Connect June/July 2014

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NextPage attains G7 Master Printer StatusWhy should I care about the G7 designation?G7 Master Printer status means that your print service provider is following the highest industry standards to meet your quality and color requirements, no matter the press your piece is printing on.

I have strict quality standards. How does NextPage make sure my pieces look right every time?Buyers believe the similarity of the visual appearance across print products is critical; many now make G7 a buying requirement. At NextPage, we have been tested and given the recognition by a third party that we are following the best practices in the industry to ensure that your pieces meet your strict quality guidelines.

Aren’t all print service providers doing the same thing?Good question and the short answer is NO. We are one of less than five commercial print service providers in the region that have the G7 Master Printer designation. Why wouldn’t you want to work with those that have gone the extra mile?

Would you like to learn more about how a G7 Master Printer can help your organization achieve outstanding brand consistency? Visit nxtpg.co/G7printer

June/July 2014 by NextPage

I N S I D EThe Inbox | 4

Throw your content marketing machine into gear | 6

Making data sing | 10

Trending with... | 14

Before you go | 15

Throw your content marketing machine into gear

Before you go

Two Sides

Nearly 90% of consumers say they want to receive print marketing collateral

related to promotions and sales.

Nielsen

24% of marketers considered coupons or discounts to be very effective in prompting consumers to interact with mobile codes.

InfoTrends

Hi John,

Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%. Aberdeen Group

Two TT Sidii edd s

24% of m

62% of companies

outsource their

content marketing.

Mashable

Source: Issue 4 of Customer Marketing Content from Dscoop: Marketing Stat Sheet, Kelly Rehan, January 2014

Print Is the Original Content Marketing Strategy!That’s right; we said it! Print IS content marketing and when you marry print with all the other marketing channels available, you have a well-rounded AND highly effective marketing campaign. Let’s look at the numbers:

Response rates of cross-media marketing campaigns continue to show solid results. A recent analysis of 1,856 cross media campaigns in 30 vertical markets showed an average visit rate of 6.5 percent and an average response rate of 4.5 percent. Results for some markets included:

• Education: 3.3 percent visit rate and 2.1 percent response rate • Nonprofit: 5.3 percent visit rate and 3.5 percent response rate • Financial: 4.6 percent visit rate and 3.1 percent response rate • Insurance: 5.6 percent vist rate and 3.6 percent response rate • Arts, Media and Entertainment: 7.3 percent visit rate and 5.9

response rate

Marketing Automation

Are you confused with the new marketing landscape?

Cross Channel MarketingSocial Marketing

Are you frustrated by the myriad of choices?

EMailSocial Media Direct MailWeb Marketing PR

Trade ShowsMass Marketing

Lead Nurturing

goNextPage.com

See how NextPage combined print and e-mail communications for a client that delivered more effective communications while reducing costs by more than $25,000. Learn more at http://nxtpg.co/FCAmkt or scan the QR code.

15

To discuss any information contained in Connect by NextPage, please contact NextPage at 866.938.3607.

Author Scott Stratten writes, “If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.” What Stratten and other thought-leading experts find ironic in today’s highly connected, addicted-to-ROI world is that people buy from

people they know and trust.Despite the incessant need for a CEO or CFO to manage every dollar and report back

on the effect of the latest tweet, people buy from people and developing real relationships matters. So, in this highly electronic world where everyone has their heads down, the people who take time to build authentic relationships will shine.

While many marketers are immersed in the immediate gratification of electronics and sales managers continue to rely on the archaic practice of cold calling, the brightest of us all are working on owning the high ground of thought leadership and authenticity.

Being yourself is a sustainable practice because it allows you to connect with people who are like-minded and share similar values. In turn, when you have those common de-nominators, the likelihood of having a long-term relationship increases.

Owning the high ground of thought leadership is when you endeavor to become a rec-ognized expert in a field and, ultimately, become a known entity to the market. Once you establish that kind of cache, it sets you apart. In contrast, the old-fashioned cold call can commoditize a relationship right from the start.

In this issue, we wanted to take a deeper look at some of the strategies at your disposal – tools that can deepen your relationships and help you own the high ground. In our cover story, “Throw Your Content Marketing Machine into Gear” we lay out a plan of attack for starting or improving your content marketing strategy.

In our second feature, “Making Data Sing,” we examine the premise that data is just noise without context – and that context only can come when you are intimate with a market. That’s part of owning the high ground.

Enjoy this issue and all the best,

Gina M. Danner

The High Ground

CONTENTS

Being yourself is a sustainable practice because it allows you to connect with people who are like-minded and share similar values.

3 Publisher’s LetterThe High Ground

4 The Inbox

6 Throw your content marketing machine into gearSeven best practices to get you started

10 Making data sing

14 Trending with...Renowned innovator and bestselling author

Lon Safko

15 Before you goSurvey shows how consumers are crazy for

digital devices

PublishersGina M. Danner Tom Harvey

Managing EditorsRosanne KirnKallen Leak

Art DirectionBrent Cashman • Creative DirectorJaime Hill • Graphic Designer

Connect is published bimonthly by NextPage8300 NE Underground Drive, Pillar 122Kansas City, Missouri 64161© 2014. All rights reserved

For more information, contact us at 800.660.0108 or visit goNextPage.com.

