Millennials approach information sources differently than previous generations. This, coupled with their increased customer experience expectations presents a challenge for B2B companies.

Rise of the Millennials

As shown in the illustration below, there are over 53 million millennials are in the workforce, making up 28.5% of the overall total. With Millennials focused on promotions and Baby Boomers retiring, soon Millennials will hold many purchasing positions.

Millennials, having grown up exposed to technology, no longer see technology as an add-on or gimmick. Instead, they expect technology to complement all experiences whether digital or analog. At the same time, Millennials emphasize the human factor. In an era of digitization, providing a humanized, personal experience sets a company apart.

Because Millennials view technology as a part of the human experience, they also expect technology to adapt to them. These expectations will especially challenge B2B companies, which already struggle with digital marketing.

B2B: Laggards in Digital Marketing

While many B2B companies have made tremendous strides in their digital marketing, many still struggle. The industry lags far behind their consumer-facing peers. In a recent survey, 70% of digital marketers from B2B companies said: “their organization’s digital advertising strategy fails to meet expectations”. This is due to the difficulty in gathering quality leads and in measuring the return on digital marketing spend.

This challenge is especially acute in personalizing experiences. B2B companies are struggling to deliver personalized experiences, often citing technical challenges. Another major challenge is the inherent differences in how B2B and B2C companies go to market.

B2B companies personalize based on company and role, rather than individuals. By personalizing too much to individuals, B2B companies can actually hurt sales cycles. This reduces the number of data-points available and requires a judicious approach to personalization.

Another challenge for B2B companies is the disconnect between digital experiences and the actual sale. While B2B buyers research online, most do not buy through digital platforms. Without direct conversions, companies struggle to attribute leads and personalize experiences.

Millennials: New Challenges for B2B Marketers

The rise of millennials poses another digital marketing challenge to B2B companies. According to a recent survey by the Arketi Group, Millennials expect more of digital experiences than other generations. This is especially true at the top of the buying funnel, Millennials’ favored channels include:

• Blogs
• eBooks
• Infographics
• Online Ads
• Vendor Texts
• Social Media

Millennials find traditional B2B sales and marketing channels less effective throughout the buying process, and view the following channels significantly less engaging than other generations:

• Analyst Reports
• Vendor Websites
• In-Person Demos and Meetings
• Phone Calls
• Product brochures, datasheets, sales literature
• Trade shows and conferences
• Whitepapers

A few patterns emerge when looking at different methods millennials prefer for B2B marketing. Millennials favor channels that are digital, interactive, and social. In-person, print, and traditional channels are far less popular than for previous generations.

Contrast these channel preferences to these indicated by B2B marketers as the most effective in reaching their goals:

• Events (exhibitions, conferences, trade shows etc) 84%
• Print Media 13%
• Direct Mail 22%
• Outdoor Ads 6%
• Television 4%
• Radio 4%

This poses a challenge, as the channels preferred by B2B marketers are the ones millennials find less engaging. If B2B companies do not evolve their marketing to better serve millennial workers’ desires and expectations, millennials will leave for competitors.

B2B Digital Marketing for Millennials

So how do B2B marketers market to millennials?

First, B2B marketers need to lay a foundation for excellent digital marketing experiences. This means eliminating data silos, developing customer 360 profiles and building a strong platform. This requires an effective implementation team and modern technical platform.

With this solid platform, marketers can build technology-enabled solutions to market to every generation. This includes omni-channel marketing, to message consistently across all forms of media, and building personalized experiences across all digital platforms to deliver the correct message. Finally, sales and knowledge enablement platforms help deliver the best content.

Finally, Digital marketers need to market specifically to millennials. Marketers should include mobile, social, and interactive media to capture and hold the attention of millennial buyers. These new forms of media also offer the benefits of increased conversion points and data. These grant marketers a richer data source to inform their marketing efforts.

The rise of the millennial generation poses significant challenges to B2B marketing strategies. They are less likely to be persuaded by traditional B2B marketing approaches. Yet, this presents an opportunity to companies that choose to implement technology-enabled digital marketing. Companies that embrace this opportunity will win Millennials’ business from their less-agile competition.

People generate massive amounts of content daily. Think about how much you use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or blog on a daily basis. As an example of how much content is out there, Facebook has 2.5 billion pieces of content and 300 million photos.

Are companies capitalizing on user generated content (UGC)? For some, the answer is a resounding yes. The Content Marketing Institute reports that 78% of B2C companies plan to leverage UGC in their marketing strategies this year.

