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ROI Archives - NVISION, A BradyPLUS Company

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.

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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.

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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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Belief-Driven Brands: Reshaping Retail Landscape in 2019

be the change - brand activism

Consumers today are more plugged into social issues and concerns than any group since the 1960s. And that impacts the way they shop, too. That’s according to a new Edelman’s report  “Brands Take A Stand,” which examines how belief-driven purchases are reshaping the retail landscape in 2019. So, how can brands take a stand in the new year, while also helping their bottom lines stand tall?

gen-z-holding arms together

Brands Can Drive Revenue by Standing for Something

For a long time, the prevailing logic was that a brand’s marketing should not ruffle any feathers. If there was political or social turmoil in the air, your branding should avoid it, and instead focus solely on the merits of your product. But as the name of the Edelman report suggests, the market is changing, and brand marketing is changing with it.

“Consumers’ purchases are becoming more and more belief-driven, particularly over the past year,” the report states. “In every market surveyed, more consumers were taking a brand’s mission and activism into account when making decisions about what to buy.” The report suggests that not only should brands not avoid social activism, but in fact should embrace it as a new driver of revenue in 2019.

“Taking a stand, no matter the cause is no longer something brands can shy away from if they want to be at the forefront of consumers’ minds,” the report says. And Edelman CEO Richard Edelman agrees, saying that “purchasing activism” is a simple and effective way for shoppers to feel like they’re making a difference.

“People go with their pocketbooks, in a way,” Edelman explains. “They want business to take the lead on change, and they want to feel as if they’re making an impact.”

green initiative-sustainability

The Bottom Line is The Bottom Line for Brand Activism

Brands used to steer away from activism because it would hurt their bottom lines. For each shopper who was happy with that brand’s stance, there were likely to be two or three more who either didn’t care or chose to boycott the brand for that same stance. The numbers didn’t pan out. It just didn’t make good business sense.

But all that has changed, as the cultural zeitgeist has shifted back towards activism, especially as Millennials and Generation Z make up more and more of the market (approximately 40% of all consumers and over $1.4 trillion in buying power by 2020). And, according to the Edelman report, businesses can now bolster their bottom lines by investing in brand activism.

The report reveals, 65% of global consumers are making belief-driven purchases. That’s a 50% increase over last year – an enormous shift. It also found that an estimated 57% of American consumers are currently buying or boycotting at least one brand because of its position on social issues. A similar study by Havas Media reports that belief-driven brands outperformed the overall stock market by 120% this year and that the top 50 belief-driven brands outperformed the overall S&P 500 index by more than 1200%. The bottom line is clear: for brands, the time is now to take a stand and bolster revenue with belief-driven marketing.

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The common marketing logic for brands used to be avoiding activism and belief-driven advertising. But not anymore. Today, brands must take a stand to win an ever-increasing portion of the consumer population. By doing so, they can not only improve their revenue but can win lasting, powerful brand loyalty that is built upon something greater than the color or quality of a product.

And that’s the bottom line.

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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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Top Trends for Influencer Marketing: Are Your Audiences Under the Right Influence?

influencer marketing

“Why should I trust you?”

This is the question from customers that even the best marketing departments dread. Because after all, why should a prospect or a customer believe marketers are telling the truth when their clear intention is for their audience to spend money on their products.

Studies have shown that overall consumer confidence in the trustworthiness of corporate marketing is declining. According to some estimates, as much as 69% of consumers inherently distrust brand advertising, and 43% of respondents report that they trust brand advertising less than they used to.

Enter Influencer Marketing.

While consumer trust in brands has fallen off a cliff, trust in their fellow consumers has risen precipitously. 70% of shoppers state that they are influenced by recommendations from their peers and fellow “normal people.” In fact, consumers today are 30% more likely to purchase if it is recommended by a trusted influencer, rather than a celebrity. And 74% of consumers say that they do trust social media networks to guide them to purchase decisions.

This is where influencer marketing presents an enormous opportunity for smart companies. Let’s take a look at what Brandon Brown of Grin has identified as some of the biggest current trends in influencer marketing.

Retail Influencer Marketing Is Growing

From lifestyle to home décor to fashion, retail brands are embracing influencer marketing faster than any other segment. In fashion, for example, well-known brands like Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf Goodman, Zara, and Sephora are working with popular social media influencers to model their products and give audiences a taste of what they, too might look like in the featured clothes or cosmetics.

