Synergist voted most popular software by top B2B marketing agencies
UK’s top-ranked B2B Marcomms agencies vote Synergist as the most popular software for managing their projects. B2B Marketing has released the results from its annual agency benchmarking survey. 95 of the UK’s top B2B agencies shared what’s in their tech stack and Synergist came out the top.
The meaty report covers many aspects of agency life and the B2B marketing agency industry. Not only is the report a ranking of the top B2B marketing agencies but it unearths current trends and predictions for the rest of this year. So whether you’re an agency looking to size-up the competition, or you’re looking to hire a B2B marketing agency, this report is sure to make an interesting read.
To whet your appetite, we’ve pulled out some of the key pieces of information unearthed from the report, including, of course, the area we’re delighted to rank number one, what is in the most successful agency’s tech stack.
Agency rankings
OLIVER top the list of integrated agencies with a whopping 1642 headcount and £99 million gross income.
Other front runners include Ogilvy UK, with a GI of £25.7 million and Bray Leino with a GI of £20.3 million. Of the smaller agencies, with just 25 employees Kingpin Communications comes in an impressive twelfth place boasting a £9.8 million GI.
Unsurprisingly with their 1642 headcount OLIVER also top the list of fastest growing UK B2B marcomms agencies.
Agency finances
Interestingly, the report had 95 responses out of over 800 agencies asked. The collators of the report state that this is a marked improvement on last year, where they say many of the regular contributors dropped out citing poor performance as the reason.
This year, agencies remain positive about the year ahead, despite Brexit uncertainty. Average gross income for B2B agencies has increased from £5,475,964 to £5,746,992 but this growth, at 4.5%, is slower than the previous year’s 14%.
There’s much more detailed financial benchmarking in the report.
Agency trends and offerings
So how are agencies evolving? 48% of agencies now describe themselves as providing “integrated operations” with just 16% calling themselves “digital” and less still, 13% referring to themselves as “creative”. So the report notes a trend for offering more breath than depth. In terms of primary services, last year “marketing planning and strategy” topped the bill but this has been replaced with “campaign and creative execution,” which was votes as the primary services by 58% of respondents.
Agency's tech stack
One comment the report makes immediately is that unbelievably a fifth of respondents are still using spreadsheets, or other manual processes to track their project management. But of agencies who are using a system to track their projects, Synergist came top.
If you'd like to know more about why these successful agencies are relying on Synergist as the number one provider for their tracking you can find out more about Synergist below.
In terms of other technology, unsurprisingly MailChimp tops the marketing automation tools list, followed by Hubspot. Social Media management was dominated by Hootsuite, with Hubspot coming in second place again. And WordPress was the winner of Content management systems.
The remainder of the report is built-up of interesting agency thoughts, quotes and comments in the areas of client service, the future shape of agencies and learnings from the previous year. All-in-all the report is a great read for anyone looking to appoint a healthy and successful agency, or for agencies looking to see where they sit among their peers.
