Essential insights from Progressive Impressions International

2 0 1 5 V o l u m e T h r e e

START UPBRIAN’S

PLAN

Alan Watts, the great 20th century philosopher, once said, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

If you haven’t started to plunge, move and dance, now is the time. This issue of offers insight into some of the most dynamic changes occurring in our industry.

For example, the Big Bang Theory is turning the notion of rigorous marketing testing on its head. Today, it often makes sense to throw the proverbial handful of spaghetti against a wall and see what sticks — with little emotional or financial investment. Learn more on page 4.

Change is hard, but it can also be freeing. Turn to page 10 to read about the growth of mobile technology and the speed at which consumers are adopting a mobile-only lifestyle.

Even change is changing! Witness the enormous upheavals happening in social media. How will your interests align with your customers’ interests going forward? Check out page 8.

Get ready to plunge, move and dance. Contact me anytime, and let’s talk about ways to ensure your success in our ever-changing future.

Sincerely,

Let’s discuss what we can do for you.

Marketing requires more than product knowledge. It requires insight. It’s essential that you understand exactly where in the market your opportunities are and utilize the most effective communications to keep your company “top of mind” for customers and prospects alike.

Our purpose is to make you a better marketer

Let us show you how our targeted customer marketing programs achieve maximum results through:

■ Strategy & Analytics■ Marketing Technology ■ Production & Execution

Brian,

Ron Drenning Senior Vice President, Sales 800.883.1156 rdrenning@whateverittakes.com

800.883.1156

whateverittakes.com

© 2015 Progressive Impressions International. All Rights Reserved.

About the PublisherSince 1992, Progressive Impressions International (pii) has worked with corporate marketers to develop programs with personalization to support sales representatives working from local offices and stores. We have the resources to design, implement and update complete marketing solutions to keep pace with your changing needs. We specialize in maximizing customer relationships through education, cross-sell/upsell and channel marketing solutions to capture the full lifetime value of your customers.

Table of Contents

Balancing ActThe yin and the yang of SEO and social media

4

6

8

10

12

Mobile’s Momentous Momentum

Industry Insights

Making the move to a mobile-only mindset

News with impact for marketers today

Fantastic VoyageOur step-by-step guide to crafting an awesome customer journey

Even the Kitchen SinkPut Big Bang disruptions to work for you

Corporate Headquarters One Hardman Drive Bloomington, IL 61701 800.664.0444

A back-stage tour

1 in 50 chance to win a signed guitar

Meet & Greet with a photo opportunity

Pre-concert acoustic performance

If you’re feelin’ lucky or just wanna

make new friends and rock out!

Contact us at sales@whateverittakes.com

to enter! Who knows, you just might win!

4 issentials

THE BIG BANG

Thriving in a world disruptiveof innovationBO M!

issentials 5

THE BIG BANG You likely know of businesses that are upending the status quo, driving their competition crazy, turning unheard-of profits, and delighting their customers. How do they do that, you may ask? More to the point, how can you do that? It requires deep change — a change in the fundamental rules of the game, a strategy rethink that will enable you to reinvent the way your industry does business and force your competition to play catch-up. These are big bang disruptions — they are unplanned, often unintentional and always a challenge for incumbents to survive.

Three defining characteristicsBig bang disruptions deliver surprise after surprise, thanks to these three defining characteristics:

1 Unencumbered development. Because disruptive technologies are cheap to manufacture and deploy, tens of thousands of innovators can churn out dozens of new products, trying out ideas relentlessly. Right now, Silicon Valley companies, engineers and product developers get together late at night in what are popularly known as “hackathons.” Their goal is to cobble together new products from existing technologies in a few days. Yes, many will fail outright but when one of these ideas takes hold, and it only takes one, it will grow virally and make up for all the failures.

Consider Twitter, which began its commercial life in 2007 at the South by Southwest conference, following its invention at a hackathon the year before. Its developers wanted to test sending standard text messages to multiple users simultaneously. The experiment required almost no new technology. Today the company boasts more than 200 million active users and half a billion tweets a day. Its immediate success with minimal investments of time and money underscores an important dimension of big bang innovations: They are often the result of rapid-fire, low-cost experiments on global platforms. When cost and expectations are low, disrupters can just launch their ideas and see what happens.

