Are Marketing Clouds an Agency’s Friend or Foe?

Be it creative tools or social media platforms, digital agencies are constantly integrating new software solutions to stay at ahead of the competition. But a new type of cloud-powered software, dubbed the “marketing cloud,” has the potential to become both a friend and foe for advertisers and creative agencies. While it can be an integral part of agencies’ toolkit to broaden their expertise, it also creates the opportunity for small and medium  enterprises to take some (if not all) of their marketing challenges in house.

Which “marketing cloud” is the leader, however, has turned into a hotly contested question. Adobe has traditionally been the leader in creative and marketing cloud software for agencies. Their one-two punch of the Creative Cloud and Marketing Cloud grants both access to some of their most popular creative tools (Photoshop and Illustrator) and essential marketing services including email, content curation, and landing page design. Yet, Adobe’s status as the top dog in the space is under threat by the heavy hitter in the sales and marketing software stack, Salesforce. The Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform has rapidly expanded in the past few years, building on their ExactTarget acquisition in 2012 to also integrate an e-commerce provider (DemandWare), a data management platform (Krux), and user experience agency (Sequence). Whether run in-house or by a consultancy, marketing clouds can offer more customization and data transparency and eliminate the need for companies to to rely on an agency. At the same time, they can allow agencies to broaden their horizon and add a marketing cloud expertise to their services – hence becoming more relevant than ever.

Should digital agencies be concerned with the emerging marketing clouds? Learn more on Adage.