Ask Lon Safko, and he’ll tell you that the secret to success is easy – you have to see the world from a different perspective each and every day. When you have founded 14 successful companies, hold three U.S. patents and are in the Guinness Book of World

Records, people tend to listen. Steve Jobs did. When Safko created the “First Computer To Save A Human Life,” Jobs coined it. That computer, along with 18 other inventions and more than 30,000 of his papers are in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. We sat down with Safko to get his take on how to win in the game of marketing.

Trending with ...

What do you know about marketing today that the rest of us don’t?A lot of companies are making a mistake about how they market. If you call yourself a social me-dia expert, you’re announcing to the world that you’ve been left behind. Social media is not a replacement for traditional marketing – it just requires a completely different set of rules to perform effectively. The difference between so-cial media and traditional media is that we’ve moved from a one-way monologue to a two-way dialogue, and that has scared many marketing and advertising agencies, and internal market-ing departments. The most successful marketers will realize that social media is simply another marketing tool – one that fuses all of the tools (traditional, social and digital) into one cohesive set of marketing tools.

What traits should every good marketer have?He must have insight, an innate understanding of what a customer wants, the ability to convert that to a need and the way to effectively communicate that need to arouse an action. I had the opportu-nity to work with (not for) Steve Jobs and Apple. Steve was an outstanding entrepreneur and an amazing marketer. He knew what people wanted, made it look as though they needed it, and then

communicated that message more effectively than anyone I have ever known. Apple didn’t invent the first MP3 Player, but Steve knew how to take a technology – whether it was the Xerox Mac interface or an off the shelf MP3 Player – and make it sexy and functional. He made people think they needed it.

What’s the “secret sauce” when it comes to branding?I’m going to go old school and say consistency. You must have consistency in your images, col-ors, music and/or sound (that “signature” tone a Mac makes when starting up), and repetition. McDonald’s Golden Arches. Mercedes’ propel-ler. Apple’s apple. The chili in Chili’s. All of these iconic brands are immediately recognizable because of consistency.

What’s the best piece of marketing advice you ever received?It was more of “learned it the hard way” piece of advice: never compete on price, not even if you’re a commodity with a ton of competition. I once ran an Apple retail store that had one direct competitor – another Apple store in an

adjacent town. People would sit with me for two to three hours, get a written price quote, and then go buy it from my com-petitor. We would continually undercut each other’s prices. This went on until we both went out of business two years later. If you don’t have any competi-tion, price and quality doesn’t matter. If you’re competing in a commodity market, compete on

quality, functionality, ease of use or just be-cause it’s sexier. But never compete on price.

What’s the one thing every marketer should learn in 2014?The ability to fuse. In my latest book, “The Fusion Marketing Bible,” I talk about traditional market-ing, digital marketing (Search Engine Optimiza-tion, Search Engine Marketing or pay-per-click, Really Simple Syndication, etc.) and social media marketing. They are all just different tools, used a different way, to market your products or services. But they must be fused, integrated and com-bined. The smart companies are starting to figure this out. In five years, there will be no more social media experts or agencies specializing in social media. We will all go back to just marketing.

Renowned innovator and bestselling author Lon Safko

“If you’re competing in a commodity

market, compete on quality,

functionality, ease of use or just

because it’s sexier. But never

compete on price.”

publisher ’s letterQ&A: Interview with Lon Safko

314

June/July 2014 • Connect by NextPage To discuss any information contained in Connect by NextPage, please contact NextPage at 866.938.3607.

Sources: 1 Brian Morris, 10 Print Marketing Statistics You Should Know, DMR 2 USPS Household Diary Study 2013 3 DMA Statistical Fact Book 2013

of households say they read or scan direct-mail ads.1

%79Direct-mail marketing on average yields a 13-to-1 return on investment ratio.1

13:1

92of young

shoppers say they prefer direct

mail for making purchasing

decisions.1

%

Direct mail brings in 78%

of donations for nonpro�ts.1

%78

2014

2004

14%

Since 2004, direct-mail marketing response rates

have increased by 14%.1

of customers �nd print marketing to

be the most trustworthy type of

marketing.1

56%

of customers visit a brand’s website after receiving direct-mail marketing.1

44%

of postcard mailings are read by recipients.2

%53

Postcards received the highest response rate

at 23.4%.

Larger than letter size received a 16.6% response rate.

Letter size received a 7.9% response rate.

7.9%

16.6%

23.4%

Mail Piece Design Matters:3

USPS projects Standard Mail

to grow.2 69by 2020

of people retain direct mail for future reference.1

%48

of customers say they try a business for the �rst time because of direct-mail advertising.1

%39

4 Ways to Make Your Direct Mail More Eco-FriendlyPrinting and mailing responsibly should be important to your printer, even if it means mailing fewer pieces. Below are four things your printer should be offering to decrease their carbon footprint.

Database Cleansing: Before producing a direct mail campaign, it is important to clean the mailing list. Removal of undeliverable and duplicate addresses will reduce waste in your campaign. Progressive service providers offer list hygiene services, such as National Change of Address processing and address correction, making the campaign more effective and eco-friendly.

Digital Printing: Indigo and iGen digital presses allow companies to reduce printed inventory with the ability to print on demand. Being able to print in exact quantities eliminates waste and waste disposal costs. The ability to print directly from a computer has also greatly reduced chemical and solid waste (normally found with traditional plate making).

