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Customer Experience Archives - Page 4 of 4 - NVISION, A BradyPLUS Company

NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In CMO, Marketing Trends, Marketing Operations

Top Emerging Challenges Facing CMOs in 2018

Man pointing finger on the marketing materials on the desk in the meeting

As Summer 2018 approaches and brands are preparing to make their marketing pushes to capitalize on the summer spending season, it’s not just sunscreen and cook-outs on the minds of marketers. That’s according to Emily Cross at the World Advertising Research Center (WARC), who explains that there are five (5) main areas where CMOs are facing new challenges, exactly what potential dangers those challenges pose, and how savvy marketers can overcome them. So let’s take a look at some of the challenges CMOs are facing in 2018, and how smart brands are dealing with them.

Digital Transparency: the Real Numbers

Digital is the hot word on the lips of CMOs right now. Omnichannel expansion and the Internet of Things are revolutionizing how marketers target and reach their audiences. But there are some pitfalls with digital as well. Namely, that ROI and revenue can be much more difficult to attribute with digital versus print. That’s why WARC says that most brands cite “digital measurement” and transparency as the number one issue in their marketing plans. In fact, 30% of those polled expect to cut their digital spend in 2018 if these issues aren’t alleviated.

So, how can smart CMOs protect themselves and their brands?

  • Take proactive steps to minimize risk
  • Prioritize ad visibility over duration
  • Explore more traditional channels

Customer Experience: Superior and Competitive

In increasingly crowded marketplaces, more and more brands are setting themselves apart by delivering a superior, highly personalized customer experience. And the reasons are obvious. Modern consumers will actually give preference to brands that offer them personalized experiences. In fact, 80% of consumers state they are more likely to engage with a brand if it offers personalized customer experiences, and customers will shop 3x as frequently if it provides experiences personalized to them. That’s why, according to WARC, 53% of brands will prioritize CX in their marketing strategy for 2018.

So, how can CMOs position themselves to compete – and win – on the customer experience?

  • Understand CX is a whole customer journey, not one touchpoint
  • Structure teams, operations, and supply chains to execute
  • Use data intelligently to create a full view of the customer
brand idea poster - onsite services

Defining Your Brand Purpose

Everyone is searching for a purpose in life. But according to WARC, many brands are, too. As the lines between politics, world events, and marketing continue to blur thanks in part to social media, many CMOs are seeing purpose-driven advertisements as a powerful way to associate their brand with issues that matter to their customers, winning their loyalty.

Which explains why WARC reports a 300% increase in purpose-driven ads from the top 100 global brands in the last five years. But when purpose-driven marketing misses the mark, its backlash can be loud and damaging. Authenticity is key.

So, how can CMOs leverage their brand purpose wisely?

  • Keep it rooted in your brand’s current, actual values
  • Support long-term brand building and customer loyalty
  • Respond rapidly to popular trends; don’t wait too long and miss them

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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 Hospitality, Marketing Trends

Top Trends in Hospitality Marketing for 2018

napkin-on-table-hospitality

The hospitality and travel industry is a trillion-dollar business, according to Deloitte. As with any lucrative industry, hospitality has become highly competitive, with large chain brands and independent boutique hoteliers competing for customers’ time, attention, and dollars.

And while the way that brands across all industries market themselves begins to change with the rise of digital and other channels, the hospitality industry would be wise to keep an eye on a few trends. That’s according to Jason Dent at Campaign Monitor, who explains some of the biggest new opportunities for hospitality marketers.

Personalized Customer Experiences

The more data you have about your customers, the more you can tailor their experiences in ways that truly wow them, add value to their stay, and win over their loyalty. For example, by leveraging information about their booking dates (are they near a specific holiday or anniversary?) their check in information (are they newlyweds with a single room or business colleagues with a double?), and any host of preferences they can opt-in to providing to you, you can offer them customized onsite experiences.

