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Marketing Strategy

NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In CMO, Marketing ROI, Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Operations, Marketing Strategy

CMO’s Guide: Capitalizing on Emerging Marketing Trends Beyond 2020

man with ipad

The landscape of the marketing industry is in constant motion. These changes present new opportunities for marketers to engage with consumers to drive sales. However, some brands are struggling to keep up with changes in the industry, and are consequently falling behind as the broader retail landscape changes.

According to Charles Golvin, as quoted by Chris Pemberton in his Gartner article, “Shifting consumer behaviors and technology innovation deprive marketers of equilibrium. Recovering that equilibrium will require organizational alacrity, a laser focus on customer needs, and a balanced embrace of automation.”

In order to ensure future success, brands need to find ways to capitalize on the current changes in the industry. So, what can brand marketers do to gain benefits from emerging marketing forces in the coming years?

shop with digital network graphics - retail continuity

Adapt to Consumer Behavioral Changes

Consumers are changing the way they shop. Technology plays a major role in this evolution of the modern shopper. Customers now use voice commands, wherever they are, to get tips and advice from automated voice interfaces as if it were a human. Brand marketers need to ensure that their brand comes up as a suggestion when customers search for a particular product through voice automation.

Along with using voice commands, consumers respond enormously to video content. Brands should recognize this emerging preference and focus on producing creative, engaging video content to capture the attention of potential customers. By discovering how to use new consumption formats to reach your target consumers, you can increase the effectiveness of your marketing presence and drive sales for your brand.

marketing meeting

Partner With Experts

As we already know, many brands collect personal data from shoppers. But the simple act of gathering information doesn’t lead to results by itself. Brand marketers need to figure out how to properly analyze and utilize the data that they have.

Brands need to ensure that they employ analytical talent with the expertise necessary to extract valuable insights from large amounts of data. As Pemberton explains, “Based on the Gartner Marketing Analytics survey, nearly half of marketing leaders surveyed said some of their most expensive and experienced analysts and data scientists spend their time preparing data to be analyzed rather than analyzing the data.” The problem is that many data analysts are simply “missing the mark” when it comes to effectively utilizing personal information to market towards a target audience.

When brand marketers know how to put consumer data into action, they are able to focus on personalizing the customer experience, which results in higher profits and increased conversion rates. An effective way to capture the attention of customers is through personalized, creative marketing materials that can engage customers with call-to-action.

AI-machine learning

Marketing with Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence is an important technology that has strongly impacted the marketing industry. The increased use of sophisticated technology for marketing may pose challenges for brand marketers, especially those who are convinced that legacy marketing tactics are the only effective way to reach customers. What brands need to realize is that an effective, balanced combination of physical marketing tactics and digital marketing methods is required for brands to remain profitable in the current age.

Brand marketers can capitalize on the emergence of new automation devices by delivering personalized communications to consumers. Pemberton explains, “Vendors promise their AI solutions will yield increases in marketer efficiency and deliver optimal communications to prospects and customers at the moment of maximum influence.”

As automation methods continue to dominate the marketing industry, marketing teams will experience a disruption in the way they perform. But, when brand marketers see technological advances as new opportunities, as opposed to problems, they can invent and implement innovative methods to improve marketing outcomes and customer experiences.

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The changing terrain of marketing in the coming years doesn’t mean that you will struggle. Instead, brand marketers should see these market challenges as opportunities to redefine their business by thinking of new, creative ways to engage with customers and drive sales.

Adapting to customers’ behavioral changes related to shopping, hiring experts who know how to effectively analyze data to improve marketing tactics, and capitalizing on the use of machines for marketing are important steps you can take as a brand marketer in order to flourish in today’s challenging market. By understanding these useful actions, brands are more likely to remain profitable and ensure a prosperous future for their business.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Healthcare, Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Direct Mail

3 Tips to Driving Healthcare Marketing to Success

elderly woman at the hospital counter - full

Today’s healthcare consumers are much different than the healthcare consumers of the past, thanks to the wealth of resources available, including the advancement of technology. Patients now have more options than ever, and can access them instantly from their devices. As a result, healthcare companies today face new challenges when it comes to marketing effectively.

According to Lindsay Resnick in CMO.com, “Success in a transformative landscape requires marketing leaders to re-examine strategic imperatives, anticipate what’s coming next, and deftly navigate a fast-moving set of obstacles and opportunities to capture customer mindshare.”

In order to ensure success in these changing market conditions, healthcare brands must capitalize on emerging opportunities to improve their marketing campaigns, and here’s how.

doctor touching screen -healthcare

You and Yours Only

Delivering an exceptional customer experience being the priority, healthcare marketers should collect, analyze, and leverage consumer data to develop a “Patient Persona” to attribute marketing strategy.

