Are You Acting on This Year’s Top 3 Marketing Pressures?

The most recent Adobe Dig­i­tal Road­block study finds that mar­keters are fac­ing high­er-than-ever expec­ta­tions from cus­tomers. More than 1,300 Euro­pean mar­keters ranked more imme­di­a­cy in brand respons­es, bet­ter con­tent, and stronger mobile expe­ri­ences as the top con­sumer expec­ta­tions their pro­fes­sion needs to be con­sid­er­ing, and act­ing upon, today.

“Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is giv­ing mar­keters more choice than ever about how they reach cus­tomers, and cus­tomers more pow­er than ever to engage with brands on their own terms,” says my col­league John Wat­ton, Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor, Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing EMEA at Adobe. “In order to set them­selves apart, brands need to put the cus­tomer at the very cen­tre of what they do. That requires an entire­ly new approach and set of capa­bil­i­ties in build­ing, man­ag­ing, and deliv­er­ing per­son­alised expe­ri­ences at scale.”

Here’s how those height­ened expec­ta­tions are mak­ing them­selves felt in the three areas above.

1. More imme­di­a­cy in brand responses

Imme­di­a­cy isn’t just about speed—in fact, it’s often a mis­take to rush the fastest pos­si­ble response to the cus­tomer, regard­less of the message’s rel­e­van­cy. Instead, when mar­keters talk about imme­di­a­cy, they’re talk­ing in terms of relevance.

The most engag­ing response for a cus­tomer is one that’s deliv­ered quick­ly, accu­rate­ly, and in an agile, per­son­alised way. They’ll be most like­ly to view and inter­act with con­tent that adapts to their most recent behav­iour, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion they’re actu­al­ly look­ing for, at a time when it’ll be useful.

This lev­el of imme­di­a­cy requires uni­fied cus­tomer pro­files that per­sist across all ver­ti­cals of your organ­i­sa­tion. When a cus­tomer inves­ti­gates a cer­tain prod­uct while signed in to your web­site, all mar­ket­ing they receive should be tai­lored around that inter­est. When they call sup­port, any recent pur­chase they’ve made should auto­mat­i­cal­ly route their call to the cor­rect department.

The more rel­e­vant a brand’s respons­es are, the more cus­tomers will feel engaged.

2. Bet­ter content

We’re already in the midst of a con­tent explo­sion. Brands are required to pro­duce increas­ing­ly large vol­umes of con­tent, even as cus­tomers demand that every new piece of con­tent be more per­son­alised and use­ful than the last. Speed is also essen­tial. “Con­tent veloc­i­ty” – some­thing we’ve been talk­ing abour for a while at Adobe — is now a recog­nised imperative.

Suc­cess with all these aspects of con­tent depends on hav­ing the right design and pro­duc­tion tools, as well as improv­ing work­flows across the organ­i­sa­tion, to make con­tent devel­op­ment more dynam­ic and responsive.

Mar­keters are begin­ning to grasp these facts. Our Dig­i­tal Trends report (with Econ­sul­tan­cy) ear­li­er this year revealed that mar­keters rate con­tent cre­ation and deliv­ery process improve­ment as “a crit­i­cal miss­ing piece” of their organ­i­sa­tions’ con­tent strate­gies. Mar­keters also rank speed of deliv­ery and mul­ti­screen access as high pri­or­i­ties: 94 per­cent are active­ly work­ing to opti­mise cre­ative work­flows to facil­i­tate more rapid cre­ation and deploy­ment of con­tent across mul­ti­ple platforms—a neces­si­ty, giv­en the demands of today’s hyper­con­nect­ed con­sumers, who expect the same expe­ri­ence from a brand regard­less of device or context.

At the same time, busi­ness lead­ers are start­ing to recog­nise that con­tent today is rarely the prod­uct of just one team or func­tion with­in the organ­i­sa­tion. Instead, dig­i­tal asset man­age­ment (DAM) is increas­ing­ly the respon­si­bil­i­ty of a much larg­er set of peo­ple—strate­gists, writ­ers, design­ers, coders, UX experts, plat­form spe­cial­ists, along with exter­nal part­ners or suppliers—all of whom have a say in the cre­ation of even the sim­plest inter­ac­tive con­tent and appli­ca­tions. It’s crit­i­cal to syn­chro­nise the input of all these agents as part of the con­tent process.

3. Stronger mobile experiences

The mobile-first con­sumer is already a real­i­ty for many mar­keters, and all indi­ca­tions point to this trend con­tin­u­ing to increase over the next year. But in fact, the biggest chal­lenge isn’t sim­ply reach­ing cus­tomers on mobile—it’s remov­ing com­plex­i­ty from the mobile channel.

Mobile’s great­est val­ue is also its great­est mar­ket­ing chal­lenge: in a word, it’s per­son­al. Mobile phones are per­son­al devices, for which broad mes­sag­ing is poor­ly suit­ed. Cus­tomers expect brands to deliv­er mobile mes­sages and expe­ri­ences that are as inti­mate and per­son­al as their device; any­thing less is disruptive.

Here at Adobe, we often talk about the “three Cs” of mobile mar­ket­ing: con­text (improv­ing engage­ment using loca­tion, activ­i­ty, and device), con­nec­tion (using con­text to make each inter­ac­tion per­son­al), and cadence (deliv­er­ing per­son­alised mes­sages when they mat­ter most). In short, mobile cus­tomer expec­ta­tions have turned up the pres­sure for brands to ini­ti­ate rel­e­vant, per­son­alised mobile moments at exact­ly the right time and place.

Brands that find ways to tight­en the imme­di­a­cy of their respons­es, improve the man­age­ment and deliv­ery of dig­i­tal assets, and engage cus­tomers with per­son­alised mobile mes­sag­ing will be in the strongest posi­tions to suc­ceed in 2017. How is your organ­i­sa­tion respond­ing to these pressures?

You can down­load the full Adobe Dig­i­tal Road­block report here: Adobe Dig­i­tal Road­block EMEA