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Marketing Trends

NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends

Digital Transformation: Turning Marketing Challenges into Opportunities

finger touching device

The marketing industry is being disrupted. You can see it everywhere you look, from apps that can deliver personalized experiences across various channels to the reconsideration of tried-and-true legacy processes and the restructuring of reliable silos.

As a result, many CMOs feel like they’re constantly being forced to play catch-up. That’s according to a new report by the American Marketing Association, which spoke with top marketing executives at IBM, Nasdaq, Microsoft, and Deloitte to better understand just what challenges digital transformation is presenting, and how savvy brands can keep with – and stay ahead of – these changes.

No Process is Sacred or Beyond Critical Audit

“Every company is structured 1980s-style,” says Microsoft USA CMO Grad Conn. And while these complex processes and robust silos have been built out with care over years or decades, “We’re waking up to a new dawn in business – and we’re all realizing that we need to operate in a non-siloed way.”

As Conn explains, an organizational re-imagining of its siloed structures, and the areas within those silos that can and should better interact with one another to realize new revenue streams and capture emerging opportunities should be a top priority for all brands. Especially as customers’ expectations of online shopping and in-store experiences continue to shift – with more customers wanting to shop online but purchase in-store, and vice versa – savvy companies are enlisting trusted partners to help them critically evaluate where their long-standing silos and structures could be better optimized for interaction.

shop with digital network graphics - retail continuity

Personalized Experiences, for Everyone

The more you know about your customers, the better you can appeal to them. That’s why personalized customer experiences are so valuable to marketers. However, as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Nasdaq Jeremy Skule explains, “CMOs must build strategies for listening to these customers, documenting their conversations, and following up with personalized interactions.”

Digital transformation has now come along and, for the first time, truly made this a viable possibility for companies of all sizes. Brands must not only listen to their customers’ feedback, but be responsive to it, and deliver on customer desires in a timely fashion in order to best capitalize on that feedback and realize the revenue opportunities it presents. Customers may tell you exactly what they want to buy over the holidays, for example, but if your marketing department can’t react to those changing expectations quickly and thoroughly enough, you may be stuck delivering in February what would have worked in December.

Customer Profiles Across Channels

Michelle Peluso, Chief Marketing Officer at IBM, doesn’t mince words when it comes to the importance of creating persistent customer profiles: “Having a thoughtful approach to customer identification and customer profiling is critical.” This isn’t necessarily a surprise to savvy marketers, but the digital transformation is changing the reason why.

The ability to track customers across various channels, whether on mobile apps, online, or in-store, creates a far more holistic 360-degree view of your clients and reveals insights that traditional siloed tracking misses out on. For example, the ability to understand which areas of your website customers spend the most time on before completing a purchase in-store, or which areas of your store offer the most compelling in-person experience by measuring which in-stock items the customer eventually seeks out online reviews of, provides priceless insight into which areas of your marketing efforts you should beef up with additional investment, and which are no longer the revenue-drivers that they once were in years past.

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Digital transformation is opening up worlds of opportunity for organizations willing to crack open their marketing activities, examine them with a flashlight, and peer inside to see what they can improve. Trusted partners can help facilitate that process.

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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

Innovation: The Secret Value Hidden by Misconceptions

In hyper-competitive markets, innovation is the key to standing out. This is especially true in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, where finite shelf space requires each brand to maximize every advantage it can.

But innovation can be a tricky thing. Not only can it be difficult to tell good change from bad before you’ve invested in and committed to it, but the true meaning – and value – of business innovation is widely misunderstood.

That’s according to Greg Satell of the Harvard Business Review, who explains that while many enterprises pay lip service to value “innovation,” few are taking the steps to actually do so, and even fewer are capitalizing on the enormous value lying hidden in modern business innovation.

Here are some of the biggest misconceptions, and areas of untapped value, surrounding innovation today.

Innovation: A Common Struggle

It’s no secret: no brand wants to be seen as the one that doesn’t value innovation. That’s why in a recent report from McKinsey, 84% of corporate executives claimed innovation is “key to achieving growth objectives.” Yet of those same executives, only 6% were satisfied with the “innovation performance” of their firm.

This is widely attributed to the fact that innovation is seen as a luxury, a “nice to have” asset rather than a core competency, and indeed, one that can fundamentally detract from operational efficiency in the here-and-now.

But this is simply a misconception, and an opportunity hiding in plain sight.

AI-machine learning

Sow Innovation, Reap Returns

Look, we are not going to tell you not to focus on ROI. No business person worth his or her salt would. But in this case, it is helpful to think of ROI not just as Return on Investment, but as Return on Innovation, as well.

ROI is generally maximized by making continuous, incremental improvements in efficiency, thereby realizing a competitive advantage. And do you know what that is? Innovation.

