The storage closet. It’s a common mysterious entity that lives within company walls. It is there that marketing collateral and promotional items rest until they’re called up for active duty.
What makes this room so mysterious is that no matter what you do it always finds a way to revert to a disorganized labyrinth of materials. Such is the common pain of any company that houses their own marketing assets.
What other trouble can a storage room like this cause? We’ve identified four problems that can arise from storing your marketing assets yourself.
YOUR EMPLOYEES UNDERSTAND THE PHRASE, FINDING A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK A LITTLE TOO WELL
When your boss asks you to go find products in the storage room, the rest of your coworkers sigh from relief, and gleefully wish you good luck. It may take you five minutes or a half hour. In cases more common than they should be, you return empty-handed because the company failed to re-order. That’s not the news you want to deliver to your boss.
THERE ARE TWO ISSUES AT WORK HERE.
The first is the wasted time it takes to find collateral you need. Not only do companies want their employees to be working on achieving goals for the business, but also, employees who have their day disrupted for long periods of time can become overwhelmed by their awaiting work.
As it is well known, happy employees are better motivated to achieve their tasks and do what they can to improve the business. Interruptions to look through storage adds stress and therefore drive contentedness levels down.
The second problem with housing assets this way is that there is no structured system in place to track them. Companies need different assets for specific purposes. If the last of a specific marketing collateral piece was used a month ago, but you need it for a prospect meeting tomorrow, you then have to decide whether you should run the risk of trying to get it on time or if you should make do with another piece that isn’t really intended for that purpose. Either way, you ran out and now have to scramble at the last minute.
DAMAGED ASSETS
If that back room of yours is a mess, most likely there are assets or promo items in there that have become damaged and therefore, unusable. That’s a loss of investment and resources to your company you shouldn’t suffer from.
SPRING CLEANING
Eventually the mess is going to become too powerful and someone is going to have to spend most of or their entire day taming the beast. This goes back to the issue of decreased productivity and contentedness in your employees.
THE OPEN INVITATION EXTENDS TO EVERYONE
Organizing your marketing materials and sales collateral this way means that everyone has the key. There are no authorization restrictions set to prevent the misuse of materials. Anyone granted access to the room has the opportunity to handle and use any and all assets stored in that space. This opens the door for the possibility of damaged collateral and excessive overuse of materials.
Making sure your marketing assets are accounted for, preserved for high quality and available to you at a moments notice is important to the overall success of your company. It appears unprofessional to have mismatched assets at a sales meeting or to have damaged assets constantly drain your budget.
A marketing asset fulfillment vendor is one way to forgo all of the above listed complications. They will house all or the majority of your collateral to ensure its quality. All assets will be printed and distributed by your fulfiller which will prevent improper branding.
Another solution is to set up a marketing asset management system. This will allow you to know what assets are being requested and used by who and when. Should you choose, you can receive notices for when your inventory is running low and when you’ll need to restock. You can set authorization channels in place, so members of your team only have access to the materials that pertain to their needs and track the data for what assets are popular or which you may not want to reorder.
Don’t house a black hole in your building any longer. Make 2017 your most effective year by implementing an asset management system that works for you.