How Adobe Uses Data To Tell Better Stories

To sharpen your storytelling and make your brand stand out, we’re introducing a special edition of Forbes Connections where we interview top marketers.

We’re kicking off with Adobe, a brand that knows how to tell great stories. As the workplace transformed amid the pandemic, Adobe sought to help enterprise leaders and CIOs adapt and continue to drive growth in this new environment—and they used data to tell the story.

Adobe and Forbes Insights conducted a survey of more than 500 senior digital and technology executives from North America and Europe. The goal of the study was to educate business decision-makers into how to seamlessly transform their workplace and workflows for the better.

The findings were published in a report and featured at both the Forbes CIO Summit and Adobe’s celebrated summit. Among the most compelling: 86% of executives said workflow software will be very important to succeed in managing a distributed or hybrid workforce. 

The data in the survey also informed the multi-platform campaign that came next and helped Adobe boost its brand in an uncertain market. How? As a special edition of Forbes Connections, we interviewed Adobe’s director of enterprise marketing for digital media, Marc Blakeney, about how Adobe uses data to tell better stories.

“If you're trying to tell a somewhat disruptive market, a relevant market-leading story, you have to tell it in a way that is defensible,” says Blakeney. “Data makes it defensible.”

If you want to defend your brand against uncertainty, check out his four tips below.

Tip #1: Shift your marketing approach from ‘inside out’ to ‘outside in’

First thing’s first, you need to develop relevancy—and that means going outside in.

According to Blakeney, an “outside in” approach means sharing what peers are saying with your buying group while giving them insight into why this information is relevant to them. And the best way to know what peers are saying? Ask them. You can then use that data to bring out the needs and interests of your target audience and tailor messaging toward that buying group.

“When developing a campaign, it’s important to make sure it’s relevant to your target audience, and it talks to them in a language that’s relevant to them,” explains Blakeney. “Get to know what they care about because once you understand where their head is at, it allows you to develop marketing content that is ‘outside in’ versus ‘inside out.’”

This strategy differs from the traditional “inside out” approach when your messaging focuses on what you’re selling. Instead, it invites your audience in. “Folks are much less interested in hearing about the latest thing you're trying to sell, like a new release or a new widget,” says Blakeney. “They're interested in how you can help them.”

Tip #2: Survey your buying group based on your story arc 

Tip #2: Survey your buying group based on your story arc 

A survey is one of the best ways to gather insights directly from your community and create a compelling story for your audience. But where do you start? According to Blakeney, it’s with the story arc.

“You need to put yourself in your target audience's shoes,” explains Blakeney. “This is your starting point, and it can help you think through what the message should be and what story arc you want to take someone towards.” 

“Based on those insights, you can back your way into what types of questions will bring the story forward.” To help get you started, Blakeney suggests the following steps: 

1. Collect and look at the data you already have from other marketing initiatives 
2. Create your hypothesis based on where you think the story arc will go and how you can help your buying group
3. Use your hypothesis to develop the questions that you want to ask your audience
4. Start with more questions and then whittle them down to the most meaningful ones
5. Pilot your questions to a test audience so you can test your hypothesis 
6. Adjust, refine and reframe survey questions as needed 

“If you've done your homework upfront, you shouldn't be too far off on your hypothesis,” says Blakeney. “What you're doing next is fine-tuning questions to align the responses better to the story arc while, at the same time, adjusting the narrative around that story arc.”

Tip #3: Connect your dots and your data with the right third-party partner

Adobe, who’s partnered with Forbes on thought leadership content and surveys, is gearing up to dive deeper in 2022.

“If we tried to connect the dots ourselves, we'd probably connect them a bit differently than with Forbes,” says Blakeney. “Having the right partner in developing the content really helps to connect the dots because they already have a pulse of what's going on in the market.”

Once you finalize your questions and get your results, what you'll wind up with is… numbers. From there, a third-party partner can help you bring out a story from the data and contextualize it with trends in the market. 

“If you do it yourself, and it's purely a self-driven survey or a report, it doesn't hold the same value as it does with a third party that's relevant to your target audience,” explains Blakeney, “if you drive it internally, you'll wind up with an ‘inside out’ message vs. an ‘outside in’ one.” 

“Plus, when it's on a third party paper like Forbes, it comes with validation that it isn't just Adobe speaking, it’s what the market is saying.”

Tip #4: Invite your audience and your data into the conversation   

Having meaningful data isn’t enough. To have a truly impactful campaign, your data needs to create a meaningful conversation.

“We've gotten all sorts of ABM, content syndication, email nurture campaigns, and we’re seeing a much higher engagement and conversion rate from those offers compared to other pieces of content that we have,” starts Blakeney. “But where I felt and have seen this really work well for us is in bringing the narrative out in roundtable events.”

“The roundtable events are really cool because we see dialogue among peers on where they see things going while also allowing us to continue asking the right questions. And by adding to the conversation, as a seller, you can leave decision-makers feeling like they walked away from a good discussion with new insights, and it’ll make them that much more interested in a follow-up conversation later on.”

Thoughtfully curated events paired with data allow leaders the chance to engage in a meaningful peer-to-peer dialogue to understand what's working and what's not working. “You want to be at the table with those leaders, and having data-driven research relevant to your decision-making audience gives you a seat at that table.”

Five Quick Tips 

The summary? Data tells the best story. And in case you need more ideas to tell yours, here are some additional tips from Marc Blakeney: 

• Embrace flexibility and listen to your audience (don't keep yourself tied to pre-conceived story arcs or messages).
• Acquire responses, qualified leads and create a pipeline using gated content, so you know who the folks you’re marketing to are.
• Use a mixture of self-owned and paid media channels to amplify your message and acquire more responses.
• Collaborate with someone on the survey who's good with content to bridge the hypothesis and the questions, and then bring your insights and results back to your internal stakeholders to show them where it’s headed.
• Think out of the box on how you get insights from your audience (e.g., asking survey questions in a virtual event or roundtable discussion.)

What topics do you want us to cover in these special editions? Send us your ideas, and we may feature you in a future special edition!