Environmentally Sound Papers: The quality and variety of earth-friendly paper choices has increased substantially over the past five years. Among today’s choices are recycled papers, papers with chlorine-free processing, and even “tree free”: papers made from non-wood pulp.

Web-to-Print: Web-to-Print platform allows for reduced paperwork and streamlined processing. Production occurs automatically, and when combined with digital printing customers can order in large or small quantities. With just a few simple clicks clients are able to place orders, see proofs, manage shipping and be billed automatically. A Web-to-Print platform not only reduces paper waste, but also the inefficiency of traditional printing.

Soschin says. “In other words, I would not run an advertisement or marketing campaign without first knowing what my goal is and how to measure the results against that goal.”

Staying in tuneAt American Public University, data is used for more than analyzing purchasing patterns and refining marketing programs. It uses data to stay in tune with their students from enrollment through graduation and beyond.

“We focus on the entire lifecycle of the student. We’re an online, data-driven univer-sity; we codify everything,” says Sebastian Diaz, AVP of Marketing Analytics and a for-mer college professor of statistics. “What zip code students are from, how often they log on, when they log on – it all has value when it comes to ensuring the ongoing success of our students, and that has huge implications for us. We care about what happens to our students after they enroll, so we use predic-

tive analytics to identify and address potential problems that may prevent student success. We are proactive. We target at-risk students and then provide those students the added support they need to graduate.”

The university’s endeavor to stay in tune with students has helped earn the school con-sistently high reviews and a No. 34 ranking on U.S. News’ “Best Online Bachelor’s Programs.”

Whether you need to fine-tune your mar-keting or stay more in tune with your clients, the right data used appropriately can transform meaningless prattle into a resounding melody. “All data is not necessarily useful,” Hinman says. “But data has the potential to help mar-keters make better decisions and faster deci-sions – you can react to changes in the market-place much quicker than ever before. It gives marketers a good picture of what’s happened in the past, what’s happening right now, and if used optimally, it can give you great insights into what’s going to happen in the future.”

“ As a marketer, I endeavor to understand first what my objective is, then how I will measure my campaigns against that objective before I ever launch the campaign.”

– Dan Soschin, VP of Marketing, Ultimate Medical Academy

Put Big Data to Work!Visit http://nxtpg.co/MKTsuccess to download “Where the Science of Successful Marketing Happens.” A white paper by NextPage partner Kurtis Ruf of Ruf Strategic Solutions, a pioneering market segmentation and big data analytics services firm. www.ruf.com

VOLUME How much data? Google reportedly captures a petabyte (composed of customer transactions, photo uploads, social media posts, business statistics and much more) every hour. One petabyte could hold approximately 20 million four-door filing cabinets full of text. It could hold 500 billion pages of standard printed text.

VELOCITY How fast is data coming at you? Increasingly faster with improved hardware and software technology. Data has a short shelf life – it must be captured while it’s timely and relevant.

VARIETY Data includes both structured (columns of statistics), as well as unstructured information that can be derived from narrative texts like tweets and blogs. Analysis of language and narrative data is a growing field.

VALUE Not all data is significant for decision making. Big Data encompasses everything coming across the internet, but a large amount of that data has little importance to business or government.

BREAKING DOWN THE Vs OF DATABIG

The Inbox

4 13





13:1

92of young



decisions.1

%



%78

2014

2004

14%





marketing.1

56%


44%


%53


at 23.4%.



7.9%

16.6%

23.4%



to grow.2 69by 2020


%48


%39“Before you dive into Big Data, you need

to be clear about your objectives,” Hinman says. “Make sure you know what you want to achieve, and determine if data will enable you to do a better job. It’s more important to understand marketing than to understand Ha-doop (standard computing platform written in Java). Narrow your focus by asking the ques-tions a marketer would ask: who, where, what. Who is my customer, where do I find him and what does he need that I can provide?”

Eliminating the noiseBy everyone’s measure, there is a loud cre-scendo cacophony of data circling the globe – more than we can effectively process in the foreseeable future. With the increased techni-cal capability to gather and store data, the ex-ploding amounts of data shared on the internet and faster processing times, you can easily and quickly can collect vast amounts of structured statistical data (how many units purchased) and unstructured data (how those units were regarded) relating to your clients and potential clients.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Unfortunately, unimportant data seems to be growing much faster than rele-vant data and drowning it out. (Do you really need to know what your client had for dinner

last night?) Hinman says that when assess-ing data, you must examine it in terms of The Four Vs (see “Breaking Down the Vs of Big Data,” page 13). “You can readily determine the volume, velocity and variety of data, but the more important question, and the more difficult to determine, is, ‘What is the value of the data? Is it worth looking at? What insights will it help you gain?’”

Fine-tuningDan Soschin, VP of marketing at Ultimate Med-ical Academy in Tampa, Fla., says that having a clear objective is instrumental to success. From his perspective, Big Data enables more per-sonalization for marketers to create better user experiences for future and existing customers.

“This extends into all aspects of the cus-tomer lifecycle – advertising, acquisition, nur-turing, selling, fulfillment, loyalty, and so on,” Soschin says. “More data points enable orga-nizations to fine tune each of these experienc-es by better knowing their customers.”

