of UK agencies reveals their assessment of the B2B marketplace, including their challenges, opportunities, and how they’re responding with new service offerings.
This free 120-page report also ranks the growth of UK agencies by their annual financial results and headcount, not only showing which agencies are top of the pack, but also which are growing the fastest – both here in the UK and internationally.
But before you race to find out where you or others sit among them, stick around for an overview of the year just gone and ahead.
Services and skills
We dug deeply into which services agencies plan to introduce in the year ahead. It revealed some interesting results. With 82% of agencies having already invested in digital developments, many have turned – or are turning – their attention to data. Data analytics will see significant investment from agencies in 2020 with 18% adding it as an offering by year-end. Teamed with those already doing it, a collective 81% of agencies will offer this service by the close of 2020.
Following this, the most significant investment will be put into performance marketing and martech consultancy (16% each) and social listening (15%). However, marry those numbers with those who’ve already invested in these areas and they surface somewhere in the middle of the pack.
So let’s fast forward to the end of the year and see which three new or non-core services will be the most popular offerings. At the top spot is digital development with 89% of agencies offering this. Next is data analytics at 81%, quickly followed by account-based marketing, which at 80% has seen a huge increase in recent years.
2019’s big bugbears
Each year, we ask agencies about the recent challenges they’ve been facing.
During the last 12 months, two particular problems have grown in intensity, both climbing three places from their spot last year. The first is Brexit, which is now in third place, falling behind the habitual frontrunners of staff retention and client budgets. With the UK really no closer to a resolution of this matter, unfortunately Brexit – and its effect on spending – will continue to dampen matters for the year ahead. The other challenge to have piqued agencies during 2019 was the move by
clients to bring more of their agency activity in-house. While only four percent of our survey participants ranked client in-sourcing as a ‘very significant’ challenge, a further 28% see it as a ‘significant’ challenge, putting it at number seven in the
list, up from 10th place last year. It’s a trend that gained real traction with the likes of Deloitte setting up its own internal agency, 368, and Atos celebrated gains with its move to bring Oliver’s agency staff in-house to work alongside its own. However, even those who aren’t making these sweeping changes have been opting to do more with their in-house team, saving agencies for the very essentials, no doubt buffering the costly tides of Brexit.
Winning new business
Want to know where your rivals are finding work? Most new business comes through direct client referral (73% say this is very common) or a referral from another individual (38% say it’s very common). Beyond that, 33% win new business through the pitching process and 22% through an RFP. Agencies are pretty confident about their ability to win pitches with the largest percentage group (29%) saying they win between 70-80% of the pitches they deliver. The next largest group (19%) claim they win pitches between 50-60% of the time.
