In partnership with:

The 2019 Trend Tracker report

1 1

Data privacy Customer

(GDPR and experience
PECR)

2
Da
Customer
(G
experience 3
3
Marketing Performance
automation marketing

6
5 5
Agile Performance
arketing Marketing
marketing
automation
4 4
ABM ABM

7
8 8
The tech Emotional Agile
stack engagement marketing
10 10

9
Intent and
11 11
Big data predictive

Programmatic
12 advertising 12
Contents

Section 1
Introduction 3

Section 2
GDPR takes centre stage 6

Section 3
CX is a broad umbrella 8

Section 4
Marketing automation 9

Section 5
ABM taps into human emotion 11

Section 6
The year ahead 13

2 Contents The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

Section 1

Introduction

From ABM to the tech stack, B2B Marketing uncovers the big
trends both agencies and clients are dedicating their efforts to.

Read on to find out the trends senior marketing leaders across

B2B have on their radar.

B2B Marketing’s 2019 Trend Tracker, conducted with Savanta,

surveyed senior marketers in both agency and client-side roles
to see which trends led the charge in 2018, and which will
remain top of the agenda in the year ahead.

Do clients and agencies share their views on the trends worthy

of investment? Will the coming year bring a shift in priorities?
Which new trends have made it on to our Trend Tracker and
which have slipped off? Read on to find out.

Highlights

›› GDPR topped the tables for 2018.

›› Customer experience is tipped to come in top place for
12 months ahead.
›› Performance marketing, a new addition to the Tracker,
was ranked in fourth place.
›› Blockchain slipped from this year’s list of trends.

The Trend Tracker’s methodology

The survey, our second annual Trend Tracker, covers

14 wide-ranging trends ranging from customer
experience to AI.

The bulk of the 395 respondents are either director

level (agency) and head of marketing level (client-side).

3 Section 1 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

 The 2019 B2B Marketing Trend Tracker: The B2B mind

4 Section 1
Client-side Agency-side

1 Data privacy (GDPR and PECR) 72% 1 Customer experience (CX) 73%
1 1

Data privacy Customer

2 Customer experience (CX) 63% (GDPR and experience 2 Data privacy (GDPR and PECR) 70%
PECR)

3 Marketing automation 60% 3 Performance marketing 65%

2 2
4 ABM 51% Data privacy 4 ABM 64%
Customer
(GDPR and
experience 3
3 PECR)
5 Performance marketing 50% 5 Marketing automation 64%
Marketing Performance
automation marketing

6 Agile marketing 46% 6 Emotional engagement 64%

6 6
5 5
7 Agile Performance Emotional 7
The tech stack 46% marketing Marketing engagement
Influencer marketing 55%
marketing
automation
4 4
8 Emotional engagement 46% 8 Agile marketing 55%
ABM ABM

7 7
9 Big data 44% 8 8 9 The tech stack 55%
The tech Emotional Agile Influencer
stack engagement marketing marketing
10 Influencer marketing 42% 10 10
10 Big data 54%
Influencer
Big data
marketing
11 Intent and predictive 36% 11 Intent and predictive 48%
9 9
Intent and
11 11 The
Big data predictive
12 tech stack 12
Programmatic advertising 34% Programmatic advertising 43%
Programmatic
12 advertising 12
13 Artificial intelligence 32% Artificial 13 Artificial intelligence 43%
13 13
intelligence

14 Augmented or virtual reality 24% Augmented or 14 Augmented or virtual reality 35%

14 14
virtual reality

Marketers were asked to rate the attributes shown above, based on how focused their
team was on each – from 1 (0% focused) to 10 (100% focused). Figures shown are the In association with:
average scores for each attribute for both agency and client-side marketers.

