Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015

Changes—whether they be envi­ron­men­tal, emo­tion­al, behav­ioral, etc.—have been a source of dra­mat­ic uncer­tain­ty since the begin­ning of time. Debris on the motor­way affect­ing your morn­ing dri­ve? Air tur­bu­lence chang­ing the com­fort of your recent busi­ness trip? Your moth­er in law’s pres­ence chang­ing the dynam­ic in your house­hold? The frus­trat­ing road­blocks that too often crop up in life can almost always be pin­point­ed on some ele­ment of change.

And so too for mar­keters, as I’m out every day speak­ing to top brands across Europe, the resound­ing theme I hear time and again is how busi­ness­es will be able to adapt to and suc­ceed amidst change. New and evolv­ing tech­nolo­gies are too often to blame for the dig­i­tal road­blocks fac­ing Euro­pean mar­keters today—and as the leader in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing technology—Adobe has once again tak­en the pulse of mar­keters across Europe to bet­ter under­stand how they are being impact­ed by these dra­mat­ic changes.

In the Adobe Dig­i­tal Road­block Report 2015, we sur­veyed 1,311 mar­keters across the UK, Ger­many and France—with top insights emerg­ing around:

Mar­keters are see­ing their indus­try trans­form­ing at a rapid pace – the face of mar­ket­ing is changing

• Rough­ly 5 in 6 mar­keters (86%) feel the pace of change is accel­er­at­ing and over half (58%) believe mar­ket­ing has changed more in the past year than in the pre­vi­ous 5 years.
• 7 in 10 mar­keters believe mar­ket­ing is entire­ly dif­fer­ent today than when they start­ed their mar­ket­ing career and that dig­i­tal tools and pro­lif­er­a­tion of chan­nels are fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing the nature of marketing.

The reac­tion to these changes is over­whelm­ing­ly positive

• Sev­en­ty-two per­cent agree they are at the start of a gold­en age of mar­ket­ing and most see this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty rather than a threat (87%).
• Mar­keters describe feel­ing chal­lenged (56%) and opti­mistic (55%).

Marketing’s busi­ness influ­ence and impact is seen as increasing

• Sev­en­ty-three per­cent believe the mar­ket­ing func­tion has increased in influ­ence in the past 5 years and mar­ket­ing is seen to strong­ly influ­ence over­all busi­ness strat­e­gy (65%).
• Six­ty-nine per­cent agree that mar­ket­ing is increas­ing­ly respon­si­ble for rev­enue contribution.

New tech­nolo­gies are trans­form­ing how mar­keters inter­act with their audi­ences; mar­keters must mas­ter these tech­nolo­gies to stay relevant

• Mar­keters believe that inter­net-con­nect­ed devices enable mar­ket­ing to per­me­ate every aspect of con­sumer life (69%) and mar­keters must become skilled in mobile 2 (70%) to reach these consumers.
• Tech­nol­o­gy is con­tribut­ing to the change in con­sumer expec­ta­tions – con­sumers now expect imme­di­ate respons­es (78%), com­pelling con­tent (77%), unique­ly tai­lored mar­ket­ing (69%) and 24/7 engage­ment with brands (65%).

Mobile is most impor­tant to mar­keters now. Wear­able and the inter­net of things will be cru­cial in the future.

• 72% believe the rise of mobile and wear­able tech­nol­o­gy has tak­en mar­ket­ing into new ter­ri­to­ry and 52% believe mar­ket­ing today is all about mobile and inter­net-con­nect­ed devices.
• While mobile and mar­ket­ing for com­put­ers will con­tin­ue to be impor­tant 3 years from now, it is wear­ables, IOT, and embed­ded screens that will see the largest shift in impor­tance for marketers.

Tech­nol­o­gy has changed how mar­ket­ing effec­tive­ness is measured

• Near­ly 3 in 5 (58%) believe new tech­nolo­gies are chang­ing how they reach audi­ences and ana­lyze mar­ket­ing effectiveness.
• 60% agree cap­tur­ing and apply­ing data to inform and dri­ve mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties is the new reality.
• 59% agree that data (met­rics from dig­i­tal ads, cam­paigns, web­site, etc.) are infor­ma­tive in evolv­ing their company’s mar­ket­ing creative .

Mar­keters are open to imple­ment­ing tech­nol­o­gy (64%), and tak­ing risks (57%) – how­ev­er there is reluc­tance around adopt­ing tech­nol­o­gy that is not yet mainstream.

• Change is imper­a­tive. Mar­keters expect to adapt to tech advance­ments to keep pace with the indus­try (74%).

Although these changes are wel­come and many feel opti­mistic, there is still con­cern around both their com­pa­nies and their own abil­i­ties to meet these changes

• 66% say their com­pa­ny is some­what to very well set up to deal with changes – of those only 10% say it is **set up very well **to do so.
• Being tech-savvy – an ear­ly adopter of tech­nol­o­gy – is seen as key for an ide­al suc­cess­ful mar­keter (57%), yet only 30% describe them­selves in these terms.
• Mar­keters see their com­pa­nies as per­form­ing well on tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties, but they are under­per­form­ing on activ­i­ties mar­keters iden­ti­fy as most crit­i­cal in the years to come, (big data, IoT, endem­ic mar­ket­ing, and mobile mar­ket­ing). These areas are also among those found to be most chal­leng­ing for marketers.

