Straight from the Source: 2014 Digital Marketing Trends as Told by Marketers

In the past few years, the mar­ket­ing indus­try has mor­phed into a dig­i­tal steam engine, charg­ing mar­keters through unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ries across social media, web con­tent, media opti­miza­tion and more.

But mar­keters haven’t felt com­fort­able with this pow­er­ful inno­va­tion. How would it be con­trolled? How would its effec­tive­ness be mea­sured? What type of peo­ple should be at the wheel? Accord­ing to a recent Adobe sur­vey of mar­keters, 76% feel the indus­try has changed more in the past two years than in the pre­vi­ous 5, and few­er than half of mar­keters today feel high­ly pro­fi­cient in digital.

This type of per­for­mance anx­i­ety has built a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try that is rav­en­ous for data—any key lean­ings that will help pave the way on this dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing journey.

Recent­ly Adobe, in part­ner­ship with Econ­sul­tan­cy, kicked off a glob­al sur­vey of more than 2,500 mar­keters and Inter­net pro­fes­sion­als, in hopes of bet­ter under­stand­ing what com­pa­nies and agen­cies alike are pri­ori­tis­ing in 2014.

The result? Six­ty pages of valu­able input from the coal-face of mar­ket­ing and ecom­merce high­light­ing key trends, chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing today—covering top­ics rang­ing from cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and mobile to cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing and email optimization.

Here’s a sneak peek at the meat inside this report:

• Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is the sin­gle most excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for in-house mar­keters in 2014, above mobile and con­tent marketing.
• In the world of B2B, con­tent mar­ket­ing is king. For B2C mar­keters, how­ev­er, mobile sits in at the top of the pri­or­i­ty pile.
• 2014 is a year of exper­i­men­ta­tion and agili­ty. Does your com­pa­ny cul­ture instill a fear of fail­ure? The inabil­i­ty to test, learn, and rejig­ger an approach is hold­ing many com­pa­nies back from dig­i­tal success.

https://blogsimages.adobe.com/digitaleurope/files/2014/01/Word-Cloud-2014-Digital-Trends-EMEA.jpg

Fig­ure 1: In what areas will dig­i­tal mar­keters exper­i­ment most heav­i­ly in the com­ing year?

• Con­sumer expec­ta­tions out­pace cor­po­rate inno­va­tions. There is no doubt about it—consumers are in con­trol. And aside from grab­bing con­sumer atten­tion, cus­tomer stick­i­ness has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult as per­son­al­ized offers and infor­ma­tion from oth­er brands increas­es at a stag­ger­ing rate.
• Evolv­ing role for email as mar­keters seek to engage with mil­len­ni­als. Over 90% of busi­ness­es use email as a cheap and pow­er­ful way of both broad­cast­ing news and pro­vid­ing per­son­al, 1:1 com­mu­ni­ca­tion. How­ev­er the debate of emails effec­tive­ness in reach­ing a younger, social-mind­ed audi­ence continues.
• Tech­nol­o­gy brings effi­cien­cy and imme­di­a­cy to dis­play adver­tis­ing in what has been a his­tor­i­cal­ly chaot­ic land­scape for media buy­ing. And as the effi­cien­cy of tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing dwin­dles, brands should be able to effec­tive­ly cob­ble togeth­er large audi­ences com­prised of the right people—albeit from many dif­fer­ent sources.
• Mar­keters fit for the future need to find the bal­ance between extremes. More so than ever, mar­ket­ing has become a com­bi­na­tion of art and science—and the need for left-brained engi­neers who will eat, sleep and breathe tech­nol­o­gy into their mar­ket­ing teams is just as preva­lent as the call for cre­ative genius­es. Break­ing down organ­i­sa­tion­al silos and bal­anc­ing these two extremes con­tin­ues to be a challenge.
• Com­pa­nies focus on har­mon­is­ing cross-chan­nel mes­sag­ing and expe­ri­ence. As tech­nol­o­gy evolves so too do mar­ket­ing channels—consider Vine, Pin­ter­est, Insta­gram, Tum­blr and oth­er chan­nels that have surged into pop­u­lar­i­ty. Man­ag­ing these mul­ti­ple chan­nels with con­sis­ten­cy has become an increas­ing­ly cru­cial dis­ci­pline for marketers.
• Mobile has won—the time for pro­cras­ti­na­tion is over. There couldn’t be a safer bet than to pre­dict that mobile will con­tin­ue to grow in sig­nif­i­cance for busi­ness­es, as more cus­tomers adopt tablets, smart­phones and wear­able tech­nol­o­gy. 2014 will con­tin­ue to see busi­ness­es work hard­er to improve the mobile expe­ri­ence, and to under­stand what mobile means for their customers.
• Con­tent, mobile and social will become busi­ness as usu­al. While the vast major­i­ty of mar­keters under­stand that improv­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence must be one of the sole focus­es of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, most com­pa­nies are still gath­er­ing the right tools for their tool­box in order to cre­ate such expe­ri­ences. But as mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy moves into a more inte­grat­ed set of solu­tions, these func­tions should bring greater val­ue in the year to come.

May this full report help enable us all to bet­ter under­stand the mind­set, needs and con­cerns of today’s dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing professionals—so that the tech­nol­o­gy, process and peo­ple will con­tin­ue to evolve. I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing this dis­cus­sion with all of you dur­ing 2014. We’re on this dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing jour­ney together—let’s nev­er stop find­ing new ways to improve.

Down­load the full 2014 Dig­i­tal Trends report from Econ­sul­tan­cy and Adobe here, and check out the report info­graph­ic of key findings.

@mrzablan