Finding campaign ideas from the very consumers being targeted may seem like a sure-fire way of gaining success, but it doesn’t seem like marketers are seeing it that way – at least not anymore.
Content management firm Kentico recently asked ‘What do digital marketers really want in 2015?’ as part of a study on 300 industry professionals, with the results bearing some bad news for consumer-inspired practices.
Just 38% of marketers said they were giving priority to crowdsourced activities in 2015, far below the rates of uptake for better customer experiences (66%) and effective use of big data (54%).
The stats showed that while brands are certainly investing heavily in finding out more about their audiences and making sure they’re well-catered for, the customer’s input in future campaigns could be minimal.
Brands stop listening
Crowdsourcing is a model that very much lends itself to marketing practices where the brand attempts to play off emotion to gauge a response.
An entire content marketing strategy can revolve around article ideas posed by the consumer – the brands delving deep into feedback on social media, a forum or focus group to see what resonates with their audience.
Going off responses from people outside the organisation ensures that companies are paying attention to what their customers want. There is also a chance that customer feedback may offer perspective that hadn’t been considered by the company’s hierarchy.
But crowdsourcing may be set to play a much smaller role in dictating campaign and product ideas in the future, says Kentico, as only a third of marketers will make room for it in their strategies for this year.
Notes in the report claimed this is being seen particularly in the B2C arena, where consumers either didn’t deliver or no longer care about having their say on proceedings.
Other priorities
The report went on to provide insights into where top-performing marketers plan on investing in 2015, with social media topping the list of priorities.
Nearly eight in ten (77%) of the the top 15% of performers said they would be ramping up their social investment in 2015, with web analytics (67%), personalisation (67%) and mobile advertising (67%) following swiftly behind.
As for the activities likely to see a drop in spend, loyalty programmes were tipped for a low contribution in 2015 – cited as a key activity by 24% of the group.
Remarketing was even lower down the list of priorities, on 16%, with gamification – one the main buzzwords of 2013 – gaining an uptake of just 9%.