I think we can all relate to these themes and, at Adobe, our job is to help knock down the dig­i­tal road­blocks of today—partnering with you to build a dig­i­tal roadmap to help you cap­i­tal­ize on marketing’s gold­en age. Check out the full report below for more infor­ma­tion, and let’s con­tin­ue this con­ver­sa­tion as we com­bat dig­i­tal change.

@mrzablan

Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015

Click the graphs to share to Twitter

Key Find­ings

Most agree the pace of change in mar­ket­ing is accel­er­at­ing, but they are divid­ed on how that change is happening:

(Click to share)

7 in 10 claim mar­ket­ing is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent today than when they began their career:

(Click to share)

… with more than half feel­ing chal­lenged and opti­mistic about indus­try changes:

(Click to share)

The mar­ket­ing func­tion has increased in influ­ence in the past five years, most notably in France:

(Click to share)

Influ­ence on cor­po­rate strat­e­gy remains strong, with a quar­ter nam­ing mar­ket­ing as the largest con­trib­u­tor to future revenue:

(Click to share)

New tech­nolo­gies are a dri­ving force behind indus­try change:

(Click to share)

These tech­nol­o­gy changes affect per­son­al approach­es to marketing…

(Click to share)

…And feed the expec­ta­tion that mar­keters should keep up with advance­ments in tech, mobile, and social.

(Click to share)

Con­sumer expec­ta­tions are high­er than ever –imme­di­ate respons­es and com­pelling con­tent are need­ed to deliver:

(Click to share)

Mar­keters feel they have the nec­es­sary skills and are pre­pared to imple­ment new technologies:

(Click to share)

37% of mar­keters wor­ry about their abil­i­ty to keep up:

(Click to share)

Many orga­ni­za­tion struc­tures are not well set up to meet mar­ket­ing changes

• Those with the high­est dig­i­tal spend and most tech savvy were most like­ly to say their com­pa­ny was well set up

(Click to share)

A suc­cess­ful mar­keter is seen as tech savvy, how­ev­er only a third of mar­keters describe them­selves as such

(Click to share)

Mar­keters vary in the chal­lenges they are faced with­in trends and technologies

(Click to share)

Deliv­ery chan­nels are bound to change in the future – near­ly 7 in 10 believe that wear­ables will be impor­tant in deliv­er­ing qual­i­ty service

(Click to share)

The need to adapt is imme­di­ate: mobile mar­ket­ing, e‑commerce, and per­son­al­iza­tion and tar­get­ing are pro­ject­ed to be less impor­tant in 3 years

(Click to share)

Tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing is where mar­keters feel per­for­mance is strongest

(Click to share)

Lack of resources and bud­get are the key bar­ri­ers hold­ing mar­keters back

(Click to share)

Change in the indus­try is seen as an oppor­tu­ni­ty and the begin­ning of a gold­en age of marketing…

(Click to share)

53% claim to have heard about a new mar­ket­ing chan­nel or term with­in the past month

(Click to share)

Mar­keters are wor­ried about their abil­i­ty to keep up, and even more so about their company’s abil­i­ty to do so

• 70% of tech chal­lenged* mar­keters are wor­ried about their company
• 71% of tech chal­lenged* mar­keters are wor­ried about themselves

(Click to share)

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, rough­ly 1 in 3 cite short­ages in tech and data relat­ed roles. Dig­i­tal Mar­keters and Mobile Mar­keters are still high­ly sought after

(Click to share)

Most mar­keters believe in the impor­tance of deliv­er­ing for mobile web­sites and com­put­ers, but there is a dis­con­nect in solv­ing for these devices

(Click to share)

For new tech­nolo­gies, mar­keters’ con­fi­dence in pre­pared­ness to deliv­er falls below actu­al performance

(Click to share)

Areas iden­ti­fied as most crit­i­cal in the years to come are the areas where per­for­mance is lowest

(Click to share)

2 in 3 mar­keters feel they have the nec­es­sary skills to per­form successfully

(Click to share)

Still, they real­ize the need for skill devel­op­ment – 44% plan to learn from attend­ing train­ing seminars

(Click to share)

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion across chan­nels and with cus­tomers rise to the top as key for effectiveness

(Click to share)

Almost 2 in 5 believe that part­ner­ships with sales are crit­i­cal in mak­ing dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing work…

(Click to share)

…And inte­gra­tion across busi­ness func­tions can be improved

(Click to share)

Method­ol­o­gy

• Online sur­vey among a total of 1,311 Euro­pean marketers
• Research man­aged by Edel­man Berland
• Field­work: March 31- April 16, 2015
• This study is a refresh of research con­duct­ed with a com­pa­ra­ble audi­ence (350 Euro­pean mar­keters) in May 2014

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion and region­al breakdown

Please view the full report on Slideshare