Tag

Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 6 - NVISION, A BradyPLUS Company

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

Three CPG Market Trends to Watch Out for in 2019 and Beyond

The consumer packaged goods market is constantly evolving. While the use of technology remains an integral part of customer outreach, it’s most effective when partnered with physical marketing tactics.

This is creating new challenges for brand marketers when it comes to driving the customer in-store through an online platform and personalizing their experience through brick-and-mortar methods to improve conversion rates. The better their in-store experience, the more loyal they’ll grow to your brand.

According to Deloitte in their 2019 Consumer Products Outlook report, “The continued growth of direct-to-consumer brands, the reemergence of pop-up stores, and online retailers developing a brick-and-mortar presence are all accelerated by the deployment of disruptive technologies, creating more avenues for brands to have a dialogue with consumers.”

So, what can brand marketers do to drive sales and maximize profits in coming years?

Open Pop-Up Stores

Pop-up stores are trending in 2019. In pop-up stores, customers can directly engage with your brand without you having to invest in the overhead costs of a conventional retail store.

The temporary nature of pop-up stores creates a fun experience that gets customers excited to shop. With every single item “available for a limited time only” by default, pop-ups evoke a sense of urgency to shoppers to make more purchases.

Pop-up stores are especially beneficial during peak sales times, such as the holidays. They present a great opportunity to utilize physical marketing materials like creative signage and POS displays to drive customers into your store and increase demand.

mall-shop-high-conversion

Establish Both Online and Brick-and-Mortar Presences

In 2019, a number of exclusively online brands are developing brick-and-mortar stores. There’s no denying that the majority of customers prefer to “experience” products before making purchases, and the best way to capitalize on that is to open physical stores.

Deloitte’s report explains, “From an e-retailer’s point of view, the benefits of having a presence in physical stores can include:

  • Minimizing costs associated with product marketing, delivery, and returns.
  • Being able to access shopping data.
  • Centralizing procurement of niche/regional products and merchandising.”

Traditional stores are also important because directly engaging with customers is the most effective way to learn what they prefer in a retail shopping experience.

Then, you can personalize the experience and tailor it to them. It’s just not possible to give customers that same level of brand connection through e-commerce alone.

smart packaging

Focus on Smart Brand Packaging

Modern-day shoppers are growing increasingly conscious of what’s inside the items they purchase. As a result, smart packaging is a significant new trend that is beginning to dominate the consumer packaged goods industry.

Smart packaging involves creating labels that detail the contents and related health benefits of a product. Specialty items such as those that are organic, gluten-free, and fair-trade are attractive to modern consumers. So, packaging that conveniently and clearly shows these features can drive higher sales.

This is a potential avenue to target consumers’ lifestyle preferences, which in turn creates more chances to build brand loyalty. Essentially, if the customers trust your product, the more likely they are to keep buying it.

By coupling the opening of physical retail stores with the right kind of physical marketing assets, your brand can reach new consumer audiences while simultaneously maintaining the loyalty of your current ones.

*****

New trends are dominating the market in 2019 and forecasted to continue driving the retail industry into the next level. Pop-up stores are providing a fun, temporary environment that drives demand generation among shoppers. Online brands are opening up physical stores to give customers the full “experience.” And the revolution of smart packaging is changing the way brands communicate product value to audiences.

By understanding these emerging market trends, brands can thrive on new opportunities by directly engaging with consumers through various touchpoints in their retail journey.

And by working with a trusted partner who can help you take advantage of these new opportunities in market trends, your brand can compete on the quality and effectiveness of delivering value to your customers.

Related blogs:

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
NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing ROI, Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Performance Measurement, Marketing Strategy, Online shopping, E-Commerce

Three Ways to Make Your POP Pop!

It’s no secret to anyone that as retail marketing technology has begun to transform in-store displays, it is also changing how retailers leverage those displays. According to an Inc.com report, 40 percent of shoppers still make in-store purchases at least once a week. And with so much revenue still flowing through brick-and-mortar retail spaces, one of the biggest ways marketers are seeking to capitalize this business is point-of-purchase (POP) displays.

