Good morning and thank you for joining me here this morning in the Future Trends theatre at the show. My name is Jamie Brighton and I'm the Product Marketing Manager for EMEA for the Adobe Marketing Cloud.
A recent CEO study found they doubt the impact of marketing. We’re not connected to business results… we live in a creative and social media “bubble” I’m sure you’ve heard it all before … This a long-standing perception. [[AFTER A CLICK]]I’m here today to tell you this is NONSENSE.At Adobe we are trying to debunk these myths with our own campaign called ‘Metrics Not Myths’. We know this is nonsense but we wanted we to get the pulse of digital marketers and check that they were already moving in the right direction or had the data and the tools to measure and prove the value of everything they do.
So we conducted a survey. and we did this in conjunction with eConsultancy.This is a short presentation on future trends, but it's not about me standing here and telling you about what I think the latest and greatest social network is going to be or how we're all going to be using a completely new type of device to access our data and the internet but the end of the year. More importantly, we wanted to understand the things affecting and driving digital marketers in their jobs.We asked a number of questions about what digital marketers felt were the biggest challenges and opportunities in 2013, and we also asked them to give us their general opinions on the future state of digital marketing. This is actually something that we looked at for 2012, so this year we're also able to make some comparisons between changes in thinking over the last year.We had 700 respondents across a broad range of roles and from a diverse range of companies.There was roughly a 50/50 split between agencies and 60% of the organisations were based in the UK.I'm going to walk through some of the headline findings and also give some examples of companies that I feel are taking advantage of the opportunities that we uncovered.
The single most significant trend is the continued emergence of content marketing as a standalone discipline. Content, in all its shapes and forms, is core to everything we do as marketers. There is now a widespread realisation that optimisation of all types of content, both on-site and off-site, and across a range of different formats and devices, is absolutely critical.The rightful positioning of content at the centre of the digital universe is illustrated by the tag cloud.A content-related buzz phrase set to gather more momentum during 2012 is ‘native advertising’ which is indicative of the blurring of boundaries between paid-for, earned and owned media. By producing great quality and immersive content, brands can market themselves without interrupting consumers with more explicit advertising.What about social media in 2013? This was particularly important last year and is still important this year. However, social for many companies is now becoming ‘business as usual’ and another way of disseminating and amplifying content.Like social, the mobile ‘channel’ (another oft-cited trend in recent years) can also be seen through the lens of content, with companies striving to present information and creative in a way which is compelling and effective across different devices.
While content marketing has emerged as the top priority for marketers next year, they focus too much on creation and neglect the importance of content optimisation. Many struggle with the challenges associated with the planning, delivery and management of content. To ensure that their endeavours are successful, marketers need to create content which is:- Relevant, shareable and reusable. Coca-Cola’s 2020 advertising strategy puts content at its core and uses the phrase “liquid and linked” to describe their content marketing plans. Content needs to be not only shareable, “contagious” (either by being educational, entertaining or provoking conversation), but also aligned to an organisation’sbusiness objectives, otherwise the impact on the bottom line will be negligible.Most often, companies choose to create content with a specific purpose or campaign in mind, adopting a “blast and forget” approach. Content can often be repurposed and careful planning plays a significant role in maximising efficiencies and content shelf life. For example, Coca-Cola applies a 70/20/10 investment rule to content creation: 70% is low-risk, core content relevant to their brand, 20% is spun-off from what has already worked within the 70% by optimising and innovating, and the remaining 10% is high-risk, experimental content that can become tomorrow’s 70% or 20%.- Adaptive. Around 90% of media consumption occurs in front of a screen and multi-device interactions have become the norm, with no single device at the centre of users’ attention. Brands need to adapt their content processes and workflows to match this multi-tasking and multi-screen behaviour and publish to multiple channels in an effective way.- User and context sensitive. Context is one of the most important dimensions of content marketing and determines its impact. If brands are able to understand the context of an interaction, they can identify the right content that matches the user’s interests, resonates with them and elicits an emotional response.- Enriched socially. Allow your content to be commented on, shared and built upon, this will lock in customers’ attention, gain more loyal brand advocates and increase your social footprint.
