Adobe Research Sends Message to Marketers: Embrace the Next Evolution of Customer Experience – Integrate Content and Creativity

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Adobe

03 Nov, 2015, 13:06 IST

NEW DELHI, November 3, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

New research from Adobe and the CMO Council reveals that marketers need to turn their attention to the next evolution of marketing, boosting focus to integrate content and creativity as the foundation of customer experience, the driver of how customers interact digitally and a critical point of alignment for organizations.

The CMO Council in partnership with Adobe has been tracking adoption, traction and success of digital marketing in key Asia Pacific countries since 2012. 900 senior marketers from a range of industries took part. For the first time, the 2015 Adobe APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard examined creative empowerment and content velocity indicators, both critical to delivering an integrated and compelling customer experience across digital and real-world touchpoints.

The 2015 Digital Dashboard found a significant majority of Indian marketers believe digital marketing can create a competitive advantage for their organization. The study also notes that while only 9% of marketers across APAC believe that data is integrated throughout the marketing lifecycle and that data represents a competitive advantage for their organization, India along with Australia are the leaders in this thinking, at 14% and 17% respectively. While this is optimistic, a larger majority of marketers in India are yet to embrace the fact that customer preference and digital dependency are driving the adoption of digital marketing as only 38% say digital marketing has the ability to better engage and activate audiences when compared to the rest of APAC (60%).

Commenting on the announcement, Umang Bedi, MD, Adobe South Asia said, "While Indian companies are highly data driven, they are struggling with integrating the insights that the data provides into building enhanced customer experiences. Increasingly we see a strong organisational view in favour of digital marketing but creativity and the development of content is happening in siloes. Indian marketers need to work towards solving this conundrum in order to fully realise the potential that digital holds in delivering outstanding customer experiences and driving business transformation."

Compounding this is the low amount of support that Indian marketers get from senior management when compared to the rest of the region. Only 28% feel they have a champion in the senior leadership team helping them advance the digital agenda when compared to the rest of the region (41%). This, in turn, is slowing the advancement of digital marketing in the Indian market which is otherwise a region replete with enthusiasm and has the right infrastructure in place.

Some other interesting highlights from the study are:

  • 83% of Indian marketers are using analytic and reporting technologies; up from 73% in 2014.
  • While in-house skill set continues to be challenge across the region, marketers in India have an extreme level of confidence in, and support from their agency partners, with 22% saying they are extremely effective and understand strategy, execution and measurement very well. This is a significant increase up from 9% in 2014.
  • There is strong expectation of service in India which in turn leads to higher pressure for Indian marketers to deliver the right customer experiences edging them towards building mobile first experiences for a market like India.
  • 54% of Indian marketers say the proliferation, appeal and capability of mobile devices is driving the adoption of digital marketing in the market which is much higher than the region average of 49%, but not surprising in such a 'mobile-first' market. 29% of Indian marketers say they have enabled creative teams to develop mobile-ready content that is accessible on multiple device types and sizes.

Liz Miller, Vice President of Marketing at the CMO Council said that marketers have come full circle. "In a pre-digital era, we relied on instinct and experience to tell us what customers wanted from our brand. The emergence of powerful marketing technology platforms enabled us to move away from guesswork, and gave us unprecedented access to a single, organizational view of the customer along with actionable insights and information. Yet in our haste to embrace that power, we may have lost sight of the power of creativity in delivering an exceptional, aligned and consistent customer experience. The second wave of rapid adoption is about to hit marketers and business across Asia Pacific, with creativity and content playing a pivotal role in delivering a personalized customer experience."

Liz Miller offers three areas of focus for India's marketers in the year ahead:

  • Keep reporting against business KPIs and define digital success in terms of business goals - this is what resonates with the leadership team.
  • Re-define what data means and see it as the embodiment of the customer, not just a reporting metric.
  • Content and creativity are key, and together with strong organizational data mindset and execution, will be the fuel that catapults customer experience forward.

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