Innovation can be a scary word, but it doesn’t necessarily mean monumental, gigantic, moonshot-level change. Innovators – and partners who know how to sniff out innovation – can often find clever ways to optimize efficiencies that have been hiding right in plain sight. Little tweaks here and there, slight changes to well-trod processes, at an enterprise level all add up to improvements in your bottom line that will have you hailed as a visionary innovator.

At the other end of the spectrum, corporations should not shy away from big, innovative ideas only because the return on their investment is more protracted and less guaranteed. Technology and a changing global economy are bringing disruption to each and every sector, and it’s already here for consumer packaged goods companies. When the round peg of disruption comes for the square hole of your tried-and-true processes, you’ll wish you had invested in innovation sooner. Return on investment in innovative research in the public sector is already estimated to be between 30% and 100%.

Innovation Solves Problems, Not Ideas

Innovation is not some highfalutin, head-in-the-clouds, abstract concept. It is about solving problems. That’s it.

Organizations that develop a systematic and disciplined process for identifying new problems outside of traditional methods are more frequently able to innovate consistently over an extended period of time. Establishing a framework for analyzing problems and minimizing bottlenecks in operational efficiency, or working with a trusted partner who specializes in doing so, is exactly how you embed sustainable innovation deep within the DNA of your company.

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Why NVISION?

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

Shoppers’ Emotions

Shoppers’ Emotions and the In-Store Experience

As more and more customers opt to conduct an ever-larger portion of their shopping online, brands are realizing the value of shifting, rather than diminishing, the role of their brick-and-mortar retail stores.

That’s according to a new report conducted by YouGov and GPShopper, which examined shoppers’ emotions as they browse retail stores and what brands can do to leverage shoppers’ emotional responses to increase revenue and brand loyalty.

“Retailers must deliver a convenient shopping experience that also sparks a little excitement and brand loyalty,” says Maya Mikhailov, CMO of GPShopper. She’s absolutely right, and this is how brands can – and should – use print materials, in-store displays, and point-of-sale marketing promotions to drive that valuable emotional response.

The Value of Retail-to-Online Revenue

According to the survey, 86% of shoppers will give preference to a store where they can try out products in person and then make a purchase online. As we’ve discussed before, the increased shift to online shopping is compelling retailers to re-think the role of their brick-and-mortar stores. More and more shrewd brands are discovering and leveraging the value of using their retail spaces as showrooms for their products, treating them as fully three-dimensional branded experiences.

By using relevant and compelling print materials, in-store displays, and point-of-sale materials, brands can use their retail stores to drive revenue through omnichannel marketing efforts, even if that revenue is eventually realized online.

cashier handing credit card back to customer - sales person

Which Emotions Should Retailers Cultivate In-Store?

First, it’s important to understand what shoppers are currently feeling. According to the survey, 10% of customers report feeling “frustrated” upon walking into retail stores, with confusing displays and promotions that don’t always match the ones they saw online. This disconnect between a brand’s different shopping channels hurts brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. By taking steps to make sure that the physical marketing experience is aligned and consistent with the digital experience, brands can ensure continuity and help reduce customer frustration.

Perhaps worst of all, the single-most reported emotion according to the survey was “Nothing” (40%). While a lack of emotion is not strictly the same as a negative emotion, this statistic is concerning for a different reason: it indicates that retailers are failing to maximize the value of their retail space through dynamic and compelling display materials. In hyper-competitive retail markets, “beige” is death for brands that need ways to stand out.

In fact, only 20% of customers reported feeling “excited” about their retail experience, and barely 12% felt “satisfied.” These are exactly the emotions brands should be trying to create in their brick-and-mortar spaces.

What Can Stores Do Better?

“Retailers need to begin experimenting with new, innovative options for their locations, because this is ultimately what consumers are looking for,” Mikhailov advises. And the results of the survey bear this out.

85% of shoppers like to see product recommendations based upon customer reviews. Retailers can win major brand loyalty and revenue by creating and deploying in-store displays that leverage their online reviews. This type of omnichannel synergy is exactly what retailers should be leveraging. “The research tells us that digital channels, like mobile, are still siloed from the in-store experience, rather than being used to augment the reality of stores,” Mikhailov says. “Consumers are clearly comfortable with ‘experience centers,’” that offer a three-dimensional, cross-channel experience.

Additionally, 80% of customers like being able to purchase a product online, and then be treated to an emotional “experience” when they pick it up in-store.

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“Developing an emotional connection with a brand, experience, or store staff can be the difference between creating a loyal customer and pushing them toward online or offline competitors,” Mikhailov concludes.

By harnessing the power of print materials, banners, and other physical point-of-sale marketing materials, brands can translate their carefully cultivated in-store experiences into significant online sales revenue, and vice versa.`

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Why NVISION?

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.

LEARN MORE