Adobe recently acquired Livefyre, a solution that curates UGC, because the technology supports the Adobe Marketing Cloud and provides marketers quick access to authentic, user-generated content.

In an interview with CMS Wire, Loni Stark, senior director of strategy and product marketing for Adobe, reveals more about the strategy behind the acquisition. Giving marketers full access to Livefyre, it allows them to tap into billions of pieces of UGC to use on their websites, ads, emails, apps, and more.

Brands typically use this content for brand advocacy. According to Adobe, UGC is revered as more trustworthy by consumers.

“Our content research found 81% of respondents considered a product that was endorsed by a family member or someone they were related to or a friend,” said Stark.

With more authentic user-generated content, brands have the opportunity to create more compelling and engaging experiences.

“That’s why we wanted to work with Livefyre,” Stark remarked. “It’s to bring the joint story of professional and user-generated content and deliver it in creative ways through the marketing cloud.”

This thought should give us pause as marketers. Rather than creating and pushing more of our content out there, shouldn’t we be creating opportunities and experiences for our customers that inspire their content creation?

Let us hear from you. How do you plan on taking advantage of user-generated content to enhance your marketing efforts?

Sound familiar?

Between call centers, social media, email, mobile apps, and brick-and-mortar stores, your customers have multiple options for engaging with your company. The downside is that when the data coming from these channels aren’t connected, the experience can be confusing and off-putting. Not to mention that your customers’ frustration can be amplified when encountering vastly different experiences across your mobile, desktop, and eCommerce sites.

As a digital marketer, you must optimize content to maintain customers’ attention and meet their expectations to remain competitive. You might wonder, “How will this impact my business?”

A study of customer journeys by Harvard Business Review followed companies in two industries, insurance and pay TV. The companies that excelled in delivering journeys outperformed the competition with:

• 30-40% improvement in overall customer satisfaction
• 20-30% better performance in revenue, repeat purchases, and positive word of mouth

When you focus on delivering a journey that aligns to customer expectations, you position yourself to jump ahead of the competition. With a digital marketing platform like Adobe Marketing Cloud, you can create a seamless customer journey by organizing data and delivering a connected experience.

Want to learn more about creating a connected customer journey and solving other common digital marketing challenges? Download our latest guide below.

According to Gartner, 89% of companies expect to compete on customer experience in 2016. And in just four years, it’s estimated that 85% of a customer’s relationship with a brand won’t include face-to-face interactions. (Got your attention?)

Personalization is key not only for customer acquisition but also for customer retention. In the 2016 Annual Digital Trends Survey, companies that want to meet (or exceed) customer expectations need to deliver experiences that are: 

• Personalized and relevant (25%)
• Valuable (25%)
• Easy to understand (17%)

To create personalized experiences, marketing organizations need a solid digital marketing platform that supports their well-defined personalization strategies.

Many marketing departments choose to standardize on a single platform, easing the support and integration required for disparate, existing tools. Adobe Experience Manager, the content management pillar within the Adobe Marketing Cloud, is one such example.

Updates included in the recent release of Adobe Experience Manager 6.2 include features that make it easier for marketers to:

• Personalize and target offers
• Understand which assets are performing well (or not so well)
• Create connected experiences across mobile apps, forms, and in-person (or in-store)

Want to learn more about exceeding customer expectations and solving other common digital marketing challenges? Download our latest guide below.

In the latest release of Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe has simplified authoring personalized content. In addition to some exciting new features, this release includes a new integration with Adobe Target. The new integration allows authors to edit personalized content directly within AEM.

Given the strong ROI of personalization, the improved AEM / Target integration will be a big win for Adobe customers.

Authoring Personalized Experiences with AEM & Target

While at Adobe Summit, I attended the lab “Integrating Experience Manager with Adobe Analytics, Target and DTM”, which showcased the new AEM / Target integration. In only one hour, we were able to set up the integration and personalize content.

In this post, I’ll show the process for authoring personalized content in AEM with Adobe Target. For more information on setting up the integration, please see the Summit Session documents. The images below are credits the authors of the lab.

1. Configure an Activity in AEM

The first step to using Adobe Target in AEM is to configure your Activity. An activity is an instance of targeting on a page. Each activity gets a name and you can configure which targeting engine, configuration and targeting type to use.

To create a new Activity, first, select the Brand (which is a container of activities for a particular brand or site) and then click the + button. If you wanted to modify an existing activity, you would select the name of activity from the drop-down.

2. Define Targets

Next, define the components to be targeted. You can define any number of components to be targeted on the page. To do so, simply select the Targeting icon on the component’s edit bar while in targeting mode.

