Does your marketing plan incorporate marketing asset management? If not, you could be hurting your brand, your budget, and your potential future revenue.
First, what do we mean by marketing asset management? Essentially, it’s the processes, procedures, and practices a company has in place to manage its assets, including documents, files, images, videos, e-mails and other marketing resources. This collection of processes can also be automated through software.
Your marketing assets are among the most vital resources for your company. Whether you use a manual or automated process, it’s critical to have a solid program in place to understand what you have, who wants it, and how you will get it to them.
Let’s take a look at why marketing asset management is so important and how it benefits the ROI for your company.
3 Key Justifications for Marketing Asset Management
Increased productivity
Marketing materials are often created and handled by numerous individuals, sometimes in different locations or on different work schedules. Collateral can be spread across multiple computers, offices, clouds, and hard drives, making it almost impossible to track.
A McKinsey study found that on average, employees spend nearly two hours a day—almost 10 hours a week—searching and gathering information. So, in a 40-hour work week, nearly 25 percent of productivity is lost just trying to track down the right documents and materials.
And, once the information needed is found, is it the right information? When was the last time that sales brochure was updated? Are the field staff using the most current and accurate price sheets?
A marketing asset management system that centrally manages and maintains your inventory will significantly improve productivity by reducing wasted time searching for content, eliminating the use of outdated collateral, and improving communication flow between remote offices.
Cost savings
Having an organized, centrally managed process will save money. Your printing expenses will probably go down because you have a better handle on your inventory and won’t be printing what you don’t need. Cost savings will be realized through increased efficiencies in the fulfillment and distribution processes too. The improved productivity of employees also translates into hard dollars: think about those extra 10 hours a week that can now be focused on activities that directly support the company’s goals, rather than fruitlessly searching for a marketing flyer.
Ability to measure results
This is where the rubber meets the road, and the true ROI of a marketing asset management system is apparent. By monitoring and managing your marketing program, you’ll be able to see what’s working and what’s not. Statistics such as e-mail open rates, unique visits, and other stats to measure effectiveness can inform your decision-making process. You’ll be able to more clearly see which pieces of collateral are getting views, which campaigns are generating leads, and which regions are responding positively, for example.
So, make sure your marketing strategy includes marketing asset management. The time and resources you’ll invest will be well worth it over the long term in helping you successfully leverage those assets to contribute to your company’s bottom line.