The other notable year-on-year increase is for conversion rateoptimisation which has gone up from 34% to 39%.More companies have come to realise that even small uplifts in conversion rates brought about by improvements in processes and technology can translate into significant financial gains.Targeting andpersonalisation (37%) was a new option added to the survey this year, and this addition is vindicated by its position among the top priorities.While social media analytics as a focus is (worryingly) not on the radar as a priority for many companies, social media engagement has maintained its position near the top of the leader board.Engagement equates to a strong brand tie, leading to a higher lifetime value, product loyalty and customer advocacy. But there is no standard definition or metric for engagement, nor do most organisations fully understand the migration from engagement to revenue.Together, the top three priorities for 2013 tell the story of how companies are aiming to build emotional ties that contribute to the bottom line. It begins with using content to build brand and generate inbound leads, increasing social media effectiveness to stay engaged with customers or prospects, and increasing conversion rates at key points in the process.The challenge is to understand what’s happening within the dynamic ecosystem of content and social and being able to make tactical changes to increase conversion and revenue.
From an agency perspective, with content marketing again emerging as a key focus area with a jump to 38% from only 21% a year ago.Agency respondents are more likely than their in-house counterparts to perceive mobileoptimisation as a top priority, with this option second in the list compared to sixth place when looking at in-house responses.The chart also shows a large drop for social media engagement which is not apparent for client-side respondents. Just over a third (37%) of agencies report this to be a top priority for their clients, down from 54% last year. While social media was top of mind for marketers in 2012, agencies no longer see this as the shiny new but unproven toy that they were raving about 12 months ago.
Targeting andpersonalisation – despite concerns over the possibility of privacy-related limits to the ability to target, the possibilities remain exciting and for some sectors, vital. The value in placing customised messaging in front of “in market” or high-value consumers is obvious enough, but doing it in a way that’s seen as valuable instead of intrusive is an ongoing challenge.For many consumers, the issue isn’t entirely one of privacy, but of experience. Blunt force retargeting pummels browsing shoppers with familiar images wherever they travel on the web, while ads on social networks clumsily tie their personal history to incongruous or irrelevant products. How many consumers have been bemused by offers like “We’ve got a special on tooth whitening products for graduates of [your college here]” on their Facebook pages? Nearly three-quarters, according to a recent Nielsen study.In a recent edition of the Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing, 52% of marketers said that the ability to personalisecontent was fundamental to their online strategy. However, there is plenty of room for improvement. Some of the most powerful methods of personalisation are rarely used;- Purchase history is only leveraged by 21% of marketing organisations, while 77% of those say it has a “high impact on ROI”.- Behavioural data is employed by 20% of respondents, but 68% of them report strong ROI.- Social graph data has the highest ratio of all; only 6% usage, while nearly all of those organisations(88%) giving it high marks for ROI.