2 Unconstrained growth. Big bang disruptions collapse the new product life cycle as we know it. Gone is the classic bell curve of five distinct customer segments: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. The cycle is much faster now, consisting of development, deployment and replacement.

It’s also much simpler now, as there are only two groups: trial users, who may participate in product design, and everyone else. Now the adoption curve looks something closer to a straight line that heads up and then falls rapidly when market saturation is reached or a new disruption appears.

3 Undisciplined strategy. Traditional competitive strategy tells us businesses should align strategic goals along one — and only one — of three value disciplines: operational excellence (think low cost), product leadership (constant innovation) or customer intimacy (customized offerings). Big bang disrupters, however, compete with mainstream products on all three value disciplines right from the jump. They start with better performance at a lower price and greater customization.

Let’s look at another example: portable navigation tools. Twenty years ago, mapmaking was a mature industry dominated by a few companies and the not-for-profit automobile clubs. The first competition came from free Internet sites offering route directions, such as MapQuest and Yahoo Maps. Then came stand-alone and in-dash devices that use GPS satellite data to generate real-time routes and turn-by-turn spoken directions. The big bang disruption, however, turned out to be the smartphone. The Google Maps Navigation app, for instance, offers virtually all the features of high-end GPS devices, and it costs nothing — it’s just another wildly popular add-on for the free Android operating system.

Result: The GPS device industry is in a tailspin. Garmin lost 70 percent of its market capitalization in the two years after navigation apps were introduced and TomTom nearly 85 percent.

Survive and thriveIf the classic rules of business and traditional thinking on strategy, marketing and innovation don’t apply to big bang disruptions, how do you cope? Here are four strategies that will help you thrive in the face of big bang disruption:

Find your “truth tellers”These visionaries understand and can predict the future with insight and clarity. They may be employees working on the front lines far below the ranks of senior management, or they may not be your employees at all but rather longtime customers, financial analysts or others who

know your business and industry. Truth tellers are often difficult to listen to — they can be eccentric and arrogant. Consider such difficult personalities as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. They are hard to find and harder to listen to, but they see it coming.

Slow the disruptive innovation Although once it’s taken off, you can’t stop the disruption someone else creates, you can make it harder for its developers to cash in. You can delay their profitability by lowering prices, locking in customers with long-term contracts, or forming strategic alliances with advertisers and other companies critical to your disrupter’s plans. All the while, look for opportunities to leverage your surviving assets elsewhere.

Be ready for a fast escapeTo compete with undisciplined competitors, you have to prepare for an immediate escape from current markets and be ready to jettison once-valuable assets. A big bang disruption can set off a rapid decline in value, making it important not only to shed those assets but to do so quickly. Your most valuable assets may be your intangibles such as the value of expertise, brands and patents. Look at the acquisition of the venerable New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) a few years ago by the upstart Intercontinental Exchange. With the rapid transformation of financial trading from physical to electronic, the residual value of the NYSE was largely in its brand.

Try diversification Diversification has always long been a hedge against risk in cyclical industries. Think about a different kind of diversification: having a diverse set of businesses. As industry change becomes less cyclical and more volatile, business diversification may be vital to survival.

Your big bang may not be far offThe good news is that big bang disruption may hold immense potential for those who can quickly learn the new rules of unencumbered development, unconstrained growth and undisciplined strategy. Although your current business may be replaced with one less stable and more dynamic, it may also be more profitable. Remember, the change will come suddenly — not with a snivel or a moan but with a bang.

“In recent years a new — disquieting form of disruptive innovation has emerged, one that beats incumbents on both price and quality right from the start and quickly sweeps through every customer segment.” Big Bang Disruption, 2014, Larry Downes

E very interaction a customer has with an organization has an effect on satisfaction, loyalty and the bottom line.

Knowing this, and despite best intentions and mountains of data, many organizations continue to offer lackluster integrated experiences for their customers.

The solution: Create a great customer journey. Easier said than done … customer engagement is not simply a series of interactions — it’s not just getting people to visit a website, “Like” something on Facebook or download a mobile app. Meaningful customer engagement requires identifying how and where individuals and organizations can exist harmoniously together. It’s centered on compatibility — how your organization, product, service or brand fits into customers’ changing lives today and tomorrow.

