B2B in 2019: It's a jungle sometimes

This year Green Hat returns with its diagnosis of the Australian B2B marketing landscape, taking stock of how marketers are doing with their objectives from 2018, examining their greatest challenges in the year ahead and observing shifting preferences and advancements in technology, social media and strategy. The ninth edition, ‘B2B Marketing Research Report 2019: The B2B Jungle’, surveyed 478 participants – a record response for the annual report.

Proving marketing impact and ROI remained the industry’s greatest challenge in 2018 (listed as a challenge by 49 percent of participants), followed by the struggle to optimise customer experience (46 percent) and implement marketing technology (43 percent). The top objective for B2B in 2019 will be generating and managing leads (68 percent), closely followed by proving marketing impact and ROI (67 percent). The hype around customer experience (CX) also seems to have died down, at least for B2B marketers; this year CX optimisation slipped from second to fourth priority in terms of marketing objectives.

Every year the report also offers a contrast of how ‘best-in-class’ marketers are approaching the scene.

This year Green Hat is defining these marketers as those who reported success in customer empathy, developing customer journeys and buyer personas, sales and marketing alignment, having a strategic