That’s according to the experts at ThomasNet.com, who explain that POP displays are on the cutting edge of creating new, compelling customer experiences that encourage brand loyalty and drive greater in-store revenue. So, what does a truly exceptional POP display need to have?

three female shoppers-retail

Good POP Displays Are Interactive

Interactive experiences are not only the key to an effective POP display but the secret to a winning in-store retail experience in general. As we’ve discussed on this blog before, brick-and-mortar retailers are embracing the move towards transforming their stores into “experience centers,” where customers can interact with and experience a brand’s products in a way that online shopping just can’t match.

“The option to touch, feel, or test products when applicable is paramount to purchasing decisions,” ThomasNet says. In fact, 61 percent of consumers like trying on the item or actually seeing it in person before committing to an item, according to an Inc.com report. So whatever else your POP displays accomplish, make sure they give your shoppers something to physically interact with.

POP Displays Should Showcase Your Brand Identity

Your retail space is a brand’s world. Everything in it represents what your brand stands for, from the signage colors and materials to the music. And that includes your POP display.

“POP displays should give consumers a taste of the brand the product represents. Consumers in younger generations, especially, are looking to feel a connection with the products they buy—they want to feel good about the purchases they make,” ThomasNet explains.

You should use your POP displays to further your brand’s identity. What does your brand stand for in the minds of consumers? By customizing your POP displays, you can project whatever values represent your brand, from minimalism to environmentalism to outrageousness.

commercial printing

POP Displays Create Personal Connections

Especially among Millennial shoppers – who make up a larger and larger percentage of the buying public every day – personal connections can lead to long-lasting brand loyalty.

And POP displays are an excellent way to foster those connections. Maybe your POP display showcases “how Brand X shoppers have removed 10,000 tons of plastic waste from the oceans” by buying your recycled fashion products. Or perhaps you use it to show “real people enjoying Brand Y’s products at concerts and music festivals,” in order to let shoppers personally imagine their lives with your product.

“They want to have a medium to connect with the world around them and the causes they care about when they make purchasing decisions. Through showcasing aspects of a business that highlight these things, a retailer or marketer can anticipate a positive consumer response,” ThomasNet explains.

*****

By understanding the changing role of brick-and-mortar retail spaces as customer experience centers, brand marketers can start to leverage the true power of POP displays. And by working with a trusted partner who can deliver highly customized and unique POP displays, on-time and on-budget, your brand can compete and win on the quality of your retail customer experiences.

Related blogs:

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
NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In CMO, Marketing ROI, Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Performance Measurement, Marketing Strategy, Accountability

Top Brand Marketing Trends for 2019

people looking up-crowd

2019 is set to be a game-changing year for brand marketers. Between a rapidly shifting political landscape and fast increases in marketing technology, the way marketers do their jobs – and how brands connect with their customers – is likely to witness some major new trends that they’ll need to be prepared for to capitalize on.

That’s according to an article by Michael Stone, published in Forbes that while “we live in a time of radical transformation” of the retail space, savvy marketers can still prepare themselves for success.

So, what significant trends are set to shape the marketing landscape in 2019?

broadway street view with storefront signs

Merging Online and In-Store Customer Journeys

One of the biggest marketing trends set to continue well beyond 2019 is the merging of an online and in-store customer retail journeys.

As Stone says, “the blurring of online and offline retail will continue at an increased pace.” This is made possible in large part due to advances in customer data tracking and analysis. Thanks to a multi-channel understanding of a customer’s interactions with your brand, you can drive them either to your brick-and-mortar space or your e-commerce website by offering personalized deals through either channel.

At any rate, brands will need to ensure both their digital and in-store marketing are in healthy, fighting shape, as competition continues to grow from retailers moving from one space into the other (like Amazon’s move into brick-and-mortar, and Walmart’s robust online shopping platform). Stone explains: “Retailers will not [be able to] sit still as they continue to up their game.”

Creating Compelling In-Store Experiences

As we’ve discussed on the NVISION blog before, one of the most interesting retail marketing trends is the growing appeal of transforming retail stores into “experience centers.”