Organizations can suffer from analysis paralysis when there is too much data. The solution is to first have a clear understanding of your objectives. “As a marketer, I endeavor to understand first what my objective is, then how I will measure my campaigns against that objective before I ever launch the campaign,”

Organizations can suffer from

analysis paralysis when there is

too much data. The solution is to

first have a clear understanding of

your objectives.

Making data sing

512


Reading a newspaper one morning, musi-cian Jarbas Agnelli had a different perspective. He saw a photograph of birds sitting on five parallel wires and thought that it looked like a musical score. The birds’ relation to each other spread out on the five wires suggested chords and a melody to the composer, so he sat down at his piano to see what the melo-dy might sound like. The resulting tune was featured in an award-winning YouTube video, Birds on the Wires, which has been viewed by nearly a million people worldwide, and in a popular Brazilian TED talk.

Similarly, many of today’s successful compa-nies are hearing music in the vast and cluttered landscape of data, where others are just hearing noise. In a world where Google routinely captures a petabyte (1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of information every hour, it’s becoming more of a challenge to listen carefully and separate the music from the noise. Perspective, once again, is the key. “Think like a marketer, not like a techie,” says Donald Hinman, SVP with Epsilon Data Services. Often referred to as “Dr. Data,” Hinman has a Ph.D. in Mass Communication Research and is a 35-year veteran in the field of data.

Birds on the wires. Who hasn’t seen a flock of birds perched together on

a series of power lines? It’s a common visual element in cluttered urban

and suburban landscapes worldwide (that most of us don’t notice).

By Lorrie Bryan

6 11


Flashback to 2002, if you wanted to make a major business purchase

you called three sales reps. They came to your business and pitched you

a sale. To learn more, you asked the questions and they answered. You

relied on the information they provided to make an educated purchase.

In those days, sales cycles lasted 12 to 24 months and the sales rep was

actively involved in the education process.

Fast forward to 2014. If you want to buy something, you hop on Google.

You do a quick search, gleen some basic information and learn what you

need to know in order to weed out the multitude of vendors available.

Forrester Research shows that as a buyer, you’re about 60% of the way

through your buying process before you’ve even engaged a sales rep.

Throw your content

marketing machine

into gear

Making datasing

710


Today, if you google “content marketing” you’ll get more than 800 million results. You can probably guess what that means. Content marketing is THE hot topic in marketing. New emphasis has been placed on content creation and quality, highlighting a very real need for or-ganizations to rethink their go-to-market plans and add content to their marketing mix.

Establishing a strong foundation of con-tent that attracts prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey, building awareness and nurturing ongoing interest is critical to land-ing that next client. Developing a solid content marketing strategy takes clear intention, care-ful planning and focused execution.

Whether you have a content marketing strategy in place today or you’re just now start-ing the process, these seven best practices will guide you in developing and deploying an ef-fective content marketing strategy across all of your channels and customer buying cycles.

Get Your Executives OnboardContent marketing is not an event but rather a long-term commitment that requires con-tinual collaboration and engagement. To be successful, it requires budget, time and, most importantly—executive support. Ongoing sup-port from your top executives ensures enough commitment and funding is available to source a solid content marketing strategy.

Focus on Your Stakeholder’s Goals and Pain Points An effective technique for securing in-ternal buy-in is to focus on your stakeholders’ goals and pain points, including their bonus systems and areas that affect their own suc-cess. Then introduce content marketing as a valuable way for them to get better results from marketing and ultimately move the needle.

Know Your Customers, Understand Their JourneyContent marketing is about educating, enter-

taining or otherwise engaging your readers in order to earn their trust over time. To be successful, you need to understand your au-dience; what they want and need from you. Only then can you gauge how much viable content you already have, and what content you’ll need to create. Develop customer personas. Targeting your customers helps identify the topics your con-tent should cover. Dig in to your sales data, ask yourself and your sales team these ques-tions: • Who are our ideal prospects and

customers? • How do they go about making a buying

decision? • What problems are they trying to solve? • What would they type into a search

query to find solutions? • What gaps in information are they lacking

that my content can fill?

Don’t forget to validate all of the anecdotal in-formation with real sales data.

Map your content to the buyer’s journey. It’s likely no one woke up today and said, “I want to buy your product.” By mapping specific content to the buying process, you not only make the best use of existing content, you also discover gaps. Those gaps are the future con-tent that you will generate. Four Stages of a Buyer’s Journey • Awareness. The prospect has a need and

is looking around; just getting to know your company. Content solutions for this stage may include blog posts, social media out-lets, video blogs and press releases.

• Research. Your prospect is researching solutions for their problems. Appropriate content here may be industry reports, white papers, e-books and webinars.

• Comparison. The prospect is now look-ing at options and comparing yours to other solutions. This is where you need to have strong case studies, testimonials and product demos available.

• Purchase. The final stage. Now is the time to have clearly defined agreements that outline what you will do for them and what they will supply to you. This is the beginning of a partnership so com-munication is critical here. It will set the tone for your business relationship.

Identify the Right Content MixContent that helps your prospects solve an is-sue or realize their business can’t survive with-out your product is key to a successful content strategy. Your content needs to facilitate con-versations among influencers, stakeholders, and decision makers, giving them the confi-dence to take the next step. If it doesn’t, your content marketing strategy will fail. (Alterna-tively, at the very least underachieve its goal.)