When you target a component, AEM replaces the existing component with a targeting container and makes the existing content the default.

3. Create Experiences

Once you have your components selected for the Activity, you need to create the experiences. Experiences are content variants shown to a particular audience or are groups of users based on criteria. By default, only the DEFAULT experience will be displayed when the Activity is first created.

To add an experience, select “+ Add Experience Targeting”. This will allow you to choose from among the pre-defined audiences or create a new audience to target.

You can create any number of audiences and order them in order in which they will be selected by Target.

4. Create the Experience Content

Once you’ve defined the experiences, select each one and update the content in the targeted components. You can change content, images or anything else you can edit within an AEM component.

You can quickly switch between experiences in authoring mode by selecting the experience name on the right. This allows you to see how the content appears in each experience.

5. Finish and Publish

Once you have created the content for the experiences, review and finish the setup of the Activity.

From this screen, you can define how reporting will be tracked for the Activity as well as the goals for the Activity. This will allow marketers to see reports on the success of the personalization activity.

Once you have verified and finished the Activity, publish the page to push the changes to the live website. AEM will publish all the content to the live site simultaneously to ensure website consistency.

Bonus: Testing Experiences

To ensure your targeting is working correctly, AEM includes the ability to view and modify the Client Context. The Client Context stores data on the current user and can / should be used for configuring segments inside AEM and Target. To view the Client Context, switch to Preview mode in AEM and then select the Client Context Hub icon. This will allow you to modify the variables in the client context and switch between segments to see the different experiences.

Personalization Unleashed

With AEM and Target, brands can delight their customers by providing rich, personalized experiences. At the same time, the new integration means authors have less overhead maintaining content.

Brands understand the need of personalization and the new AEM / Target integration allows them to make it happen.

Need help with understanding personalization with AEM & Target? Leave a comment below and I’d be happy to help!

However, delivering a top-notch CX poses several challenges, particularly when it comes to integrating technology with existing marketing processes and platforms. Follow these seven expert tips to help you optimize your digital marketing platforms.

Like what you see? Download our guide, Solve Three Common Digital Marketing Challenges with Adobe Marketing Cloud.

“Marketers are no longer in the business of selling products – we are selling experiences.”

The proliferation of technology, such as smartphones and the Internet of Things, make it possible to engage with customers on a one-to-one basis. However, the challenge is meeting their expectations to provide continuous, consistent, and compelling experiences both digitally and in reality.

Clients often come to us with the same three digital marketing challenges that can be solved with a solid marketing technology platform. Our latest guide, “Solve Three Common Digital Marketing Challenges with Adobe Marketing Cloud,” explores the underlying factors that impact customer experience and how the right digital marketing platform can help you:

• Exceed customer expectations in B2B and B2C
• Create a seamless customer experience across all channels
• Use analytics to make data-driven marketing decisions

By integrating best-in-class rich content authoring and creation with best-in-class enterprise commerce, we can provide a single, unified solution for all consumer touchpoints. At the same time, retailers can optimize and personalize the shopping experience, in real time, by testing different content types based on purchase data. (Tom Griffin, Demandware)

Makes good sense, doesn’t it? The integration of best-in-class content authoring and publishing, digital marketing and analytics (Adobe) with an omnichannel commerce engine and storefront (Demandware) is so obvious that it’s kind of a no-brainer.

Of course, integrating content and commerce is nothing new. We’ve been doing it since the earliest days of the internet as a sales engine.  The two diverged as specialized platforms for first web content management, and then e-commerce, became the rage in the past decade—but the obvious next step on either side was to reach back out and embrace the other.

Certain platforms and software companies have seen limited success in this regard, but for quite some time the only way for an online retailer to achieve a “best-in-class” experience was through custom integration between a pure-play CMS and a pure-play e-commerce platform.

Born in the Cloud

To some extent, that’s still the case; Adobe and Demandware remain different companies with different software platforms and different licenses.  The value of this particular partnership, however—what sets it apart and makes it so exciting—is that it’s born in the cloud.

The Adobe Marketing Cloud is more than just the CMS—Adobe Experience Manager.  It’s digital marketing and analytics, rich media and more, and it’s a unified cloud platform offering the flexibility and scalability that software-as-a-service provides as its primary value proposition.  Similarly, Demandware is a purely cloud-based solution— and that cloud DNA is what sets it apart from the rest of its peers.  The ability to scale up or down quickly to meet demand is a huge advantage for any retailer—B2C or B2B—who anticipates seasonal or market-driven shifts in volume.

