Addressing the opportunities and challenges of print and marketing collateral.
Welcome to the Dove Direct Print and Marketing Blog. Today’s post, “Marketing Home Runs from 1st Half - 2018” highlights some of the top marketing trends that have come to light in the first half of 2018. We are now officially operating in the last half of 2018 and businesses should be taking advantage of both current trends, as well as, trends that are developing and expected to impact 2019.
Marketing trends in and of themselves are a far cry from establishing company strategies, but nonetheless serve as a window of what’s actually driving revenue and how to take advantage of consumer interests based on the latest trends. To that end, the more actionable information available for organizations to make informed strategic marketing decisions, the higher the probability for successful outcomes.
For those of you who celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, we at Dove Direct would like to take this moment to thank our readers and wish all a safe, happy and exciting Fourth of July celebration!
The following excerpts are taken from a selection of posts created during the first half of 2018. We've pulled, what we believe, to be the most valuable highlights and we trust that you will find the review invaluable as well. So let's get started.
Direct Mail Resurgence
Direct mail has seen a resurgence in recent years and the marketing trends indicate that using direct mail in any marketing initiative is a must-have and a difference maker. Here are a few points that we want to reiterate about direct mail:
Martech
We’ve now graduated from ad tech to martech, which is the buzzword that now represents marketing technology, or better yet, the intersection where marketing meets technology and they proceed to stroll down the proverbial marketing road, hand in hand, offering a better marketing solution experience in a digital world.
Morgan Stanely’s 2016 "Software Eating the CMO Suite" report uncovered five technology implementation challenges marketers are facing by percentages:
In looking at technology implementation from yet another perspective, Steve Nakata of the Pedowitz Group states, “Marketers must know what they actually have and how well it’s integrated with the rest of the different areas of the organization before they go out and start looking for new technology to bring into the house.”
Cultural Branding And Brand Spam
As crowd-culture is maturing into many sub-cultures, Douglas Holt, president of the Cultural Strategy Group now sees the strategy for reaching these groups to be ‘cultural branding.’ Recent studies and reports have determined that consumers show minimal interest in branded content, hence the term, ‘brand spam’ enters the marketing conversation fray. Further, Facebook and others have deemed that ‘brand spam’ also viewed as clutter, is the primary reason why companies are being charged for sponsor positions being fed into user feeds, the same feeds of folks who are supposed to be supporters of the brand.
Branding in the digital age comes with a variety of techniques, including some which are considered old-school tactics. Uncovering the mindsets of crowdsources and their respective sub-sets is the key to being able to position one’s brand correctly with those consumers. In addition, branding in the digital age actually focuses on a new term, that being ‘cultural branding.’ Think about that for a moment. If you are electing to promote a novel, authentic ideology gleaned from a crowdsource, then in effect you are actually in the process of cultural branding.
Mobile Usage and the Wrike Report
The Wrike's (software provider) December 2015 survey produced even more supporting data that mobile usage among U.S. professionals was beginning to rise. This consequential data outcome pointed to a trend that U.S. professionals were not only using mobile in greater numbers for business activities, but were also using mobile devices for business-related content for educational purposes. Some interesting data highlights from the Wrike report include:
Adding Promotions to Existing Transactional Documents
The beauty of using transpromo marketing concepts has a number of advantages. In fact, promoting marketing messages using transaction-related documents rises above the advantages of most other promotions. These are just a few of the advantages:
Developing Compelling B2B Trademark Stories
One of the most effective ways to refresh the brand is to provide new visibility and energy with the introduction of new trademark stories. Similar to marketing campaign strategies, where frequency is the determining factor associated with creating mindshare, or brand retention, multiple stories can provide depth, texture and breadth for the brand image.
It is without a doubt a challenging proposition for a brand’s marketing message to include all the various facets and brand depth to be included across multiple storylines. Therefore, care should be taken to avoid staff concerns with being able to successfully manage them. In lieu of story management concerns, the following short list should help with those issues:
B2B Content Marketing is Growing Up
The following numbers demonstrate what the report uncovered regarding content type usage by the B2B marketing community. These marketing medium tools represent the direction of what most successful B2B marketers are using. By the numbers these are the top 6 growth areas that B2B marketers are committed to:
Content Marketing Commitment
A report conducted by the Content Marketing Institute along with MarketingProfs, demonstrated that going forward, 80% of B2B marketers are going to focus on growing their audiences. The survey included 870 North American B2B marketers inclusive of various company sizes and industry sectors. Which leads to this excerpt on Content Marketing Ratings Year Over Year:
B2B Content Marketing Successes
The following percentages highlight what the Content Marketing Institute's report uncovered regarding content successes submitted by the B2B marketing community. These success percentages represent the how successful B2B marketers are rating their content usage. The report did query how B2B marketers rate the success of their organization’s overall content marketing approach:
Improving Market Share
B2C and B2B sectors are moving toward human to human targeting in the personalization marketing game, and to that end, all of the above excerpts form a roadmap of sorts to building personalization strategies for marketing initiatives across the board. These aforementioned marketing trend excerpts should greatly aid any brand’s quest for improving ROI for the remainder of 2018.
The Net-Net
Marketing techniques and strategies are changing and refocusing due to the Internet of Things, and most importantly, the offshoot of advanced technologies that allow consumer to consumer to brand and back conversations. Brands that fail to adopt any of these 2018 marketing trends are only asking for an unhappy ending. Hit a Home Run with Happy Strategic 2018 Marketing Trend Development!
Let’s have a conversation about direct mail strategies, printing, print software, transactional documents, variable digital printing, brand equity and unified marketing collateral during our next Open House. We invite you to join us on Thursday, July 26th, 2018, anytime between 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. Let us show you how to improve your document processes to optimize your workflow, reduce your costs, and maximize your organization’s printing, letter shop and mailing capabilities. Dove Direct does have an official USPS certified bureau located within our offices that will save you time and money. And, if you bring us your files, we will create a demo file for you. For more information call Carla Eubanks at 404-629-0122 or email Carla at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Dove Direct, your Atlanta based print and mail solutions provider offers organizations end-to-end data, printing and mailing solutions: Data Management, Variable Digital Printing, LetterShop and Fulfillment, Fully Automated MLOCR Presort Bureau, Marketing and Production Management Support and Secure Data Life Cycle Management.
If you don't want to wait for the Open House, you can reach Dove Direct today by calling 404-629-0122 or use the contact form for Dove Direct.
Leland Hicks is the CTO of MatterMax Media, a digital marketing agency that provides business strategy, web design, social media management and training. He can be reached at lahicks@mattermaxmedia.com
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