With online shopping and e-commerce becoming easier and faster every day (especially with services that offer next-day or even same-day delivery), brands must find new ways to draw customers into their brick-and-mortar stores. To do so, they are creating experience centers, where customers can physically touch, try, handle, and use the company’s products, and even test them in a real-world environment.

“Brands will continue to look for ways to ‘pull’ customers into the brand rather than ‘pushing’ the brand at them,” Stone explains, “such as creatively driven pop-up stores; new, permanent mono-branded stores; malls featuring spa services, tailoring, and personal stylists; branded hotels; themed restaurants; and themed exhibits. Brands and consumers will become more ‘entangled.’”

And as the popularity of these brick-and-mortar experiences grows, so too will the need for brands to create, produce, and deliver their physical marketing materials on-time, on-budget, and with empowered flexibility.

woman holding shopping bags walking

Brands Taking Positions in a Shifting Political Landscape

For years, brands were told to “stay in your lane” and athletes were told to “stick to sports.” But 2019 promises to be a year where much of the rules around marketing and politics change.

As Stone points out, many brands have been “forced” to take a stand politically, citing the example of many brands pulling their support (and advertising dollars) and “abandoning the NRA following the shooting last February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.”

Other have chosen to take a stand and roll the dice both financially and politically, such as Nike did in 2018 when it made former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick its spokesperson.

“Brands are increasingly aware that younger consumers want their brands to take a position and to have a purpose,” Stone writes. And whether that position is something fairly uncontroversial – like using sustainable manufacturing processes or promoting female executives to leadership roles – or whether it is a new hot-button issue for 2019 (like the widespread legalization of the marijuana industry in the U.S. and Canada), customers want their brands to stand for something.

*****

2019 will be a year of new trends and changes for marketers everywhere. Between a shifting political landscape and the continued blurring of the online and in-store retail spaces, having flexible and reliable marketing operations will allow many brands to capitalize on these changing trends and post record-breaking years. And that’s a trend we can all hope for.

Related blogs:

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

Top Ways ABM Is Creating Opportunities for CMOs

Think of traditional marketing as fishing with a net – designed to reach as broad and wide as possible to snare any potential deals of all sizes. This works well if your goal is not to miss any opportunities but ultimately leads to significant waste.

Then there is ABM or account-based marketing. Compared to traditional marketing, ABM is like spearfishing – targeting only the ideal accounts that are most likely to close and/or generate the most revenue. That’s why, according to a recent report by ITSMA, 87 percent of companies state that ABM delivers a higher ROI than traditional marketing.

So, why should CMOs care about ABM in 2019? Jon Miller of Engagio explains some of the best reasons.

professional meeting - ABM

Better Alignment With Sales

One of the most common frustrations CMOs face is a lack of alignment with sales teams. With different goals, KPIs, and responsibilities, marketing teams often find themselves pursuing one thing while sales is actively pursuing another.

The result? Your prospects receive mixed messages and inconsistent marketing materials. That weakens your brand. But with ABM, marketing and sales are more fully aligned. With a small selection of specific, hand-picked accounts, CMOs can produce marketing materials that are more personalized, targeted, and branded just for those accounts. Marketing and sales are now working in tandem, sharing the same goal of landing those identified accounts.

And that means better ROI for CMOs. In fact, according to SiriusDecisions, sales and marketing alignment can drive up to 36 percent more business growth and 27 percent faster profit growth.

Stronger Brand Recognition

Related to the “waste” associated with traditional marketing methods mentioned above, even the strength of your brand can get lost in the shuffle. For every mass email blast that reaches an audience it wasn’t intended for, your brand is seen as inaccurate, irrelevant, or – worst of all – pitching a message that you did not intend for that customer to hear.

“ABM allows [CMOs] to establish and cultivate trust with your customers, thereby building a strong brand over time,” Miller explains. “If you take the time to utilize the core tenants of ABM, and send a personal and relevant message to a targeted audience,” you are able to portray your brand as an authority, a trusted advisor, and an approachable resource. That specificity and intentionality strengthen your brand.

brand idea poster - onsite services

Marketing Guides the Customer Journey

ABM is a “land and expand” type of strategy. It involves identifying and targeting accounts that are not only ideal new customers but that present likely upselling and cross-selling opportunities as well. “ABM guides intelligent account expansion at existing customer accounts,” Miller says. “In ABM, all customer-facing teams work in harmony to ensure a buyer’s experience is positive, consistent, and in context with the rest of the account.”

