When a survey manages to attract responses from nearly 13,000 marketing professionals worldwide, it’s worth taking note of. This is the high level of participation that Econsultancy managed to achieve for its wide-ranging report “Digital Intelligence Briefing – 2018 Digital Trends” published in association with Adobe.
As you would expect from a comprehensive survey such as this, covering countries across North America, EAMA and Asia Pacific, there are numerous statistics relating to multi-channel marketing and communications representing the opinions and predictions of those questioned.
But is there a single thread to tie this plethora of information together, one element that really stands out from the rest? We put our heads together at BBI Brandboost and we believe we have identified it.
Creative and technical partnerships
Optimising customer experience has emerged very high on the 2018 agenda as it did in last year’s Econsultancy survey and John Watton, Adobe’s Senior Director of Marketing, has accurately described the means towards achieving this goal.
He explains: “It takes the right culture to achieve the right blend of tech, data and design. Companies committed to delivering experiences are adopting a cross-team approach with the customer at the heart of all initiatives and collaboration.”
A significant number of marketers questioned in this survey have shown themselves to be sympathetic to this belief by answering positively to the following key statements:
- We have a cross-team approach with the customer at the heart of all initiatives (74%)
- We are combining digital marketing skills with technology (73%)
- We have tools that allow for streamlined workflows between creative and content marketers/web teams (59%)
There are those that are resisting this collaborative approach, which the report sees as a negative factor:
“Almost twice as many companies (20%) say their digital marketing activity is very much separate than [those companies saying that they put] digital-first (11%), with these organisations seemingly unable to break out of a siloed business structure that ultimately impedes their chances of success.”
Creating the best possible customer experience, whether in a B2C or B2B context, requires a range of creative and technical skills being used in an integrated way. Similarly, it takes multi-skilled creative and technical teams operating together to identify and make use of the best communication channels and social media networks to carry out the most effective marketing strategies of their clients.
Throughout this excellent survey, statistics support the premise that businesses that are able to bring both creative and technical expertise to bear on any given marketing project are more likely to succeed than those that do not have these resources or are unable to make them function coherently.
At BBI Brandboost, it is our policy that our marketing strategists, content creators, SEO specialists and website technical experts should work together as a close-knit team. This means that we are holistic in our approach to the services we offer our clients and have the combined expertise to provide solutions that are consistently creative, reliable and practical.