The top 20% of companies at digital marketing are pulling away from the pack as they get better at what they do and are leaving a yawning gap between those that can and can't.
Adobe vice-president of strategy John Mellor told a 7000 strong crowd at the Adobe Summit in Salt Lake City that the top companies maturity in digital marketing was paying dividends and becoming a driver of business success.
Quoting statistics from Adobe's new Best of the Best digital index report, he said that the evidence that the best of breed in each category were winning and getting faster at what they did.
"The travel and retail top 20% is 100% better at conversion rates than the rest.
Financial services top get a 50% increase in stickiness. Media gets a 30% increase in consumption. These KPIs are driving business results," he said.
Mellor said the common ground each of these companies had could be found in the three Ps of digital marketing: people, process and product.
"They've somehow been able to connect the dots. It's not just product teams, social, advertising . . . Process that spans the organisation in a formal way allows people with the skills in digital marketing and the desire to reinvent themselves to do just that."
He said organisational awareness was key. He said you couldn't just
theorise, you need to break down the three Ps "so we can understand where our organisations are today".
He said that there wasn't a data set available to allow this deconstruction, so Adobe created a set of 44 questions that help tease out performance gaps.
The full performance report can be downloaded here. And Adobe's survey of 1000 CMOs can be downloaded here.