By leveraging the sum of cross-channel consumer data, nothing will attract more consumers than an intimately crafted and satisfying message tailored to consumers’ needs.

When consumers are content with their needs through your product, your brand will experience higher profits, increased demand generation, and enhanced brand awareness.

As Resnick stated, “Customer experience will go beyond journey mapping as healthcare companies commit to budgeted, cross-functional efforts across customer life cycle touchpoints.”

people looking up - crowd

Know Your Shoppers’ Personas

To effectively reach and engage with customers, brand marketers need to be aware of the different types of segments they’re targeting. The four most common categories of shoppers include: digital by lifestyle, digital by choice, digital by need, and offline society. Each consumer group has unique shopping needs, and brands need to prepare marketing approaches for each of them.

As Amar, Raabe, and Roggenhofer explain, “Best practice is to design primary service for each segment, using contact volume distribution and persona profiles that differentiate by digital behavior to determine engagement strategies and the necessary investments in each channel.” Different types of consumers will respond to different marketing tactics, so brand marketers need to get creative to effectively reach a large audience of shoppers.

More and more customers demand personalized journey fit their needs. The first step for brands to achieve this is to understand the shopping preference of their target consumer groups.

Some consumer segments respond more to online advertisements, whereas others are more touched by physical marketing materials such as direct mail that drives them to brick-and-mortar stores where they can experience a personal connection with the brand. Therefore, brands should focus on developing marketing strategies that serve each persona group based on their shopping preferences in conjunction with omnichannel digital efforts.

digital data-hand touching tablet

Combine Data, Creativity, and Technology

To healthcare brands, it is critical to provide an attractive, yet attentive customer experience by realizing the three-way convergence of brand, direct, and content marketing. And they should combine data, creativity, and technology to develop and implement robust marketing approaches.

For obvious reasons, developing customer touchpoints based on consumer data is essential to deliver personalized experience via relevant conversations to exchange value to retain profitable consumers.

And health brands, perhaps more than most industries, must take advantage of the technological resources; apps that can be used on mobile devices to easily and quickly interact with brand representatives, search for product information and ask essential questions help close the gap between customer and care.

No one enjoys feeling like they’ve wasted time. When customers receive an easy, convenient, yet quality experience, they will be happier, and more likely to become your brand ambassador.

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As the healthcare industry changes and presents more challenges to marketers, health brands must employ new methods to remain profitable and satisfy their customers’ needs.

By using customer data to deliver a more personalized experience, ensuring that there is an effective channel for communication and productive engagement with consumers, and employing marketing techniques that combine data, creativity, and technology, you can provide a satisfying, helpful customer experience that will drive sales, and increase brand awareness.

And by working with a trusted partner who can help you capitalize on new marketing opportunities in the healthcare market, your brand can compete on the quality and effectiveness of your healthcare marketing efforts.

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For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Marketing Strategy, Retail Trends, Online shopping, E-Commerce

Three Ways of Capturing What Customers Want Before They Do

thinking girl with digital shopping symbols

Advancement of technology with limitless digital bandwidth opened up a new array of channels for today’s consumers to be more aggressive in engaging with brands. More importantly, it is changing the way consumers shop, forcing brands to present a superior omnichannel experience to meet the expectations and demands of consumers. However, some brands struggle to do so because they lack sufficient awareness of their customers’ needs and preferences.

According to Jorge Amar, Julian Raabe, and Stefan Roggenhofer in their McKinsey.com article, “Companies seeking to keep pace with industry leaders must embark on an omnichannel transformation — one that views touchpoints not in isolation but as part of a seamless customer journey. And since customer journeys aren’t simple and linear but a series of handoffs between traditional and digital channels that can vary significantly by customer type, an effective strategy requires an in-depth understanding of what customers truly want.”

In order to ensure success, brands need to focus on understanding the preferences and wants of their target audience.

Omni-channel-Illustration-shopping

Provide Quality Digital Customer Care

More and more customers prefer to shop digitally and seek out customer care online. Many brands have capitalized on this trend by focusing on developing a robust omnichannel presence. However, brands that design a digital channel prematurely often fail to provide adequate online support channels for their customers.

Some brand marketers believe that the customer’s desire for customer-employee interactions is diminishing due to growing technology. But, trends indicate that the volume of engagement and the number of touchpoints actually continue to increase. This shows that brands need to ensure that they are providing effective and positive engagement with customers through digital channels.

Brand marketers who fail to provide adequate customer care online find that customers make multiple visits to their website in order to receive the help and assistance that they require. This leaves shoppers frustrated and dissatisfied, decreasing sales and conversions for your brand. Concentrate on efforts to understand how to effectively help your customers, and ensure that you offer productive digital avenues through which they can seek assistance.