The Optimum Content Formula: • Take a customer-centric approach.

Create content your customers want. Many organizations make the mistake of pushing marketing messages that are important to the company, rather than providing information that’s important to the customer.

• Develop a wide variety of content to de-ploy across multiple channels and devic-es. Take the time to understand which channels and formats your customers prefer, then diversify how and where you publish your content to extend your reach. In addition to printed content (PDFs), consider other formats like ht-ml-based articles, blogs, social media sites, webinars, slide decks and videos. Lastly, optimize your content for mobile platforms.

• Don’t just create content, curate it. Show your credibility by highlighting and shar-ing relevant content written by other business leaders and field experts. The more you demonstrate your authority, the easier it is to increase customer af-finity and loyalty.

Create an Editorial CalendarYou have the content, but how, when and where do you publish it? Integrating content into a cohesive story takes careful planning, timing and strategy. Develop a calendar for publishing your content. You may not follow it verbatim, but you’ll be far more consistent and successful if one exists.

Calendar Guidelines • Provide a tentative outline of when dif-

ferent pieces of content will publish, on what platform and via which syndication and social channels.

• Clearly articulate cadence; that is, the date each piece of content will be de-veloped and distributed. Publishing your content in a consistent, timely fashion is critical.

• Map social campaigns to your editorial calendar. Work with your social team to align the respective publishing schedules and help drive traffic to your website.

Repurpose Your ContentDeveloping the volume of content necessary to fuel a content marketing strategy can be chal-lenging. Using your content in multiple ways, offering it in multiple formats and distributing it in as many places as possible will extend its life – this is called repurposing.

Get the Most Mileage Out of Your Content • Break up long content into smaller pieces

and different formats. For example, con-vert a well-developed webinar, into a vid-

eo and publish it on YouTube. Post the presentation deck on SlideShare. Make a PDF of the transcribed audio track avail-able. Break the transcript into a short series of blog posts.

• Do you have a robust white paper? Extract two main ideas and create short articles. Take two more ideas and create blog posts. Promote them all through so-cial media channels. Link them to each other thereby inviting readers on an in-formation journey with your brand. Use the articles in lead-nurture campaigns.

• Whenever and wherever appropriate, in-clude social and share links in your various content pieces. Don’t forget about search engine optimization. Use keywords and metadata to make your content findable by the people that need it. Making your content scalable reduces overhead, as well as increases visibility, brand aware-ness and value for your audience.

Create a Process for Measuring and ReportingDecreasing costs and increasing profit margins can be as important as increasing sales and revenue. An effective content marketing strate-gy can do both, but you will never know unless you measure the results. Develop a process by which you can assess the business value of your content strategy. Start by identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). • Do you have management buy in? • Have realistic expectations been set? • Do you have enough resources? • Do you have the capabilities to execute? • Are there other projects that may affect

program deployment? • What are the leading indicators of

success? • What are the lagging indicators of

success? • How will you measure financial impact?

Connect Content Marketing to SalesThe last stage of developing your content strat-egy is to connect it to the sales cycle. The best way to do that is with a marketing automation platform. Marketing automation software is an emerging technology that will track the activity of your prospects before they ever reach out to your sales department:

• See who is interested in your content.• Identify topics of interest. • Track the number of times they inter-

act with your content.

Sharing this valuable information with your sales staff drives conversations. This allows for the appropriate follow-up, so your team spends time talking to people that have “raised their hand.” With this technology your sales team spends time calling sales-ready prospects not suspects AND discussing infor-mation that the prospect has already shown interest in.

A Well-Oiled Content Marketing MachineIf all of this seems overwhelming, you are not alone. Most companies know that content marketing should be a solid part of the market-ing effort, but many are still on the sidelines. Good content marketing establishes long-term, trusted relationships with current and future customers by regularly delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information. In addition, it can bolster your SEO and brand positioning. By leveraging these ideas, you can create an effective content marketing strategy or fine-tune the one you already have in place. Re-member, buyers today are likely online looking for a vendor like you. Don’t be weeded out ear-ly. Build a well-oiled content marketing strate-gy and let your content speak for itself.


98


Flashback to 2002, if you wanted to make a major business purchase

you called three sales reps. They came to your business and pitched you

a sale. To learn more, you asked the questions and they answered. You

relied on the information they provided to make an educated purchase.

In those days, sales cycles lasted 12 to 24 months and the sales rep was

actively involved in the education process.

Fast forward to 2014. If you want to buy something, you hop on Google.

You do a quick search, gleen some basic information and learn what you

need to know in order to weed out the multitude of vendors available.

Forrester Research shows that as a buyer, you’re about 60% of the way

through your buying process before you’ve even engaged a sales rep.

Throw your content

marketing machine

into gear

Making datasing

710


Reading a newspaper one morning, musi-cian Jarbas Agnelli had a different perspective. He saw a photograph of birds sitting on five parallel wires and thought that it looked like a musical score. The birds’ relation to each other spread out on the five wires suggested chords and a melody to the composer, so he sat down at his piano to see what the melo-dy might sound like. The resulting tune was featured in an award-winning YouTube video, Birds on the Wires, which has been viewed by nearly a million people worldwide, and in a popular Brazilian TED talk.