In fact, Lord & Taylor recently ran a successful campaign where they tapped 50 influencers to each post photos wearing the exact same dress and tagging it with a predetermined hashtag. The result? The dress sold out of every Lord & Taylor in America in three days. Retail brands should give influencer marketing heavy considering in their marketing plans.

people whiteboarding-marketing assessment

The Rise of B2B Influencer Marketing

The power and promise of influencer marketing isn’t just limited to retail and B2C brands, however. And one of the ingenious ways B2B brands are leveraging it is with employee advocacy programs. Over the last three years, employee advocacy programs among B2B brands have increased by 191%.

Employee advocacy programs offer the best of both worlds in influencer marketing. The brand, for its part, enjoys the trust, authenticity, and believability that only real social media advocacy from real employees can garner. The employees themselves, on the other hand, benefit from the increased “professionalism” that such content brings to their social media pages.

The fact is that B2B brands need to capture the attention of their audiences, and more so, they need to do it in a way that is authentic and lasting. Influencer marketing and employee advocacy programs are an efficient way to do both.

The Ability to Measure ROI Will Be Crucial

As with all marketing efforts, the ability to definitively prove the value and effect of influencer marketing programs will be critical to securing ongoing buy-in from key decision-makers within your organization.

Fortunately, many savvy brands are implementing clever ways to improve their ability to measure influencer marketing ROI. Just as many brands are linking their digital and print marketing channels with the use of custom URLs and promo codes, so too are they measuring influencer marketing ROI. On the simple end of the spectrum, fastidious use of one or two set hashtags for each campaign enables marketers to easily search the engagement of those hashtags.

Likewise, many brands are now distributing custom discount and coupon codes to their influencers, encouraging them to share them with their audiences. That way, whenever a customer enters that unique discount code, the brand can know for certain that they were referred by that particular influencer, and his or her promotional activities.

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As consumer trust in brands and marketing departments continues to plummet, B2B and B2C brands alike are turning to influencer marketing as a smart, cost-effective way to make their marketing budgets go further. If your brand is struggling with trust and authenticity, influencer marketing may be an excellent solution to consider.

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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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3 Marketing Tips to Deliver ROI Accountability

a hand with pencil on a calculator - ROI

For marketing teams everywhere, the name of the game is ROI. From budget to revenue to cost reduction, no figure reflects a CMO’s performance in the eyes of the C-Suite more than the return on investment. The best organizations don’t leave ROI to chance. In fact, they plan for it by building ROI accountability directly into their marketing plans. That’s according to Amy Gallo at Harvard Business Review, who explains that with discipline and foresight, marketing teams can give their ROI accountability a head start for the coming quarters.

Here are the top three tips for ROI accountability in marketing.

account-management-professional presenting in the meeting

Create a Single Point of Truth for Marketing Inventory and Resources

Taking stock of the assets, inventory, and resources at your disposal is a critical first step towards ROI accountability. Especially in larger organizations, this can be a challenge. With multiple vendors, distributors, delivery timelines, invoices, warehouses, and more, just getting a clear understanding of what’s at your fingertips can give even the bravest CMO pause.

Gallo goes further, explaining that for many organizations, it simply makes more sense to outsource this business process to an expert. “Recognize areas where it may be more cost effective to partner with an agency rather than trying to bootstrap a solution on your own,” she says. Think of this exercise as a sort of audit for your marketing procurement process. If you can’t see and understand every link in the supply chain, you simply cannot identify areas prime for optimization and cost reduction.

Build a Marketing Schedule That Sticks

Time can make fools of us all, but it doesn’t have to for your marketing organization. That’s why it’s so important to plan, establish, and stick to a schedule. Your team should do this upfront, before solidifying your strategy for the quarter.

“Set clear milestones and deadlines for each [asset]… We recommend scheduling team check-ins in advance around deadlines for key deliverables,” Gallo explains. Not only do these check-ins keep everyone accountable, but they help ensure that every member of your team knows what is expected of them and when, and gives them proactive opportunities to push back against unattainable deadlines.

