Marketing materials such as collateral, promotional and point-of-sale account for 30% or more of the average marketing budget. Yet more than half of the spend associated with these materials is often lost to the non-productive costs of storage, fulfillment, shipping, inventory management and product obsolescence. Many companies have found that a marketing asset management (MAM) or web-to-print (W2P) solution has been able to reduce unnecessary spending, automate and streamline ordering, proofing and billing processes, manage inventory and reduce overall costs.

A recent Gleanster Research survey notes several compelling reasons to implement MAM and W2P: 78% of top performers indicated an improved marketing cycle time; 82% provided more autonomy and control over local markets; 91% noticed an increase in marketing relevance and personalization; 54% noted an increase in brand compliance and 71% saw an improvement in marketing efficiency and production.

MAM/W2P is fast becoming a necessity for many organizations in order to incorporate digital marketing with traditional marketing. It enables the company to better organize their marketing assets including video, photography, logos, etc., optimize efficiencies, manage the creation, customization and distribution of marketing collateral and in turn, is helping companies both large and small lower their costs by saving time, increasing employees' productivity, maintain strong brand consistency and drive revenue to their bottom line.

Consider these 10 reasons for implementing a MAM or W2P solution into your business:

 1. Increase brand compliance. Marketing asset management solutions allow companies to maintain brand and compliance standards by locking down certain elements in online templates while allowing local markets to customize materials for their needs.

 2. Centralize marketing assets. Create an efficient catalog system that has all your assets in one place that can be accessed and ordered online 24/7.

 3. Increase marketing relevance and personalization. Marketing is looking for ways to make messages more relevant, timely and personalized at the local level, while maintaining brand consistency at the corporate level.

 4. Provide more autonomy and control over local markets. Corporate marketing is tasked with maintaining standards while local marketers need autonomy to meet the unique needs of their target audiences. With a web-to-print solution, corporate marketing provides online templates that can be customized by local marketers.

 5. Improve marketing efficiency and productivity. Manage content more efficiently by having all assets in one place. Searchable access to content helps marketers find what they are looking for quickly.

 6. Measure asset utilization and effectiveness. Identify the assets that have the largest impact on marketing effectiveness. Have sales and marketing rate and rank marketing materials to identify the most useful assets and the marketing messages that resonate with target audiences.

 7. Manage inventory. Manage inventory levels and usage history. W2P solutions have many capabilities including online ordering, automatic inventory replenishment and built in approvals.

 8. Improve speed to market. Companies need to react quickly to stand out today. Inefficient or manual digital and marketing processes make it nearly impossible to react in a timely manner. An online repository of digital assets and online templates make it easy to get materials ordered and to the field much faster.

 9. Reduce obsolescence. The ability to customize materials and print on demand is more efficient than printing large quantities of static materials that sit in inventory and often become obsolete before they are used.

10. Reduce overall costs. Having a more effective and efficient digital and marketing asset management solution will reduce overall costs.

I welcome your comments.