Similarly, many of today’s successful compa-nies are hearing music in the vast and cluttered landscape of data, where others are just hearing noise. In a world where Google routinely captures a petabyte (1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of information every hour, it’s becoming more of a challenge to listen carefully and separate the music from the noise. Perspective, once again, is the key. “Think like a marketer, not like a techie,” says Donald Hinman, SVP with Epsilon Data Services. Often referred to as “Dr. Data,” Hinman has a Ph.D. in Mass Communication Research and is a 35-year veteran in the field of data.

Birds on the wires. Who hasn’t seen a flock of birds perched together on

a series of power lines? It’s a common visual element in cluttered urban

and suburban landscapes worldwide (that most of us don’t notice).

By Lorrie Bryan

6 11





13:1

92of young



decisions.1

%



%78

2014

2004

14%





marketing.1

56%


44%


%53


at 23.4%.



7.9%

16.6%

23.4%



to grow.2 69by 2020


%48


%39“Before you dive into Big Data, you need

to be clear about your objectives,” Hinman says. “Make sure you know what you want to achieve, and determine if data will enable you to do a better job. It’s more important to understand marketing than to understand Ha-doop (standard computing platform written in Java). Narrow your focus by asking the ques-tions a marketer would ask: who, where, what. Who is my customer, where do I find him and what does he need that I can provide?”

Eliminating the noiseBy everyone’s measure, there is a loud cre-scendo cacophony of data circling the globe – more than we can effectively process in the foreseeable future. With the increased techni-cal capability to gather and store data, the ex-ploding amounts of data shared on the internet and faster processing times, you can easily and quickly can collect vast amounts of structured statistical data (how many units purchased) and unstructured data (how those units were regarded) relating to your clients and potential clients.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Unfortunately, unimportant data seems to be growing much faster than rele-vant data and drowning it out. (Do you really need to know what your client had for dinner

last night?) Hinman says that when assess-ing data, you must examine it in terms of The Four Vs (see “Breaking Down the Vs of Big Data,” page 13). “You can readily determine the volume, velocity and variety of data, but the more important question, and the more difficult to determine, is, ‘What is the value of the data? Is it worth looking at? What insights will it help you gain?’”

Fine-tuningDan Soschin, VP of marketing at Ultimate Med-ical Academy in Tampa, Fla., says that having a clear objective is instrumental to success. From his perspective, Big Data enables more per-sonalization for marketers to create better user experiences for future and existing customers.

“This extends into all aspects of the cus-tomer lifecycle – advertising, acquisition, nur-turing, selling, fulfillment, loyalty, and so on,” Soschin says. “More data points enable orga-nizations to fine tune each of these experienc-es by better knowing their customers.”

Organizations can suffer from analysis paralysis when there is too much data. The solution is to first have a clear understanding of your objectives. “As a marketer, I endeavor to understand first what my objective is, then how I will measure my campaigns against that objective before I ever launch the campaign,”

Organizations can suffer from

analysis paralysis when there is

too much data. The solution is to

first have a clear understanding of

your objectives.

Making data sing

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4 Ways to Make Your Direct Mail More Eco-FriendlyPrinting and mailing responsibly should be important to your printer, even if it means mailing fewer pieces. Below are four things your printer should be offering to decrease their carbon footprint.

Database Cleansing: Before producing a direct mail campaign, it is important to clean the mailing list. Removal of undeliverable and duplicate addresses will reduce waste in your campaign. Progressive service providers offer list hygiene services, such as National Change of Address processing and address correction, making the campaign more effective and eco-friendly.

Digital Printing: Indigo and iGen digital presses allow companies to reduce printed inventory with the ability to print on demand. Being able to print in exact quantities eliminates waste and waste disposal costs. The ability to print directly from a computer has also greatly reduced chemical and solid waste (normally found with traditional plate making).

Environmentally Sound Papers: The quality and variety of earth-friendly paper choices has increased substantially over the past five years. Among today’s choices are recycled papers, papers with chlorine-free processing, and even “tree free”: papers made from non-wood pulp.

Web-to-Print: Web-to-Print platform allows for reduced paperwork and streamlined processing. Production occurs automatically, and when combined with digital printing customers can order in large or small quantities. With just a few simple clicks clients are able to place orders, see proofs, manage shipping and be billed automatically. A Web-to-Print platform not only reduces paper waste, but also the inefficiency of traditional printing.

Soschin says. “In other words, I would not run an advertisement or marketing campaign without first knowing what my goal is and how to measure the results against that goal.”

Staying in tuneAt American Public University, data is used for more than analyzing purchasing patterns and refining marketing programs. It uses data to stay in tune with their students from enrollment through graduation and beyond.

“We focus on the entire lifecycle of the student. We’re an online, data-driven univer-sity; we codify everything,” says Sebastian Diaz, AVP of Marketing Analytics and a for-mer college professor of statistics. “What zip code students are from, how often they log on, when they log on – it all has value when it comes to ensuring the ongoing success of our students, and that has huge implications for us. We care about what happens to our students after they enroll, so we use predic-

tive analytics to identify and address potential problems that may prevent student success. We are proactive. We target at-risk students and then provide those students the added support they need to graduate.”

