Adobe is releasing a new “State of Content” survey that outlines five broad rules for marketers in 2016.
Loni Stark, a senior director of strategy and product marketing at Adobe, told me that the goal was to help creative professionals answer the question, “What’s the best content for my customers and for my audience?” While the focus was on the content marketers who use Adobe’s Marketing Cloud, Stark suggested that the findings should apply more broadly to anyone in the content business: “On a high level, the trends are pointing in the same direction.”
I suspect that none of these findings will be particularly shocking, but what’s more interesting is connecting the broader trends with specific strategies. In this case, Adobe said it conducted two online surveys in September, ultimately getting responses from more than 12,000 people in six countries (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia and Japan). To participate, you had to be at least 18 years old and own a digital device.
Here are the findings:
- “Design for the Multiscreen Reality” — Adobe found that consumers use an average of five devices and are using 2.23 devices at one time. The company suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work when designing for all these screens, since 65 percent of users said displaying well on the device they’re using is a top priority, and 54 percent said good design is important.
- “Don’t Fall Victim to #TLDR” — Sixty-seven percent of respondents said they’ll stop reading a story if it’s too long, and 79 percent said they’ll stop reading if it doesn’t display well on their device.
- “Humor Makes Brands More Relatable” — Although 70 percent of respondents said that companies are more relatable when they are funny, only 14 percent said the content created by brands is actually entertaining.
- “In Relationships We Trust” — Do we actually trust brands? Seems that it depends on the company — only 23 percent of consumers said they trust content from brands that they haven’t bought something from, but the number went up to 43 percent if they’d purchased a product.
- “Don’t Show Up Uninvited” — Many respondents are open to sharing data with marketers: 75 percent said they’re open to sharing at least one piece of data, and 71 percent said they’re open to personalized recommendations based on their behavior. Of those who said they’re not comfortable with it, 25 percent said they’d be happier if companies asked permission to access their data.
You can read the full report here.