Not Quite Yet, Though…

Naturally, there will be challenges down the road as these software companies seek to present an integrated offering.  The integration itself is officially still in pilot mode, and big questions are yet to be answered.  As a wizened green Jedi Master told us back in 1980, “Always in motion, the future is.”  On balance, though, the prospects offered by this announcement are too exciting to ignore.

1. Ad Wearout – prevent consumers from hitting “unsubscribe”
2. X Attribution – track conversions throughout the journey
3. Adaptive Store – personal shopping that integrates mobile & retail

What technologies did you see at Summit this week that impressed you?

What do Mattel, Abby Wambach, Cirque Du Soleil, and George Clooney have in common?

I’ll wait for you to Google it… Did you come up with the answer?

According to John Mellor, Adobe’s VP of Strategy and Business Development, they all are boldly creative in a world driven by data. This is what’s required to make the transformation to an experience-led business.

“Our jobs demand more data to create those experiences, but data is just a piece of the puzzle. Data alone is insufficient until we can wrap meaning around it. Our job is to transform that data into content that gives meaning to the experience,” he said.

Mellor also revealed results of a Twitter poll of Summit attendees, revealing that more than 40% believe their organization is “slow and steady” to adapt to this change of pace. Herein lies the challenge for many brands: combine data and science with content to tell great stories at scale.

“It’s through the power of storytelling that you can create the experiences and personal connections we all crave,” Mellor stated.

While Mattel, Cirque du Soleil, Wambach, and Clooney all shared captivating stories, below are highlights from two of the talks.

“Sometimes the most valuable invention is reinvention”

For most of us, our connection to Mattel stems from our childhood. Whether you loved Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher Price, or American Girl, Mattel is etched in our memories.

Richard Dickson, President and COO of Mattel, shared the story of how the brand started as a creations company by transforming the traditional paper fashion dolls into Barbie dolls, and “reinventing the toy car as a cultural phenomenon.” (Hot Wheels)

However as the brand succeeded and the company grew, Mattel lost its way and devolved into a packaged goods company that made toys.

The company realized it had to challenge the status quo to rise as a leading brand in “playtime.” Mattel applied the reinvention roadmap to reboot Barbie and disrupt the category the founders established 60+ years ago.

“Rapid relevance was the only way out,” Dickson said. Mattel did four major things for Barbie:

1. Reflected the diversity girls see today, and launched more than 20 new dolls that represented a wide variety of skin tones, hair color and texture
2. Liberated Barbie from high heels with a flexible foot
3. Created “Hello Barbie,” one of the most advanced AI toys that engages girls with conversation (Note: this was created based on feedback from girls who said “I wish Barbie could talk to me.”)
4. Responded to decades of cultural criticism of Barbie’s “perfect body” by developing dolls that reflect a wide variety of body types

Mattel needed to make girls fall in love with Barbie again and have their moms “like Barbie a little bit more.” This prompted the brand to create and tell a story through a short film called, “Imagine the possibilities”.

Mattel knew they had won over their audience before placing any paid advertising. They “created blockbuster relevance in the marketplace that couldn’t be bought,” with trending topics on Yahoo! and a cover story for Time as well as:

• 50 million views of the short film
• 500 million engagements on Facebook and Twitter
• 81% positive reactions from moms
• Celebrity influencers talking about it on social media

This reinvention roadmap, which is now being applied to Hot Wheels, Fisher Price, and other lines, is the push for Mattel to re-establish itself as a creations company and inspire the wonder of childhood.

Shaking Up the Movie Industry

Day 2 closed with an interview of George Clooney by Ann Lewnes, senior vice president and CMO of Adobe. Among the many topics covered, they discussed the shift in the film industry due in part to emerging technologies and social media.

“Technology and new media are opening up new ways to tell stories that didn’t exist before,” Clooney said.

“What’s happening in our industry is interesting. Television, for a long time, had its limitations. But now, TV, Netflix and others have ramped up the quality. It’s better than some of the films you see, and that’s great for our industry in general,” he continued.

With the proliferation of smartphones and similar video capturing devices, anyone can create content and share their experience with a large audience on social media. While Clooney is not a fan of social media, he indicated one benefit (from his perspective): “It [social media] can force you to make better products.”

This shift is something not only with which Hollywood has to contend, but also across dozens of other industries. You can’t ignore your fans – or your haters for that matter.

Final Thoughts

The keynote speakers of the day echoed John Mellor’s earlier remarks: “Storytelling is the biggest tool we have at our disposal. It’s that human touch that helps us connect with customers. Now, more than ever, we have to be storytellers.”

What did you learn from Day 2 at Summit?

Photo by @skimsey, https://twitter.com/skimsey