Crafting a great customer journey requires enormous amounts of collaboration across groups typically independently of one another and at different stages of product development. Marketing, product design, customer service, sales, advertising, retail partners must all work in concert — all to reshape customer behavior, reduce customer effort and improve company efficiency. The end

result: a map of the customer’s journey across time and environment.

Characteristics of a customer journey mapA customer journey map is a visual or graphic interpretation of the overall story of engagement. The story is told from the customer’s perspective but also emphasizes the important juxtaposition between user expectations and business requirements. Inspired by user research, no two journey maps are alike yet regardless of format, they allow organizations to consider interactions from their customers’ points of view, instead of taking an inside-out approach. They are one tool that can help your organization evolve from a transactional approach to one that focuses on long- term relationships with customers.

10 critical components of a customer journey map1. Represent your customer’s perspective.

The customer journey map needs to represent the interactions as your customer experiences them. It should even include interactions that happen outside of your control, such as a social media interaction or a Web search.

2. Use research. Depending on the scope, development of the customer journey map can involve interviews, survey

6 issentials

Websites, mobile apps, social spheres, contact centers … these are just some of the parts of a disconnected customer journey. Taking place over time and across multiple touchpoints — and channels. A customer’s journey may stop along the way and then restart when the customer is ready. For them, these journeys are inefficient and all too often frustrating; for you they can be costly to maintain and serve.

results, direct customer feedback, comments on social media or blogs, and more.

3. Represent customer segments. Your different segments typically have very different customer journeys. Don’t try to represent these very different perspectives as one.

CREATING GREAT

CUSTOMER JOURNEYS

issentials 7

7. Include channels. This is where interaction takes place and the context of use, for example website, native app, call center, in-store.

8. Highlight moments of truth. Some interactions have more impact than others. Great journey maps separate those critical moments of truth from the rest. For example, when visiting a car dealership, a bad welcome can cut the customer journey short.

9. Measure your brand promise. A critical outcome of a great customer journey map is measuring how the experience supports your brand promise. For instance, if your brand

promise is to be highly customized then your journey map is an excellent way to document whether your cus- tomer feels you are meeting that goal.

10. Include time. Does the typical call last 30 seconds or 10 minutes? Did car shoppers spend 20 minutes or 20 visits before deciding on a product? Experience length provides important context.

Positive end-to-end experiences There is no standard for a customer journey map. You can build it following high-quality design principles or scribble it on a napkin.

Today, the customer journey is a key differentiator for competitive businesses. By creating consistently positive end- to-end experiences or never-ending experiences) for your customers, your organization can improve customer loyalty and profitability.

Your customers are on a journey. Don’t just be a part of it — show them the way.

4. Include customer goals. Goals can change as the process unfolds. Show your customers’ goals at each stage of the process.

5. Focus on emotions. Emotions are critical to any customer journey, whether B2B or B2C, and a great map communicates these emotions. Avoid using emoticons, such as smiley faces or frowns.

6. Represent touchpoints. The customer journey map is often built to commun-icate the order and type of touchpoints — and as noted above, this may include customer experiences beyond your control.

8 issentials

The yin and yang of SEO and social mediaHow to choose the best balance for your business

issentials 9

Like it or not, most of us in marketing today are faced with having to make choices about how we spend our budgets. Two of today’s biggest spending dilemmas are whether to invest more in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies or social media.

Making the best decision means getting down to three factors: how, when and why customers buy your product or service.

When SEO is the best investment Some general rules of thumb: If the reason customers buy your product is immediate, important and local, SEO takes precedence.

The yin of SEO Customers want to buy now — You already know the reason. When you really, really need something, what do you do? Well for most of us these days, the answer is an Internet search. SEO helps connect customers seeking to buy with products that match their needs.

Customers want to buy local — Many times, customers who come to you via SEO are looking for an option nearby. If your company isn’t showing up in a relevant local search, it’s time to intensify your local search strategy.

Customers want to do research — Recent studies show that more than 60 percent of shoppers use the Internet to do research before buying a product. Make sure your site contains and is optimized for the information and terms your buyers are searching for.

The yang of SEO You only get today’s customers — With SEO, you usually only get the people who are actively looking right now. You’ll need a strong promotional strategy (including one-to-one marketing) to drive buyers to your website.

