Marketers Rank 2017’s Top Challenges and Opportunities

Rela­tion­ships between busi­ness and cus­tomers are under­go­ing mas­sive trans­for­ma­tion right now. Sales, mar­ket­ing, sup­port, and oth­er areas are all shift­ing from chan­nel-spe­cif­ic pro­grams to omnichan­nel efforts in which cus­tomers engage with com­pa­nies when­ev­er, wher­ev­er, and how­ev­er they choose.

Organ­i­sa­tions through­out the UK, and in fact around the world, report being in the midst of this dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. In the lat­est Adobe Dig­i­tal Road­block Study—an online sur­vey of 1,301 Euro­pean mar­ket­ing professionals—more than half report that they find the pace of tech­nol­o­gy change “dra­mat­ic.” What’s more, near­ly 45 per­cent of mar­keters express con­cern about their abil­i­ty to keep up. Even so, a full 80 per­cent of sur­vey respon­dents say they see dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion not so much as a threat, but as an opportunity.

What are the main chal­lenges these com­pa­nies are fac­ing? What are they look­ing for­ward to? Here are their thoughts on oppor­tu­ni­ties and anx­i­eties in the midst of dig­i­tal transformation.

Height­ened challenges

One of the Dig­i­tal Road­block Study’s most strik­ing find­ings was that the urgency and pres­sure around dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion have inten­si­fied. Mar­keters have expressed a drop-off in con­fi­dence com­pared with last year’s study: less than 30 per­cent described them­selves as “tech­nol­o­gy savvy,” and more than half of them see them­selves as “pas­sive par­tic­i­pants,” rather than active agents, of trans­for­ma­tion in the dig­i­tal sphere.

Mean­while, more than half of dig­i­tal marketers—56 percent—report that the pace of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is actu­al­ly speed­ing up in their organ­i­sa­tions. Those same mar­keters say cus­tomer expec­ta­tions con­tin­ue to rise, even on top of improve­ments made in recent years. They note that bet­ter con­tent, more imme­di­a­cy in brand respons­es, and stronger mobile expe­ri­ences are the top action­ables in terms of con­sumer expectations.

Pres­sures are also inten­si­fy­ing at the organ­i­sa­tion­al lev­el. Two-thirds of study respon­dents feel that mar­ket­ing is increas­ing­ly held respon­si­ble for rev­enue con­tri­bu­tion, com­pared with pre­vi­ous years; and 40 per­cent of those mar­keters say their depart­ment isn’t work­ing well with oth­ers in their organisations—such as IT or cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM)—in the con­text of dig­i­tal change.

Still, many mar­keters have also expressed hope, and even excite­ment, about cer­tain com­ing trends.

Evolv­ing priorities

The num­ber-one force in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, mar­keters agree, is the increas­ing cus­tomer expec­ta­tion for per­son­alised com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­tent. More than half of mar­keters con­sid­er per­son­al­i­sa­tion a “crit­i­cal force in mar­ket­ing” for ear­ly 2017, and beyond.

Mar­keters expressed excite­ment about big data and the Inter­net of Things (IoT), two tech­no­log­i­cal forces that are expect­ed to make their impact felt like nev­er before in 2017. Yet many mar­keters report that their organ­i­sa­tions are pay­ing insuf­fi­cient atten­tion to data sci­ence. One in three say their organ­i­sa­tions have few data ana­lysts on staff, while more than half report that data sci­ence and mobile are both “under­per­form­ing” areas.

Along relat­ed lines, the impor­tance of mobile also con­tin­ues to rise. A full 85 per­cent of mar­keters described mobile as a “crit­i­cal chan­nel” for cus­tomer engage­ment in the com­ing year.

Mobile itself, though, is only part of a larg­er trend—the omnichan­nel trans­for­ma­tion, with its empha­sis on simul­ta­ne­ous­ly lever­ag­ing mul­ti­ple chan­nels in com­ple­men­tary ways, and shar­ing and inte­grat­ing cus­tomer data seam­less­ly across each of those chan­nels, to deliv­er more per­son­alised, impact­ful cus­tomer jour­neys. In fact, a full two-thirds of mar­keters believe that “the pro­lif­er­a­tion of chan­nels is fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing the nature of mar­ket­ing,” and report hear­ing about at least one new mar­ket­ing chan­nel “with­in the past month alone.”

As mar­keters find them­selves pushed for­ward by organ­i­sa­tion­al pres­sures, and pulled in many direc­tions by a pro­lif­er­a­tion of new chan­nels and per­son­al­i­sa­tion solu­tions, 2017 promis­es to out­do pre­vi­ous years in terms of the speed and inten­si­ty of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Busi­ness­es that find ways to inte­grate their mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties with oth­er cus­tomer-fac­ing ones, and lever­age big data to pro­vide high­ly per­son­alised cus­tomer jour­neys, will be the big win­ners in the com­ing year.

What about your business—are you pre­pared for the next accel­er­at­ed phase of dig­i­tal transformation?

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