On my way home from Adobe’s suc­cess­ful Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit this year, I thought about the tremen­dous num­ber of take­aways from the 130+ ses­sions we hosted. We dis­cussed ways to con­cep­tu­al­ize, strate­gize, opti­mize, and ana­lyze. The over­ar­ch­ing prin­ci­ple shared was the con­cept of mar­ket­ing reinvention.

Dur­ing the event, we shared with atten­dees the results of our Dig­i­tal Road­block report , an online sur­vey of more than 1,000 US mar­keters. In this post, we’ll dis­cuss those results, with an eye toward a deep dive into the ques­tions, responses, and take­aways from the report in future posts.

The report data is bro­ken out within two sub­groups: 1) com­pa­nies that reported below aver­age or aver­age busi­ness per­for­mance ver­sus com­pa­nies that reported supe­rior busi­ness per­for­mance and 2) com­pa­nies with high dig­i­tal spend. On aver­age, responses showed that enter­prises are strug­gling to rein­vent their mar­ket­ing prac­tices as mar­keter roles evolve.

We found 10 key find­ings within five con­cept tracks that illus­trate the strug­gles that mar­keters are going through.

Mar­keters know they must rein­vent them­selves but don’t know how to step through.

1. 64% of mar­keters expect their role to change over the next year; 81% in the next three years.

2. Two in five mar­keters (40%) stated that they wanted to rein­vent them­selves, while only 14% of those mar­keters actu­ally know how to step through a reinvention.

3. Respon­dents cited a lack of train­ing in new mar­ket­ing skills (30%) and orga­ni­za­tional inabil­ity to adapt (30%) as key obsta­cles to becom­ing the mar­keters they aspire to be.

Future mar­keters need to take more risks.

4. 54% of mar­keters believe the ideal mar­keter should take more risks, and 45% hope to take more risks

them­selves.

5. Nearly two out of three mar­keters (65%) said they are more com­fort­able adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies once they become mainstream.

Com­pa­nies need to hire more dig­i­tal talent.

6. Respon­dents cited digital/social mar­keters (47%), data ana­lysts (38%), cre­ative devel­op­ment (38%), and mobile mar­keters (36%) as the key roles their com­pa­nies must invest in over the next year.

Mar­keters rec­og­nize the impor­tance of data but aren’t widely using it to make informed decisions.

7. 76% of mar­keters agree they need to be more data focused to succeed.

8. Almost half (49%) report “trust­ing my gut” to guide deci­sions on where to invest their mar­ket­ing budgets.

9. 72% agree that long-term suc­cess at their com­pany is tied to prov­ing mar­ket­ing ROI.

Mobile and per­son­al­iza­tion are becom­ing big­ger priorities.

10. Finally, 61% see social media as the most crit­i­cal mar­ket­ing vehi­cle to focus on a year from now, fol­lowed closely by mobile at 51%. When asked to pri­or­i­tize one capa­bil­ity over the other, as to which will influ­ence their company’s mar­ket­ing mov­ing for­ward, per­son­al­iza­tion ranked highest.

Mar­keters rec­og­nize the evolv­ing fac­tors that are con­tribut­ing to the new dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing envi­ron­ment. In fact, they are (mostly) in align­ment when it comes to the major dri­ving forces. When asked about the dri­ving forces behind this need for change, mar­keters responded as follows:

• 73% cite expanded num­ber of chan­nels and plat­forms to reach audiences
• 71% cite new ways of think­ing about audi­ence engagement
• 71% cite new tech­nolo­gies for ana­lyz­ing mar­ket­ing effectiveness
• 61% cite the chal­lenge of “break­ing through the noise” to reach tar­get audiences

The pace of change, new respon­si­bil­i­ties for the mar­ket­ing func­tion, and recog­ni­tion of marketing’s con­tri­bu­tion to busi­ness suc­cess were also indi­cated as rein­ven­tion justification.

Prior to Sum­mit, I posted a series on assess­ing your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing score. We looked at the busi­ness pil­lars ofprod­uct, process, and peo­ple. As we jour­ney toward the rein­ven­tion of mar­ket­ing, I’ll take the same approach. Join me as we head down from the Sum­mit and get to work rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing global mar­ket­ing, reimag­in­ing the tools we’ll use to deploy mar­ket­ing, and rein­vent­ing mar­keters to deliver success.