This means that ABM uniquely puts CMOs in charge of creating the customer’s journey since CMOs are the best-qualified people in most organizations to safely steward the brand’s identity and value propositions across multiple channels.

“It is about providing a holistic view of each account, coordinating interactions across departments for every stage of the customer experience, and measuring results with an account-centric lens,” Miller continues. “The right person to own the coordination and orchestration of the relationships is [the CMO] because they have the technology and skills to do so.” ABM presents savvy CMOs with an opportunity to apply their strategic expertise to real-world account-based campaigns.

*****

Account-based marketing, or ABM, is changing how marketers generate leads for the better. With this new focused, granular outlook, ABM presents CMOs with several exciting opportunities to improve both the public perception of their brands and the operational effectiveness of their marketing departments. And that can lead to better ROI, more qualified leads, and stronger revenue forecasts.

Related blogs:

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
NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Building Products, Marketing ROI, Marketing Supply Chain, Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Performance Measurement, Marketing Operations, Marketing Strategy, Accountability

The Top Building Materials Trends for 2019

The 2019 NAHB International Builders Show is around the corner and NVISION is gearing up to be there!

S&P Global recently released its Building Materials Industry Top Trends 2019, highlighting some of the key trends, takeaways, and forecasts the building materials industry will be keeping its eye on this year, and especially at IBS 2019.

Based on the trends report, here are our three key takeaways that all building materials industry leaders should know!

steel rods - building materials

Commodity Costs Will Continue to Grow

As the report points out, commodity costs for the building industry in North America rose in 2018 for several reasons, including decreasing unemployment, new tariffs, and increased demand. And S&P Global expects those same factors to continue to drive commodity prices up in 2019.

“So far, most building materials companies have been able to offset the cost increases with higher pricing, but it remains to be seen if companies can continue to maintain higher prices in 2019,” the report says. With S&P Global predicting a 3 percent increase in building materials costs in 2019, the building materials industry will need to look at cutting costs and optimizing their supply chains to offset this increase in prices and maintain their margins without continuing to raise prices.

Increased Prices Could Slow the Building Materials Recovery

As the report states, low inventory, higher home prices, and higher interest rates may be pushing marginally qualified homebuyers out of the North American market. This, S&P Global says, could bring a halt to the building materials recovery. “Existing home sales (a big driver of repair and remodel activity) could slow if values remain high and available inventory low,” the report claims. With fewer pre-existing homes being purchased, fewer old houses will be getting remodeled and repaired by new homeowners, and that means less business for building materials companies.

With building materials companies competing for homeowners with fewer dollars to spend – or with new construction townhomes that don’t need remodeling – they will need to find other ways to protect their margins, including finding ways to cut costs and compete on the customer experience with enhanced agility and responsiveness.

home building site

The Building Materials Market is Healthy, But with Growing Risk

When it comes to the numbers, the S&P Global report predicts modest growth in the North American building materials market. “We expect 2.3 percent real GDP growth, 3.6 percent unemployment, and 1.3 million housing starts. We further expect mid-single-digit growth in repair and remodeling activity, and only 2.8 percent growth in nonresidential construction,” the report states.

As a result, S&P Global is predicting another year of improved sales and earnings for building materials companies. But, the report says, “with much less growth than in 2016 and 2017.”  What’s more, due to the affordability and availability issues of new homes mentioned above, S&P Global warns that housing starts could actually retreat slightly in 2019. To combat this problem, many builders will “attempt to address this by offering more value-based entry-level housing,” which will present an enormous opportunity to building materials companies who are able – thanks to a nimble, efficient supply chain – to offer reduced prices on materials and faster delivery timelines.

*****

The 2019 NAHB International Builders Show promises to be one to remember. With these trends in mind, building materials companies will want to be on the lookout for experienced partners who can help them cut costs and better optimize their supply chain management in order to capitalize on this shifting market.

NVISION will be there, and we hope to see you!

Related blogs:

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