Limited interaction with customers — Most website visitors are comparatively passive as compared to social followers. You’ll need social and other strategies to cultivate interactive relationships.

Things can get stale — SEO sites can be comparatively evergreen. But a once great site can turn cobwebby. A great SEO strategy depends on building toward what your customers want next.

When social is the best investment Could your product often be considered an impulse purchase? Is it something your customer might not exactly need, but could enhance their life? Then social media might be your priority.

The yin of social media When customers buy your product on impulse — Anything that can be sold to enhance lifestyle or self-image is a great candidate for social. If it can stir emotions with great images or sold with quick, direct copy, social will be your friend.

When you want to turn customers into fans — Social media is all about relationships. It lets you reach out to your customers and listen to their feelings and preferences. If you do this well, they won’t just buy from you. You’ll become a part of their lives.

When you want to reap the benefits of sharing — Fans don’t keep their passions to themselves. They leave peer reviews and recommendations that widen your circle of influence. Posts that resonate well can go viral, generating thousands or millions of unpaid views.

The yang of social mediaYou need to continuously create fresh content — It wasn’t long ago when companies were advised to limit social postings to a few times a week. Now, with the rising level of competition for newsfeeds, your company might need to post several times a day, including off-peak hours.

Visitors are less likely to buy — Just because you pique the curiosity of social visitors doesn’t mean you get the sale. Compared to visitors from search, social traffic tends to be less committed, with less urgency to convert.

You’ll need to embrace the “darkside” — Every brand has its less than stellar moments. From personal service issues to major PR crises, your social media presence carries with it a need to prepare for difficult conversations.

Change in the balanceAs media, technologies and markets change, your plans will need to flex with them. Whether your business places its priority on SEO or social one thing is clear: It’s all a matter of balance. Your pii Account Director or Business Development Manager are always ready to speak to you about your plans and how we can help.

10 issentials

It’s been a few years — an eternity in the tech industry —since smartphones and tablets made a widespread leap from “second screen” to “first screen” status. Now, they’re leaving behind their ancient ancestors entirely as consumers increasingly shift their allegiance to mobile exclusively to stay informed, in touch and entertained.

When it comes to technology, rapid change is hardly a new phenomenon. The adoption of a “mobile only” mindset, however, is moving with truly exceptional speed. Consider these facts from ComScore’s 2014 “The U.S. Mobile App Report.”

• Between June 2013 and June 2014, the amount of digital media time people spent using mobile apps increased 52 percent.

• During the same period, desktop computer use grew 1 percent.

• Users now spend 60 percent of their digital media time on mobile apps and browsers and the remaining 40 percent on desktop PCs.

The most optimistic PC defender will say this isn’t yet the coup de grace for laptop and desktop computers. Yet the trend is clear to anyone who has ever used a device to book travel, scan the news, buy a gift, make dinner reservations, check in remotely for a haircut, share family vacation photos, play games or do any of a million other tasks.

What does it all mean?Mobile’s momentum is only going to keep building. Indeed, in much the same way

that consumers were ahead of the curve when it came to social media, the overwhelming demand for more flexible and sophisticated mobile capabilities is surging ahead of developers’ ability to create apps and programs.

In its current state, mobile does have its limits. Seriously, who wants to design a PowerPoint presentation on a smartphone or write a novel on a tablet? Nobody does. But that’s just today. With mobile technology advancing inexorably every day, it won’t be long until we can easily accomplish the most complex tasks on a smartphone, tablet, eyeglasses, watch (hey, who knows?) or other device.

Embracing the inevitableNow that you’ve gazed into the future, how can you embrace the changes and opportunities that it brings? Here are some good places to start:

• Prioritize mobile. You can no longer design for PC use first and mobile second. For most consumers, mobile is not an afterthought or a nice-to-have. It’s at least their preferred choice, usually their most essential choice and, as we’ve seen, often the only choice that truly matters.

• In fact, just think of it as marketing. Will Critchlow has argued, “Mobile marketing isn’t really a distinct thing — it’s just the future of digital marketing.” In other words, you don’t need a separate mobile marketing strategy; your digital marketing strategy is a mobile marketing strategy. Or it should be. Or it will be.