The university’s endeavor to stay in tune with students has helped earn the school con-sistently high reviews and a No. 34 ranking on U.S. News’ “Best Online Bachelor’s Programs.”

Whether you need to fine-tune your mar-keting or stay more in tune with your clients, the right data used appropriately can transform meaningless prattle into a resounding melody. “All data is not necessarily useful,” Hinman says. “But data has the potential to help mar-keters make better decisions and faster deci-sions – you can react to changes in the market-place much quicker than ever before. It gives marketers a good picture of what’s happened in the past, what’s happening right now, and if used optimally, it can give you great insights into what’s going to happen in the future.”

“ As a marketer, I endeavor to understand first what my objective is, then how I will measure my campaigns against that objective before I ever launch the campaign.”

– Dan Soschin, VP of Marketing, Ultimate Medical Academy

Put Big Data to Work!Visit http://nxtpg.co/MKTsuccess to download “Where the Science of Successful Marketing Happens.” A white paper by NextPage partner Kurtis Ruf of Ruf Strategic Solutions, a pioneering market segmentation and big data analytics services firm. www.ruf.com

VOLUME How much data? Google reportedly captures a petabyte (composed of customer transactions, photo uploads, social media posts, business statistics and much more) every hour. One petabyte could hold approximately 20 million four-door filing cabinets full of text. It could hold 500 billion pages of standard printed text.

VELOCITY How fast is data coming at you? Increasingly faster with improved hardware and software technology. Data has a short shelf life – it must be captured while it’s timely and relevant.

VARIETY Data includes both structured (columns of statistics), as well as unstructured information that can be derived from narrative texts like tweets and blogs. Analysis of language and narrative data is a growing field.

VALUE Not all data is significant for decision making. Big Data encompasses everything coming across the internet, but a large amount of that data has little importance to business or government.

BREAKING DOWN THE Vs OF DATABIG

The Inbox

4 13


Author Scott Stratten writes, “If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.” What Stratten and other thought-leading experts find ironic in today’s highly connected, addicted-to-ROI world is that people buy from

people they know and trust.Despite the incessant need for a CEO or CFO to manage every dollar and report back

on the effect of the latest tweet, people buy from people and developing real relationships matters. So, in this highly electronic world where everyone has their heads down, the people who take time to build authentic relationships will shine.

While many marketers are immersed in the immediate gratification of electronics and sales managers continue to rely on the archaic practice of cold calling, the brightest of us all are working on owning the high ground of thought leadership and authenticity.

Being yourself is a sustainable practice because it allows you to connect with people who are like-minded and share similar values. In turn, when you have those common de-nominators, the likelihood of having a long-term relationship increases.

Owning the high ground of thought leadership is when you endeavor to become a rec-ognized expert in a field and, ultimately, become a known entity to the market. Once you establish that kind of cache, it sets you apart. In contrast, the old-fashioned cold call can commoditize a relationship right from the start.

In this issue, we wanted to take a deeper look at some of the strategies at your disposal – tools that can deepen your relationships and help you own the high ground. In our cover story, “Throw Your Content Marketing Machine into Gear” we lay out a plan of attack for starting or improving your content marketing strategy.

In our second feature, “Making Data Sing,” we examine the premise that data is just noise without context – and that context only can come when you are intimate with a market. That’s part of owning the high ground.

Enjoy this issue and all the best,

Gina M. Danner

The High Ground

CONTENTS

Being yourself is a sustainable practice because it allows you to connect with people who are like-minded and share similar values.

3 Publisher’s LetterThe High Ground

4 The Inbox

6 Throw your content marketing machine into gearSeven best practices to get you started

10 Making data sing

14 Trending with...Renowned innovator and bestselling author

Lon Safko

15 Before you goSurvey shows how consumers are crazy for

digital devices

PublishersGina M. Danner Tom Harvey

Managing EditorsRosanne KirnKallen Leak

Art DirectionBrent Cashman • Creative DirectorJaime Hill • Graphic Designer

Connect is published bimonthly by NextPage8300 NE Underground Drive, Pillar 122Kansas City, Missouri 64161© 2014. All rights reserved

For more information, contact us at 800.660.0108 or visit goNextPage.com.

Ask Lon Safko, and he’ll tell you that the secret to success is easy – you have to see the world from a different perspective each and every day. When you have founded 14 successful companies, hold three U.S. patents and are in the Guinness Book of World

Records, people tend to listen. Steve Jobs did. When Safko created the “First Computer To Save A Human Life,” Jobs coined it. That computer, along with 18 other inventions and more than 30,000 of his papers are in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. We sat down with Safko to get his take on how to win in the game of marketing.

Trending with ...

What do you know about marketing today that the rest of us don’t?A lot of companies are making a mistake about how they market. If you call yourself a social me-dia expert, you’re announcing to the world that you’ve been left behind. Social media is not a replacement for traditional marketing – it just requires a completely different set of rules to perform effectively. The difference between so-cial media and traditional media is that we’ve moved from a one-way monologue to a two-way dialogue, and that has scared many marketing and advertising agencies, and internal market-ing departments. The most successful marketers will realize that social media is simply another marketing tool – one that fuses all of the tools (traditional, social and digital) into one cohesive set of marketing tools.