RSA has a 300 year heritage as one of the world's leading multinational insurance groupsRSA takes over £1billion per year in online transactions and has 17 million customers across 33 different countriesA couple of years ago their online business was worth around £200 million - RSA set out to deliver personal experiences to site visitorsToday the RSA business is rewarded with many benefits of providing personalised online experiencesFor example more than in the UK sells Pet Insurance to emotive pet ownersby simply matching and displaying images of similar pet breeds to the breed visitor wanted to insure gave more than a 4% increase in salesRSA also use this information in the offline works to provide personalised material through the post and also by emailThe pet test was one of the first personalisation tests that RSA performed.RSA have created and tested many other tests including some in Canada deliberately designed to drive down calls to the call centre and deliver operational efficienciesAnd by testing nudge messaging at checkout (the area for highest drop outs) provided a higher conversion of 2% increase
RSA has 300 year heritage as one of the worlds leading multinational insurance groups. RSA takes over £1Billion per year in online transactions and has 17 Million customers across 33 different countries.A couple of years ago when their online business was worth around £200 Million, RSA set out to deliver personal experiences to site visitors.Today the RSA business is rewarded with many benefits of providing personalised online experiences.For example MORE TH>N in the UK sells pet insurance to pet owners and this can be an emotive product.Simply matching and displaying images of similar pet breeds, to the breed the visitor wanted to insure, gave MORE TH>N a 4%increase in sales.Laithwaites is a leader in the online wine retail businessIn 2011 Laithwaites wanted to understand their customers more, so they could provide a better personalised experience. Laithwaites started utilising Adobes Digital Marketing Suite to deliver personalised experience’s. They analysed visitors journeys using Site Catalyst and based on the data, they delivered differing experiences using Test and Target. Their results are staggering LaithwaitesDecreased PPC ad spend by 79%Decrease in 13% of site trafficThey increased conversions from new customer's by 29% Increased conversions from existing customers by 21%And increase overall revenue by 11%Barclays have been using Adobe for around six years to provide digital marketing and providing personalised experiences to their visitors. Barclays have understood for a long time that to provide a personalised experience it is important to pick up on as many information pointers as possible about a site visitorFor example they found it could take 13 visits to convert someone to purchase an ISA, so learning from a visitors journey is critical in helping convert them.Using Test and Target Barclays provided subtle but specifically differing experience’s to returning visitors interested in ISA’s. And noted an uplift of 59% in conversions.
Looking ahead, organisations are going to have to answer a key question: Does marketing “own” the customer experience and where does that leave the CMO?To optimise the customer experience means much more than reducing the clicks between product and purchase. The greatest challenge for marketing is that a customer’s experience is now an aggregate of online and offline events, mobile and desktop, store and device, marketing and service. Yet few organisations have one executive with the mandate to correlate these disparate but connected pieces. Meanwhile, marketing leads or is involved with many of the areas that affect customer experience online and offline.It can be argued that the CMO should aim to manage customer experience. First, marketing is best positioned at most organisations to look at the whole of the experience across media and platforms.Second, CMOs can look at this as an area of opportunity for themselves and their departments. There’s strong evidence that the customer relationship is becoming less about outgoing brand messaging and more about content and interaction. Marketing should own that evolution and shape the future.
It’s all very well having the shiniest new machinery available, but an on-going struggle in 2013 will be the ability of companies to make their data and tools work for them. The good news is that companies are slowly addressing the lack of technical and mathematical skills in their marketing departments.While the growing importance of data analysts should not be under-estimated, the need for creative thinking in the changing world of marketing has never been greater. This year will continue to see the recruitment of ‘data scientists’, who are savvy in computer science but -crucially – also able to apply creative thinking to data-driven challenges which can help to evolve and even transform businesses.
Research published by Econsultancy has previously emphasised the need for ‘T-shaped’ people who have the right mixture of both specialist skills (i.e. depth of knowledge) and broader commercial and strategic awareness.Towards the end of 2012, Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedleincoined the term ‘pi-shaped (Π) people’, to explain the requirement for marketers with both left-brain and right-brain ability. Ideally, marketing departments need to have a balance of team members with both analytical and creative skills. According to Friedlein: “[Pi-shaped marketers] are both analytical and data-driven, yet understand brands, storytelling and experiential marketing.”
Digital marketers are only starting to understand how consumers conduct research and buy products, so they’re quite far from bridging the online/offline gap. Having a 360-degree, multichannel view of digital and offline interactions is more important than ever. However, while the way customers progress to conversion looks increasingly less like a funnel, few marketers fully grasp the importance of using data from offline channels to optimise the digital experience, and vice versa.
I couldn't get all the way through the presentation without giving you a couple of my own thoughts about what will be big for marketers in 2013! Working with clients and also internally, there are a couple of areas that I see that are going to be increasingly important. The first is predictive - not his covers a lot of things, predictive analysis, predictive publishing - but it basically means using the vast amounts of data that we have available to us to determine future trends and make sure that we can capitalise on them, in a lot of cases automatically.NPS is something that we're hearing more and more and increasingly companies are basing their internal performance monitoring, and executive bonuses on NPS - so having a system in place to monitor, and influence, this is going to be increasingly important.