• Be prepared to say bye-bye. Shifting your focus to mobile means shifting your focus away from other areas. So, devoting more resources to mobile may mean devoting fewer resources to maintaining ye olde website that was designed when you still had to sit at a desk to go online.

• Appoint a champion for mobility. Mobile capabilities need a champion in each area of your business. But they also need someone who can oversee, manage, innovate and coordinate all aspects of the consumer’s mobile experience, making it seamless and whole. And speaking of wholeness …

• Look at the full experience. Consumers expect mobile across programs and within programs. Within a loyalty program, for example, they should be able to do everything — check out benefits, review terms of service, see account status, redeem points, ask questions and more — with a mobile device.

Mobile first — or mobile only?

Leaving behind the PC-based Web world looks smarter and smarter

issentials 11

• Don’t fret about non-adopters. You’ll never please everyone, so don’t even try to accommodate the few people — and there are fewer by the minute — that are resistant to mobile technology. They are the past, not the future; more importantly, they are your past, not your future.

Mobile has caught on with consumers so quickly and completely because it offers them vastly superior advantages. As a result, some windows are closing, but at the same time, doors are opening. These doors create awesome opportunities for you to engage with current customers and prospects at a deeper level than ever before.

Tomorrow, the world will be even more mobile than it is today. Act accordingly.

One Hardman Drive Bloomington, IL 61701

pii adds to arsenal of digital high speed, high quality print solutions

By partnering with Canon Solutions America, pii is one of only four companies to receive the first Océ VarioPrint i300 sheet-fed Inkjet Color Press. “Participating in the first U.S. Lead Customer Program (LCP), we’re able to test the capabilities of the Océ VarioPrint i300 and give valuable, all access insight to Canon for future innovation in technology,” said Jamie Huff, President of pii.

The i300 Sheet-fed Inkjet Color Press has the capacity to produce 300 images per minute — roughly 10 million letters per month, without sacrificing quality.

The key benefits are many:

High-speed output at lower per-page costs 1200 dpi perceived image quality Water-based pigment inks Automated quality inspection

Innovation and quality are core strengths that set pii apart from competitors. One of the many innovations of the i300 is the intelligent quality control feature that inspects and removes defective media automatically, without interrupting the printing process. Interested in seeing this equipment in motion or being the first program to run? Contact <Sales Rep> at <Sales Rep Phone#> or <Salesrepemail.com>.

Watch the time lapse install: https://youtu.be/ebctJVbL9XM

Industry Insights

V2

The state of content marketing While content marketing continues to be viewed as one of the most impactful digital marketing tools, many marketers still struggle with launching an effective content marketing strategy. A recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute revealed the key challenges B2C marketers face with content marketing:

Measuring content effectiveness: 51%

Producing engaging content: 50%

Lack of budget: 46% Producing content consistently: 44%

While all of these reasons are interrelated, one key solution may be to make sure your organization has a well-planned content marketing strategy. Before launching your plan, have dedicated people who will create the content, focus on the message and to whom it is directed, and set ROI expectations and ways to measure them.

Millennials can be just as brand-loyal as their parents Over the next five years, the purchasing power of millennials is projected to increase 133 percent to $1.4 trillion, making these 80 million Americans a critical demographic group to court. Yet, while many in the industry perceive millennials as lacking the brand loyalty of their parents, recent global market research by Accenture found that millennials can be just as loyal — provided they feel they’re being treated right.

Millennials demand a customer-centric experience — one tailored to their wants and needs. Approximately 95 percent say they want their brands to court them actively, and coupons sent via email, text or mail have the most influence on them. A brand loyalty program — offering targeted promotions and discounts — could serve as an effective tool for their continued patronage.

The eyes have it — direct mail found to be more engagingSo what type of advertising is more effective — direct mail or a digital ad? According to a neuroscientific study by Temple University, sponsored by the United States Postal Service, Office of Inspector General, digital ads seize the attention of consumers quicker. But physical ads held that attention longer, elicit a greater emotional reaction and played a more direct role in ultimate purchase decisions.

Of course, you should always communicate directly with your audience via the channel they prefer. And a multi-touchpoint strategy incorporating a variety of channels may be your best option to reach your target market with a customer-specific message.