Christophe Marée is marketing director for Western Europe at Adobe, publisher of graphics software (InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash) and video and audio editing software. A sector where marketing is increasingly technical and the personalization of customer relations is essential in more than one way. Explanations.
What are the major challenges of BtoB marketing at Adobe?
For several years, you and I have no longer been buying a product or a service but a global customer experience. BtoB companies like Adobe must take this change into account by personalizing their relationships with their customers. One of the challenges of companies like ours operating in a BtoB environment is to have a unified vision of their own customers by knowing what interests this or that function in the companies. The second essential point is how we will activate this data via the right interaction channels (e-mails, social networks, face-to-face, etc.)
This unified vision requires a common technological data base, notre Customer Data Platform (CDP). Finally, you need to have the tools to ensure real-time activation. For example, the customer comes to our site to look for the information he needs. Therefore, you must be able to immediately inform them by delivering a personalized message based on their role and topics of interest. For our part, in marketing, we need to create content adapted to the moment of interaction, to the profile of these visitors, but also to the services provided. This abounds very quickly, hence the usefulness of having tools like AI, among others, to create this content and the necessary variations and variations more quickly to communicate on different channels.
What are your priority projects?
For us, the main thing is to aggregate and organize customer data within this famous technological base, to set up all the interaction tools using this data and using appropriate technologies to create large volumes of content adapted to a need for mass personalization in real time. “Mass personalization in real time”, this concept may seem a little contradictory but it is really our ambition.
By using a common technology base for the different people working in the company, at Adobe, we have the same discourse, because we share the same data. For example, when I discuss the performance of a campaign with a finance team, I will not use terminologies that are specific to marketing, I will use a value, for example “revenue”, which speaks to everyone. The CDP notably allows us to have access to common dashboards. With all company departments speaking the same language, collaboration is increased, as is overall performance.
To inform yourself, what do you prefer? Professional newsletters, trade shows, the economic press?
In all business environments, especially in the BtoB sector, it is essential to stay informed. This involves reading specialized newsletters and consulting social networks like LinkedIn and X. I also enjoy taking part in the life of professional communities in the world of marketing directors or IT directors. I am thinking in particular of Cionet and the Disruptor club. I particularly value face-to-face interactions, I organize events for peer-to-peer exchanges with our clients. These moments allow you to share ideas, explore trends and think about new solutions, while staying informed of technological developments and best practices, without being limited to a specific sector of activity.
What are the major HR themes of the moment at Adobe?
Today, we are constantly on the lookout for the right skills and the right profile with them. There is indeed a war for talent in marketing where technicality is increasingly strong. When you work for example in paid media, paid social, paid search, these are ultra-technical activities requiring a good understanding of the tools (e.g. how to make a bid for paid search, for example, etc.). These channels of interaction and collection of information and engagement with customers are predominant. We therefore need employees who know how to use the marketing budget to obtain maximum ROI. The same goes for generative AI, omnipresent in digital creation.
If you had to explain the specificities of the BtoB sector compared to that of BtoC, what would you say?
In the BtoB sector, several people are involved in the decision-making process, which often makes the purchasing cycle longer and more complex. This journey reflects conflicting needs between the different departments of a company: for example, finance wants to reduce expenses, while marketing or IT instead want to invest more. In BtoC, a single person concentrates the roles of decision-maker, user and buyer, which simplifies the process.
In BtoB, purchases are more structured because there is a professional objective, while in BtoC, purchases are often impulsive and guided by pleasure. However, we can clearly see a convergence emerging between the two. BtoB buyers are increasingly adopting “digital first” behaviors and expecting personalized and lasting relationships with their suppliers. This is close to what consumers’ expectations may be in BtoC.
Source: www.e-marketing.fr