Whether you want to make the newlyweds aware of the couples massages available at your onsite spa, or let the business travelers know you have a fully-stocked internet café and lounge, when you understand your customers, you can market to them in the ways they love. With a highly responsive marketing supply chain, you can make it a reality.

gen-z-holding arms together

Point-of-Sale and Moment Marketing

The unique thing about hospitality marketing is that it’s one of the only industries where, generally speaking, you know exactly who is going to show up where and when. This gives brands with agile marketing operations a powerful opportunity to create compelling moments at check-in and at the point-of-sale. For example, if you know you will be hosting numerous attendees for the same conference or convention, signage and banners in the lobbying welcoming them and promoting certain amenities are strong ways to show you value their business.

This also enables highly agile cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. If your data shows that John Q. Guest often likes to have a drink at the hotel bar, or order room service, a personalized gift card waiting at check-in entitling him to a free drink or appetizer is a great way to encourage him to continue to spend money, and return as a loyal customer.

Millennial Loyalty

According to Forbes, Millennials now make up a bigger portion of travel and hospitality customers than any other generation. That means that understanding and catering to this demographic is of major importance. Millennials feel very strongly about the brands they love, and they are actually more prone to join and actively participate in consumer loyalty programs than other demographics.

To turn this fact into revenue, smart hospitality brands are investing in better integrating their loyalty programs into their marketing materials. Kiosks in the lobby where customers can easily opt-in; offering additional loyalty rewards points for activities Millennials prefer; using new technology like RFID scanners and QR codes to allow guests to link purchases to their loyalty accounts; these are all savvy ways that smart hospitality marketers are capitalizing on Millennial loyalty.

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Hospitality is big business, and that business is changing. By prioritizing the health, agility, and efficiency of your marketing supply chain, your brand can capture more revenue, and win more customer loyalty, than ever before.

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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
NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Marketing Strategy, CPG

The Omnichannel Future of CPG

How CPG brands can prepare for changing customer expectations.

Digital disruption has already begun to come to food retailers, and smart brands are adapting to these new realities.

That’s according to Julia Russell at SmartBrief, who states that today’s consumers, many of them digital natives, want on-demand, omnichannel access to their food that mirrors the level of responsiveness they’ve come to expect from other industries. Many of them prefer to look up a product online, then go find and purchase it in the store. Similarly, many of today’s consumers prefer to check out a product in person in the store, then buy it online at their convenience.

As Bobby Marhamat puts it, “Consumers want to be able to have access to merchants and information on their terms. It’s a matter of being available where the consumer wants to access that information and/or purchase from that merchant.”

But while many CPG brands count omnichannel transformation among their top priorities, there are important steps they must take to have a truly effective approach looking to the future.

A Uniform Foundation

One of the most important things a CPG brand can do to prepare for omnichannel success is ensure their customer experience is uniform across all channels.

Your brand’s mobile, online, and in-store experience should be set up the same way, so consumers can shop exactly how they’re used to, regardless of channel. This establishes a consistent brand experience and builds brand familiarity.

people looking up-crowd

Determine Your Brand Target

Brands should take the time to conceptualize their target buyer, and let that determine whether to pursue a mobile or online experience first. Further, ensuring that each channel is deeply embedded with the same experiences brands cultivate on their shelves is critical.

Russell says, “This is essential for allowing the brand to track their customers all the way throughout their buying experience.” As she explains, brands that let their customers make purchases via the channel they naturally prefer have a much higher occurrence of brand loyalty.

What’s more, brands that have a strong, uniform omnichannel strategy can allow their customers to purchase online, as well as in-store, and they can track those shoppers, analyze their behaviors, and market to them more effectively.

Partner With a Trusted Expert

CPG logistics are complex, and that complexity is increased tenfold when pursuing an omnichannel strategy.

But with complexity comes a multitude of opportunities to optimize, trim costs, and eliminate waste. A trusted partner with experience facilitating CPG marketing efforts can find those opportunities, and work with you to continue to improve critical flows, save you time, costs, and give you the ability to be responsive and ready for whatever your customers demand.

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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

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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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
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.`

Subscribe to the Blog

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