The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

 GDPR and

71%
data privacy

5 Section 1
Customer

67%
experience (CX)

Marketing

62%
automation
2019’s top 14 trends overall

Performance

56%
marketing

Account-based
56%

marketing (ABM)

Emotional
53%

engagement

Tech stack
50%

Big data
48%

Agile marketing
50%

Influencer
47%

marketing

Predictive
41%

marketing

Programmatic
37%

advertising

AI
37%

Augmented/
28%

virtual reality

The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

Section 2

GDPR takes centre stage

Data privacy is currently the biggest trend in B2B third in the tracker, overtaken by attention diverted to
marketing, but as worries surrounding the new regulation customer experience and marketing automation.
drop off, its focus is predicted to fall from first place to

B2B Marketer’s top three trends ranked over time

85%

80%

GDPR
75%
CX
70% Marketing automation

65%

60%
2018 2019 Up to 2020

The results are in and the consensus is clear: GDPR is currently

the top-ranking trend, with marketers spending 71% of their
“The nervousness has died down.
focus on it. This comes as no surprise given the legislation It hasn’t had a big impact on
came into force in May 2018. Compliance has been the word
on everyone’s lips. Marketers have frantically cleaned up
responsible marketers”
their data, worried about opt-in lists, and sought advice from
agencies on what constitutes ‘legitimate interest’.

While data privacy will continue to be a focus in 2019, it will

slip down the agenda. And, as the focus on data privacy falls,
more time will be spent on other trends. GDPR is predicted to
slide to third place by 2020.

6 Section 2 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

GDPR: Clients vs agencies, % of focus marketers on both sides gave to GDPR

2019 2019
70% 72%

2018 2018
63% 56%

Up to 2020 Up to 2020
71% 73%

Agency Client-side

The real impact of GDPR

The Marketing Practice, a UK agency, brought in a

GDPR specialist to support clients who felt isolated and
unsure about the new legislation.

Its head of marketing, Heather Barnett, says: “Most

clients went down the legitimate interest route instead
of the opt-in route,” explaining this meant they didn’t
lose their entire customer database overnight.

“The nervousness that was around in the first couple of

months [of implementation] has definitely died down.
There hasn’t been a flood of prosecutions and it hasn’t
had a big impact on responsible marketers,” she adds.

“If you were already acting with integrity and were

highly targeted in what you were doing, you didn’t run
into trouble.”

7 Section 2 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

Section 3
CX is a broad umbrella
Customer experience holds on near the top of the
Tracker, and is set to reach the pinnacle by 2020.
How focused are marketers on CX?
79% 79%
67%
2018 2019 Up to 2020
Customer experience (CX) maintained dominance in the
Tracker, placing at the second spot this year with a score
of 67%. While it dipped from 79% to 67%, this decline
is relative to the short-term focus on GDPR, which has
drawn attention away from all other areas. CX is set to
rise back up to 79% by 2020.
CX is firmly near the top of the list because ABM,
predictive marketing and GDPR all fall under its umbrella,
says Jason Talbot, managing director at The Crocodile.
8 Section 3
“Customer data is the unifying factor on this trend list,”
explains Jason. “If you see CX at a strategic level, it’s all
about a single customer view and hyper-personalisation.”
This ties into many of the trends topping the charts, he
explains, which is why it’s such a high priority for both
agency and client-side marketers.
For The Crocodile, CX has been so essential to its
strategy that the entire agency has reorganised around
it. “In the past year we’ve implemented an agency-wide
internal training programme, initiated a new planning
programme that revolves around customer journey
mapping and built our net-new strategic partnerships,”
says Jason.
It’s a crucial trend. The brands growing at speed are
laser-focused on CX and have it at their core, Jason
explains. “It’s no secret what’s powering Netflix and
Amazon, but the knack is how you do it and organise
your business around it.”
Rob’s top tip for getting CX right:
“If you’re going to put CX in your business,
you’ve got to think about sales, customer
service, and IT, as well as other departments.
Marketers who embrace it will get drawn
into the bosom of the business.”
The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing
Section 4

Marketing automation

Marketers are looking towards marketing automation Emma Rainey’s top 3 tips for using marketing
as one of the highest-ranked trends leading up to 2020. automation to its best advantage
Shifting up from third to second place for the year
ahead, it’s one to watch. 1. Create content aimed at challenges.