What traits should every good marketer have?He must have insight, an innate understanding of what a customer wants, the ability to convert that to a need and the way to effectively communicate that need to arouse an action. I had the opportu-nity to work with (not for) Steve Jobs and Apple. Steve was an outstanding entrepreneur and an amazing marketer. He knew what people wanted, made it look as though they needed it, and then

communicated that message more effectively than anyone I have ever known. Apple didn’t invent the first MP3 Player, but Steve knew how to take a technology – whether it was the Xerox Mac interface or an off the shelf MP3 Player – and make it sexy and functional. He made people think they needed it.

What’s the “secret sauce” when it comes to branding?I’m going to go old school and say consistency. You must have consistency in your images, col-ors, music and/or sound (that “signature” tone a Mac makes when starting up), and repetition. McDonald’s Golden Arches. Mercedes’ propel-ler. Apple’s apple. The chili in Chili’s. All of these iconic brands are immediately recognizable because of consistency.

What’s the best piece of marketing advice you ever received?It was more of “learned it the hard way” piece of advice: never compete on price, not even if you’re a commodity with a ton of competition. I once ran an Apple retail store that had one direct competitor – another Apple store in an

adjacent town. People would sit with me for two to three hours, get a written price quote, and then go buy it from my com-petitor. We would continually undercut each other’s prices. This went on until we both went out of business two years later. If you don’t have any competi-tion, price and quality doesn’t matter. If you’re competing in a commodity market, compete on

quality, functionality, ease of use or just be-cause it’s sexier. But never compete on price.

What’s the one thing every marketer should learn in 2014?The ability to fuse. In my latest book, “The Fusion Marketing Bible,” I talk about traditional market-ing, digital marketing (Search Engine Optimiza-tion, Search Engine Marketing or pay-per-click, Really Simple Syndication, etc.) and social media marketing. They are all just different tools, used a different way, to market your products or services. But they must be fused, integrated and com-bined. The smart companies are starting to figure this out. In five years, there will be no more social media experts or agencies specializing in social media. We will all go back to just marketing.

Renowned innovator and bestselling author Lon Safko

“If you’re competing in a commodity

market, compete on quality,

functionality, ease of use or just

because it’s sexier. But never

compete on price.”

publisher ’s letterQ&A: Interview with Lon Safko

314


Before you go

Two Sides

Nearly 90% of consumers say they want to receive print marketing collateral

related to promotions and sales.

Nielsen

24% of marketers considered coupons or discounts to be very effective in prompting consumers to interact with mobile codes.

InfoTrends

Hi John,

Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%. Aberdeen Group

Two TT Sidii edd s

24% of m

62% of companies

outsource their

content marketing.

Mashable

Source: Issue 4 of Customer Marketing Content from Dscoop: Marketing Stat Sheet, Kelly Rehan, January 2014

Print Is the Original Content Marketing Strategy!That’s right; we said it! Print IS content marketing and when you marry print with all the other marketing channels available, you have a well-rounded AND highly effective marketing campaign. Let’s look at the numbers:

Response rates of cross-media marketing campaigns continue to show solid results. A recent analysis of 1,856 cross media campaigns in 30 vertical markets showed an average visit rate of 6.5 percent and an average response rate of 4.5 percent. Results for some markets included:

• Education: 3.3 percent visit rate and 2.1 percent response rate • Nonprofit: 5.3 percent visit rate and 3.5 percent response rate • Financial: 4.6 percent visit rate and 3.1 percent response rate • Insurance: 5.6 percent vist rate and 3.6 percent response rate • Arts, Media and Entertainment: 7.3 percent visit rate and 5.9

response rate

Marketing Automation

Are you confused with the new marketing landscape?

Cross Channel MarketingSocial Marketing

Are you frustrated by the myriad of choices?

EMailSocial Media Direct MailWeb Marketing PR

Trade ShowsMass Marketing

Lead Nurturing

goNextPage.com

See how NextPage combined print and e-mail communications for a client that delivered more effective communications while reducing costs by more than $25,000. Learn more at http://nxtpg.co/FCAmkt or scan the QR code.

15

To discuss any information contained in Connect by NextPage, please contact NextPage at 866.938.3607.

8300 NE Underground Dr., Pillar 122Kansas City, MO 64161

goNextPage.com | 866.938.3607

connectby NextPage

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NextPage attains G7 Master Printer StatusWhy should I care about the G7 designation?G7 Master Printer status means that your print service provider is following the highest industry standards to meet your quality and color requirements, no matter the press your piece is printing on.

I have strict quality standards. How does NextPage make sure my pieces look right every time?Buyers believe the similarity of the visual appearance across print products is critical; many now make G7 a buying requirement. At NextPage, we have been tested and given the recognition by a third party that we are following the best practices in the industry to ensure that your pieces meet your strict quality guidelines.

Aren’t all print service providers doing the same thing?Good question and the short answer is NO. We are one of less than five commercial print service providers in the region that have the G7 Master Printer designation. Why wouldn’t you want to work with those that have gone the extra mile?

Would you like to learn more about how a G7 Master Printer can help your organization achieve outstanding brand consistency? Visit nxtpg.co/G7printer

June/July 2014 by NextPage

I N S I D EThe Inbox | 4

Throw your content marketing machine into gear | 6

Making data sing | 10

Trending with... | 14

Before you go | 15


Connect June/July 2014

Documents

Transcript of Connect June/July 2014