Know Your Shoppers’ Personas

To effectively reach and engage with customers, brand marketers need to be aware of the different types of segments they’re targeting. The four most common categories of shoppers include: digital by lifestyle, digital by choice, digital by need, and offline society. Each consumer group has unique shopping needs, and brands need to prepare marketing approaches for each of them.

As Amar, Raabe, and Roggenhofer explain, “Best practice is to design primary service for each segment, using contact volume distribution and persona profiles that differentiate by digital behavior to determine engagement strategies and the necessary investments in each channel.” Different types of consumers will respond to different marketing tactics, so brand marketers need to get creative to effectively reach a large audience of shoppers.

More and more customers demand personalized journey fit their needs. The first step for brands to achieve this is to understand the shopping preference of their target consumer groups.

Some consumer segments respond more to online advertisements, whereas others are more touched by physical marketing materials such as direct mail that drives them to brick-and-mortar stores where they can experience a personal connection with the brand. Therefore, brands should focus on developing marketing strategies that serve each persona group based on their shopping preferences in conjunction with omnichannel digital efforts.

cashier handing credit card back to customer - sales person

Train Employees to Put the Customer First

A superb omnichannel experience does not stop at the completed purchasing transaction. It now extends to seamless customer handoffs across the channel from pre-purchase interaction to after-purchase follow-ups by the customer service, via online or face to face. To provide a superb omnichannel experience, brands need to recognize the importance of employee training to fulfill the pre and post-purchase phases of the customer journey.

Well trained brand employees should be able to identify customer needs and cater to their services accordingly. In order to do so, they must receive the right kind of training. Ensure that your training is creative, effective, and designed with the customer in mind. The better the coaching, the better the service, and it translates into higher demand and increased sales for your brand. It’s integral that your workforce has the right skill sets to offer effective customer care. Eventually, this will help to refine the strategy based on brand performance in the long run.

When complex issues arise, employees need to be able to provide feasible solutions and give customers a seamless experience. Positive interactions help employees develop meaningful relationships with consumers, which serves to drive sales and bring in a higher number of loyal customers for your brand. The happier a customer feels when they leave your store or website, it’s more likely that they will recommend your product to others.

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No two consumers are the same. Each consumer segment has unique shopping needs and responds to different marketing methods. Brands need to make an effort to understand what their target customers want and implement ways to effectively deliver it.

Providing high-quality customer service and productive assistance through digital channels, personalizing the shopping experience for target groups, and training brand representatives to follow a customer-centric mindset are useful ways to deepen your understanding of what your customers want, generate demand, and drive sales.

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For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Retail Trends, CPG, Direct Mail

Three Key Tips to Gain Competitive Advantage in CPG

man looking at consumer product at a grocery store

Undeniably, the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry faces unique challenges. Over the past five years, many CPG brands have experienced a decline in revenue and profits. Brands are struggling to keep up with changes in the industry, and some are consequently falling behind as the broader retail landscape changes.

According to Bain & Company’s Matthew Meacham, François Faelli, Eduardo Giménez, and John Blasberg in their article, “When we analyzed the performance of 34 of the world’s top 50 consumer goods companies in the last few years, we made the unsettling discovery that 85% of those big companies had seen a decline in either revenues, profits or both.”

In order to ensure future success, brands need to find ways to combat the current challenges in the industry. So, what can CPG brands do to overcome the current crisis in the industry?

shadowed people with bubbles - account management

Be Agile with Emerging Trends

With advances in technology and the emergence of a new generation of shoppers, the CPG industry is constantly evolving. The wants and needs of customers are changing, along with the ways they shop. Brands that hope to survive in this ever-changing market need to keep up with the new trends.

One of the most significant trends is rapidly shifting in consumer behavior as they become more socially, environmentally, and health-conscious. This fast-growing trend contributed to the considerable disruption caused by small insurgent brands in many product categories, making the competition even more intense.

In order to support the new wave of consumers and to compete in the current market, brands should focus on establishing a robust multi-channel presence to connect with the target consumers where they are comfortable to interact and share.

When brands are aware of emerging market trends, they can come up with a plan to prepare for them ahead of time. By serving the consumer in the way they want to be served on par with the current trends, brands can outsmart the competition to be successful in the marketplace.

Reinvent Brand’s Image

Brand marketers need to start thinking “outside the box” when it comes to engaging with customers. Instead of relying solely on legacy marketing tactics, brands should consider ways to draw in customers that they haven’t used before.

Meacham, Faelli, Giménez, and Blasberg explain: “Winning companies will innovate their way out with new products, new systems, and new needs that help elevate their categories to premium status while increasing product and assortment penetration.”

If keeping up with the current trends is “today forward” strategy, brands also will need to take “future back” approach to set their own destiny and progressing toward it.

