New research sends a warning to APAC marketers: in the rush to embrace the digital future, don’t lose sight of creativity and content integration The release of Adobe’s annual APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard reveals that Hong Kong marketers need to put more effort into producing content that is mobile-ready and accessible across multiple device types and sizes, while at the same time integrating creative and content to better meet customers’ experience expectations strategically across all of an organization’s touchpoints. The fourth annual APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard was conducted by the CMO Council in partnership with Adobe. The study includes a three-month in-field program comprising quantitative surveys with over 900 marketing executives. For the first time, the 2015 Adobe APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard examined creative empowerment and content velocity indicators, both of which are critical to delivering an integrated and compelling customer experience across digital and real-world interfaces. Despite very high mobile penetration in Hong Kong, the 2015 Digital Dashboard found that Hong Kong has the lowest commitment to multi-channel content iteration and development, especially mobile-ready creative content, among all the regions in Asia Pacific. 32% of Hong Kong marketers responded that mobile is not yet a dominant factor in customer engagement, behind Singapore marketers (38%). This is likely to emerge as a key area of focus for Hong Kong marketers in the year ahead. “The 2015 Dashboard tells us that leaders across the region have hit their stride, and are now optimizing their digital approach. They’re implementing data programs, leveraging mobile touchpoints and looking for customer-centric digital approaches to meet the high expectations of digitally-demanding Asia Pacific markets,” said Paul Robson, President, Adobe Asia Pacific. 75% of Hong Kong marketers said customer preferences and digital dependencies are driving the adoption of digital marketing across the city. The point of intersection for marketers is now between creativity, content and the customer. This is the next great challenge for marketers and business leaders to solve in order to realize the full potential and competitive advantage of delivering outstanding customer experience,” said Robson. Liz Miller, Vice President of Marketing at the CMO Council said that marketers have come full circle. “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. ” Key findings from the research include: - Mobile continues to be central to APAC marketing approaches, and 32% of China’s marketers says an integrated mobile experience is a core element of their customer journey, the highest in APAC. Only 21% of Hong Kong marketers said that they allowed creative teams to iterate content that is mobile-ready and accessible to multiple device types and sizes, ranking the lowest in APAC.
- Measurement and analytics are accepted as mandatory for the modern digital marketing organization, with 84% of APAC marketers confirming they are using marketing technology platforms to analyze and report. Regionally, Australia leads in confidence, with 49% of Australian marketers say they are doing an excellent job, a stark contrast to China where the majority of marketers (47%) say they are doing a poor job, or need to improve their reporting ability. 52% of Hong Kong marketers claim that they are getting better in this aspect – the highest percentage in the survey to claim so. But they scored lowest (2%) in rating their current ability to measure the value and return as excellent or very good.
- Digital marketing enjoys strong business leadership support across Asia Pacific., with the CMO taking responsibility for digital marketing strategy at 39% of organizations across the region. More business leadership teams are receptive to piloting and testing new digital strategies (34%) while fewer are wedded to traditional marketing tactics only (13%). 31% of Hong Kong marketers rate the level of senior management support they have for implementing digital marketing campaigns as very strong, which is above the APAC average (25%).
- Few marketers are struggling to find and implement a coherent creative voice (10%) but only 4% say they have a highly evolved creative engine fueled by an organization-wide, unified vision. This lack of unified creative vision and content development alignment threatens the customer experience. 24% of APAC marketers say creativity and content development are managed as needed, on an ad hoc basis.
- In respect to how well marketers rate the ability to handle the data generated from a digital marketing campaign, a majority of Hong Kong marketers (51%) use the data to report on KPIs, showing the highest percentage in APAC. This indicates the majority are still not devoting enough attention to diagnosing results and understanding performance and making necessary changes, not to mention considering data as a key competitive differentiator.
- When asked to evaluate the marketing team’s current skill set in terms of digital marketing analysis, nearly half of Hong Kong marketers (47%) think their skill set is improving but there still a way to go, while 22% mentioned that they don’t have any specialist skills or experience, or their team is too small to develop the necessary skill set.
- 37% of Hong Kong marketers said that measurement and metrics that better track performance including business value and impact are the most effective in advancing digital marketing performance and results. Only 3% of Hong Kong marketers consider process and workflow that connect internal marketing teams with external agencies for maximum collaboration and alignment can help them. Hong Kong comes second behind South Korea marketers (41%) in this regard.
Liz Miller offers three areas of focus for marketers in the year ahead: - Increase mobile engagement in developing content and strategies.
- Keep reporting against business KPIs and define digital success in terms of business goals – this is what resonates with the leadership team.
- 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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