Everybody’s time poor so you’ve got to give them

something relevant. It should be specific to each target
How focused are marketers on marketing automation? audience, helping to solve issues such as visibility,
accuracy and efficiency. Marketing automation is the
75% key behind all of this.
69%

62% 2. Don’t forget about ABM.

ABM is the ability to use a lot of the new techniques

within automation. How content is delivered makes
all the difference now in ABM.

3. Getting data right is fundamental.

Personalisation is undoubtedly why marketing

automation is ranked so highly in the Tracker. What
underpins both is data. All insights should be driven
2018 2019 Up to 2020 by data. It’s fundamental.

Both client-side and agency marketers are increasing

their focus on marketing automation. It is the second-
highest ranking trend on the Tracker this year and is set
to see a sharp rise from 62% to 75% in the year ahead.

Marketing automation is a key focus for Emma Rainey,

VP of marketing at software company Bottomline
Technologies. Her department is leading the way in its
company’s digital transformation.

9 Section 4 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

Case study

Trending tech means transformation

for Cushman and Wakefield

Having rolled out a new CRM system and with a new

website to come later this year, marketing automation is
a high priority for Julien Scott, head of digital marketing
EMEA at Cushman and Wakefield.

“It will give us targeted comms, sequential messaging

and integration between online and offline,” he says.
Julien hopes the new platform, Pardot, part of Salesforce,
will help give an end-to-end view of marketing
communications, and crucially, move away from a
mass marketing approach. “Having an EMEA-wide
marketing automation platform is the single biggest
solution enabling us to better understand existing and
prospective clients,” he says.

The tech stack ranked at eighth

place on the Tracker with 50%

Reviewing the stack as part of Cushman and Wakefield’s

wider digital transformation, Julien hopes to centralise
data and add analytics on top of its CMS and MA platform.
“We have a fairly impressive tech stack, but like many
organisations we struggle with getting adoption and
usage ramped up,” says Julien.

10 Section 4 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

Section 5

ABM taps into human emotion

Account-based marketing (ABM) ranked fifth place GDPR: Clients vs agencies, % of focus marketers
on this year’s list – and it’s set to see the biggest surge on both sides gave to ABM
leading up to 2020.

How focused are marketers on ABM? 2019

64%

71% 2018
67%
63%
56%

Up to 2020
75%

Agency

2018 2019 Up to 2020 2019

27%

2018
31%
B2B marketers will put significantly more effort and
attention into account-based marketing (ABM) over
the coming year, our survey has shown. For 2019,
ABM ranks fifth place with 56%, but that is set to rise Up to 2020
to 71% by 2020. This marks the biggest uplift across 45%
all of our trends.

For agencies in particular the rise from 2019 to 2020

is steep, moving from 64% to 75% respectively. Client-side

11 Section 5 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

 “From our perspective ABM is a top trend,” says Rob
Mitchell, CEO of thought leadership agency Longitude,
who has seen a lot of interest in ABM from clients over
the last year.

Rob describes a growing demand in marketing for ABM-

based content. “It’s never been greater,” he says. “Good
content should resonate on an emotional level. It should
have surprising moments and trigger an emotional
response,” explains Rob. “ABM is the framework you can
put that into.”

“In terms of B2B content, ABM is still quite a new tactic,

but I’m surprised because any good marketing should
tap into the emotional.”

“Content that triggers an emotional

response doesn’t get enough
attention in B2B”

Emotional engagement is another trend

that ties into this. It will also see a sharp
rise in interest from agency and client-
side marketers, from 53% to 63% in the
coming year, according to our survey.

