Are You Ready for What’s Next in Marketing?

Effective marketing is hyper relevant, agile, and focused on results. It includes solutions that address customers’ current interests and needs, and can adapt to them on the fly and at scale. It demonstrates knowledge of each customer, and awareness of how their care-abouts are changing over time to enable brands to build individual relationships.

A change is taking place in the brand-customer relationship, defined by shorter product lifecycles, and fueled by evolving customer expectations and the abundance of new products. As such, organizations are separating from brand recognition as a marketing strategy, and moving toward a more customer-centric approach. One of the modern technologies making this shift possible is inkjet. 

You can help customers today engage their audiences with hyper-relevant, customized, and adaptable solutions that will serve them well into the future. Here’s how.

Adopt human-centric marketing

On top of the shift from product-focused to customer-focused marketing practices, there is a heightened focus on human-centric, “brand with a purpose,” marketing today, driven by generational differences. For example, members of Generations X, Y, and Z prefer to engage with companies that demonstrate transparency and authenticity, as well as brands with a sense of meaning and purpose. Human-centric marketing identifies customers as part of a community, creating a personal connection between brand and customer. 

Embrace both data and agility

Today, marketers must stay relevant among multiple generations: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y (Millennials), and Gen Z. Businesses that cannot provide a meaningful customer experience across these generations risk losing customers to competitors. While marketers work to demonstrate value to various generations across their entire customer journey, understanding when and where to intersect with individuals in a purposeful way requires both data and agility. 

Many of us in the print communications industry are well-versed in data-driven marketing, and recognize the value of treating each customer uniquely rather than all customers singularly. Businesses and their marketing efforts must be agile enough to quickly pivot in response to customer needs to deliver individual relevancy. Buyers’ interests and requirements can and do change quickly. 

Invest in inkjet

There are many differences between the 1:1 marketing concept of yesterday and the quality that digital print solutions presently deliver, including an extended substrate library, affordable run lengths of one, improved time-to-market, and variable data capabilities that produce targeted, relevant customer experiences. And, although it used to be considered intrusive to demonstrate knowledge of an individual customer’s needs and preferences, appropriately doing so today is essential to securing long-term, loyal customers.

Research shows that print is a critical communication channel in today’s evolving digital world. PSPs have an opportunity to meet the needs of businesses that are slow to apply more advanced marketing techniques with the personalization capabilities and myriad other benefits of inkjet.

Bottom line

Marketing will continue to evolve as we move into the future, and print will continue to play a vital role in providing a personalized customer experience. Embracing human-centric marketing, leveraging both data and agility, and continuing to invest in modern inkjet technologies separates you from the competition and helps your customers engage their audiences in more meaningful ways to drive business results.

Want to learn more? Visit Ricoh (Booth N1928) during PRINTING United.