But anyone can make a schedule. Sticking to it is the real key. In modern marketing, customer demands shift nearly every week. The ability to adhere to strict timelines helps guarantee that your marketing operations remain flexible, on-message, and poised to capitalize in a timely manner on any new development or opportunity. As noted above, business process outsourcing (BPO) for the procurement of physical marketing materials can help build this schedule. With experience and best practices around timelines and delivery, a trusted partner can provide both realistic deadlines and baked-in reporting, so visibility and accountability remain top priorities for your organization.

marketing management

Focus on Your Marketing Activities that Matter

This is another area where BPO can be hugely beneficial. Outsourcing generally provides higher ROI by applying expert talent, best practices, and buying power to your marketing operations, not only improving the effectiveness of your marketing materials, but also significantly lowering the costs of each procurement.

The C-Suite wants to see the bottom line. “Connect your marketing activities to ROI by tracking the path from strategy to tactic,” Gallo says. “Show how each step helps build a program that leads to a shared business goal.” Looping in a trusted partner can secure that bottom line, take unnecessary work off your already-full plate, and help ensure that marketing hits every one of the targets it outlines. With the support of the leadership team, marketing is free to aggressively pursue every opportunity.

Smart marketing teams always build ROI accountability directly into their marketing plans. By partnering with NVISION to optimize your marketing procurement and operations, you can stick to the plan.

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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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How Marketing and Procurement Can Work Together to Improve Revenue

There is no responsibility more important to marketing leaders than driving revenue. This can be done in two primary ways: growing existing revenue streams by acquiring new customers and improving customer retention, or by improving profit margins by effectively limiting costs. Nearly all marketers are focused on the former: “How do I win and retain more business?” But as Jon Smith of Marketing Week explains, there is another, even smarter way.

Procurement has a major role to play in managing revenue and marketing costs. So, how can marketing and procurement work together to improve revenue? We’re glad you asked!

people in the meeting room

Strategic Alignment for Procurement and Marketing

The name of the game for marketers today is accountability. Whether it’s in the form of revenue attribution, ROI, or highly granular cost analysis, new technology has made KPIs an even bigger part of marketers’ lives than ever before. As Worldwide Business Research Digital reports, “marketing teams are being held increasingly accountable for ROI.” Of course, for procurement teams, this level of accountability is nothing new. Cost reduction, optimization, and business process outsourcing (BPO) have been their primary job roles forever. Which is why aligning the goals of your marketing and procurement teams is so important.

Thanks to BPO, procurement can offer powerful solutions to marketing’s biggest problems. Solutions around time-to-market, brand control, cost reduction, and responsiveness are all under the purview of procurement but matter immensely to marketing as well. That’s likely why, according to WBR Digital, 51% of companies rely on BPO for marketing execution, especially around print production. By recognizing this natural synergy, and formalizing the alignment of their goals, procurement can help marketing departments do more with less.

Why BPO for Marketing Procurement?

Optimization can only follow where visibility exists. That’s why your marketing and/or procurement teams should always be looking for opportunities to achieve greater efficiency, optimization, and cost reduction through BPO. This visibility opens the door to more profitable outcomes. With reliable, granular information about marketing costs, delivery timelines, and critical areas to improve these figures, marketing can not only make more accurate predictions and plan for success, but can better understand – and subsequently optimize – how they maintain brand control, guarantee quality, and keep production velocity running smoothly.

As Smith says, it’s a “win-win” for marketing. With BPO carried out by marketing execution experts, your marketing team can focus on improving their customer experience and sales results, and leave the optimization to trusted partners.

meeting in the conference room

Marketing Execution and Print Procurement

According to WBR Digital, the majority of businesses already agree that they reap greater benefits from managing their print procurement externally. 58% of those surveyed believe that their supply chain and marketing execution partners do a better, more efficient, cost-effective job with print procurement for marketing materials. In fact, they identified the top 4 reasons why they prefer to outsource their print procurement to partners:

  1. Cost Reduction
  2. Improved time-to-market versus competition
  3. Better ROI
  4. Stronger brand and quality control

These are powerful benefits to marketers, made possible by outsourcing their print procurement.

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Procurement has a major role to play in managing revenue and marketing costs. By outsourcing it to a trusted partner, your business can enjoy the benefits of greater visibility, optimization, and success. Whether your marketing department measures success by ROI, cost reduction, or overall revenue, understanding the value of aligning your marketing and procurement goals, and the insights BPO can deliver, is a sure-fire way to increase your odds of hitting your annual goals.

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