12 Section 5 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

Section 6

The year ahead

ABM sees the biggest uplift in focus for the year The senior marketing leaders we surveyed for the Trend
ahead, with AI and predictive marketing both seeing Tracker anticipate significantly more focus on the tech
a surge in interest. stack (50% in 2019 to 60% in 2020). Clients are likely to
drive intelligent technologies, with predictive marketing
moving from 41% to 54% in importance, the second
highest uplift of our top trends, beaten only by ABM.
Highest uplift trends from 2019 to year ahead’s data
CX pushes AI up the ladder in 2020
14%
13% 13% AI will see one of the biggest leaps over the next year,
12% 12% 12% rising from 32% to 44% focus for clients, and 43% to
10% 58% for agencies. However, it’s comparatively low on the
list for overall marketers, in twelfth place for 2019.

Tim Stone, recently marketing director at communication

technology company Polycom, says the earliest use
cases of AI are in the CX space, and it is this area that will
propel the most advancement in the technology.

“AI is a very hot area for customer interaction,” he says.

Only 5% of companies have a chief experience officer,
he explains, so there isn’t one person who owns end-
Account-based
marketing

Intent and predictive

marketing

Marketing
automation

AI

Customer
experience

Influencer
marketing

Big data

to-end CX. Therefore, it might fall to CMOs to own the

technique, especially as many are interested in brand
experience and sentiment analysis, making it a key focus
for the year ahead.

“By 2020, some 85% of all customer

This might be the year when AI, big data and predictive experience interactions will be
marketing come to the fore as marketers learn how to apply
it to their businesses. While marketers currently give AI an
through chatbots, powered by AI”
average of 37% of their focus in 2019, this is expected to
rise to 49% by 2020. Similarly, big data is predicted to jump
from 48% (2019) to 58% (2020).

13 Section 6 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

At Polycom, Tim sees a dramatic shift away from voice
interactions and towards online chat in the CX space.
“Customers want to use the tools they use at home,
like Facebook messenger and Skype to interact, which
means AI is being used more in customer service than
other spaces.” According to Gartner, by 2020 85% of
all customer experience interactions will be through
chatbots, powered by AI.
Enabled by the cloud, AI might just become the norm
even for small businesses, enabling them to use offshore
resources and propel demand generation. AI can be
used for social positioning and ad campaigns, spotting
trends in group behaviour that a human wouldn’t.
“Customer experience is all about unexpected delight,”
Tim says, and AI can bring it.

Comparison of top trends showing change from 2018 to 2020

2018

2019

Up to
2020

Trend 2018 2019 Up to 2020

CX 79% 67% 79%

MA 69% 62% 75%

GDPR 64% 71% 72%

ABM 63% 56% 71%

14 Section 6 The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing

Clients and agencies: A comparison
Although CX was deemed important across the board
this year, agencies gave it 10% more focus than inhouse
marketers. Furthermore, agencies rate emotional
engagement, the tech stack, performance marketing
and ABM more highly.
So how do we explain the variation between the
two agendas?
Jason at The Crocodile is unsurprised these tactics are
lower priorities for client-side marketers’. “Agencies have
a habit of bleating on about method, whereas clients
are focused on growth and customer satisfaction,” he
Clients and agencies’ top trends for the year ahead
CX Marketing Performance
automation marketing
15 Section 6
explains. “Agencies don’t necessarily speak directly
to customer problems. It’s just a language thing.”
Clients often look to agencies to understand the
developing trends and techniques. The trick is to find a
balance between what is new and what is known to work.
In that case, it’s no wonder that CX is pitted to be the top
trend by 2020. “CX is the focus for us for the next five
years,” says Jason, “It’s a movement, not a technique.”
As GDPR becomes less of a distraction, other trends will
rise in importance. Both clients and agencies are making
CX their clear priority for 2020, while marketing automation
climbs the ladder and performance marketing (included for
the first time in the survey) enters near the top.
Clients Agencies
GDPR ABM Emotional
engagement
The 2019 Trend Tracker report © B2B Marketing
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