By redefining the vision for your brand, and your company – future back approach – to rearticulate a meaningful, sustainable, and consumer-driven purposes will inspire to reset the brand’s sense of urgency and to become the frontline innovator.

woman shopping on tablet - CPG

Directly Engage with Customers

Traditionally, most CPG brands don’t maintain a relationship with customers after they make a purchase. However, if brands take the initiative to connect and develop lasting relationships with their shoppers, they will drive sales and increase their opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

Adding the data-driven personalization in every customer touchpoint will significantly improve customer commitment to the brands, especially when a customer feels connected, understood, and valued by the brand.

One way is direct mail follow-ups with customers after they’ve purchased your product. Consumers typically respond positively to direct communication because they appreciate feeling that their feedback is important.

Also, brands should consider opening pop-up brick-and-mortar stores to improve engagement with consumers. Brands can more easily establish impactful connections with their shoppers in a physical store, where the entire consumer experience is curated by the brand.

There is no sales method more effective than good old-fashioned, positive, face-to-face interactions. When a customer leaves your store feeling like they’ve had a good experience, they are more likely to come back and also to encourage their friends and family members to shop there.

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The current crisis in the CPG industry doesn’t mean that your brand is doomed to struggle. Instead, brand marketers should see these market challenges as opportunities to redefine their business by thinking of new, creative ways to engage with customers and drive sales.

Making sure you stay in the know regarding new market trends, coming up with innovative ideas for products and marketing tactics, and putting in the effort to reach out and directly engage with your customers are important steps you can take as a CPG brand marketer in order to flourish in today’s challenging market. By understanding these useful actions, CPG brands are more likely to remain profitable and ensure a successful future for their business.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In CMO, Marketing ROI, Marketing Trends, Marketing Operations, Marketing Strategy, Business Forecast & Trends

Next Generation CMOs: Transformation Leaders

butterfly out of cocoon

The marketing industry is constantly evolving. These changes bring new opportunities and roles for CMOs and the brands they represent, alike. Brand marketers today are stepping away from legacy marketing tactics and inventing new, exciting campaigns to reach customers.

According to Deloitte’s Jen Veenstra in her article, “If CMO roles as we’ve defined them have required proficiency not only in marketing but across multiple business functions, the job has expanded even further in complexity to include sustainable growth, highly personalized customer experiences, and advanced marketing innovation.”

In order to ensure success, CMOs need to embrace and step into key strategic roles. By doing so, you will increase opportunities to enhance brand awareness, driving revenue for your business, and expanding your own professional repertoire.

man on a toy car in flame - growth

Growth Driver

It is vital that CMOs drive growth for their brand. When they fail to establish and implement initiatives for improvement centered on growth, the brand suffers.

Most CMOs measure growth using revenue. However, this seems like a daunting task to accurately attribute, and many marketers experience disconnect when trying to drive growth through revenue.

But CMOs must put in the effort to become comfortable using revenue as a metric for growth by adopting the new role as enterprise business growth leader.

At the end of the day, one of the critical responsibilities that a CMO has is to have an end-to-end view of the customer, acknowledging trends, and making strategic recommendations to outsmart the competition to grow business. It is, ultimately, the bottom line for C-Suite decision-makers.

Customer Champion

Embracing customer data and intelligence are important ways for brands to deliver better customer experiences. You can gain valuable insights by collecting and tracking both emotional and transactional preferences from consumers across all channels.

CMOs can then use this data to become the “voice” for their shoppers. And, consequently, CMOs will more effectively engage with their target group of consumers and provide a personalized buying experience.

When brands know what consumers want and what their expectations are, they can implement marketing approaches that personally “speak” to customers.

businessman holding tablet

Storyteller

Riveting, intriguing stories engage consumers’ interest. So, CMOs should ensure that they effectively assume the role of storyteller. By creating and sharing an entertaining narrative about your brand and value, shoppers will be more drawn to what you have to say, and more attracted to your products. Marketers can reshape their brand’s image through the stories they tell consumers.

As Veenstra explains, “It’s still up to marketers to safeguard and disseminate the news about their companies’ brands and invite consumers to participate in the narrative. Chief storytellers have been defined by their part in promoting brand relevance and consistency, and it appears they aren’t straying far away from this role.” Growth-oriented CMOs see storytelling as a thriving and exciting opportunity to connect with customers.

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CMOs no longer have only one role to follow. Brand marketers who want to remain profitable and relevant in today’s ever-changing market must wear different “hats,” hence, the future roles of CMO are likely to become even more complex. By adopting the enterprise-wide mindset to align with the shared goals, and to become a brand’s voice for consumers, CMOs will become the major player behind their company’s success.

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For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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