As companies strategize about expanding the reach of their products and services, they often turn to distributed marketing for a consistent, localized approach to engage audiences at the regional, state, and national levels. Branding is then disseminated at the corporate level.
In turn, franchisees, retailers, and other stakeholders localize content to most accurately address the needs of their audiences while adhering to branding guidelines. By implementing a distributed marketing strategy, companies can maintain brand consistency and drive client engagement through targeted, authentic marketing campaigns. Common printing requests include digital printing, direct mail, and fulfillment.
Despite the many conveniences, there are some roadblocks companies may come across when preparing to take on a distributed marketing approach: inconsistency in branding across locations; outdated or unapproved marketing materials; and a failure to track and record inventory.
3 Most Common Challenges
Distributed marketing teams want to attract buyers at the local level, but oftentimes, they’re not sure where to begin. They might opt to streamline branding across all of their print collateral, but that’s not necessarily what will appeal to localized markets the most. In order to be successful in their distributed marketing campaign, companies must confront the following common challenges.
- Brand Consistency
Who is your target audience? What does your brand stand for? What do you sound like? What sorts of imagery and design elements do you want to string through your collateral to let your clients know yours is one cohesive brand?
Many brands struggle to maintain branding consistency once they begin to disperse their campaigns at the local level. Without one unified brand message, clients are lost. They lose interest in your brand or lose track of your focus. Even when print collateral at the local level deviates in small ways, companies still need to convey to clients that all of their advertising ties back to the same brand.
So how can you avoid this pitfall? Keep a robust inventory of all of your marketing collateral, so you know what’s available to any of your local branches at any given time. Grant permissions to view and manage inventory, orders, and supply distribution at the local level, so they have easy access to brand standards, copy guidelines, and design considerations.
Check out one of our blog posts, “4 Ways to Maintain Brand Consistency for Distributed Marketing Teams,” to learn more about how to stay true to your brand.
- Lack of Creativity
Companies also struggle to consistently deliver fresh, creative content to keep local clients engaged. By strategizing localization efforts, companies can appeal to local markets through copy and design. Your branding guidelines should include specifics about how much leeway in design elements such as color, font, and size retailers and franchisees can expect to manage at a local level. In turn, this also gives individual locations the freedom to experiment with fresh, innovative brand aesthetics.
- Lack of Reporting
Without the right reporting tools, you will not have insights into the activities of local branches. You will lack understanding of underused marketing collateral and co-op funds and who is ordering what collateral and when. Make sure you have tools in place for tracking marketing materials to optimize your operations. It’s important to build a database of performance metrics that reflects the complete inventory. Finally, conduct analytics at the local level.
Lean on a brand and marketing asset management technology to assist you in the process. With one centralized platform, you can create clarity through better visibility into what’s going on at a local level which will improve your corporate wide marketing strategy.
Southeastern Advantage
Often, companies know what they need to do to broaden their reach and engage new clients through print collateral—they simply need some help crossing the finish line.
At Southeastern, we understand the challenges of running a distributed marketing operation. That’s why we are proud to offer a brand and marketing asset management platform that allows you to consolidate all of your brand assets and processes wherever they may take place. We help you organize brand collateral from a single, secure cloud location and create brand consistency, thus eliminating errors. We’ll also help you save your brand image, optimize supply lines, and manage inventory costs using our distributive model, reporting tools, and budgetary control resourcing. Finally, geo-route your order to production facilities near you.
It doesn’t get much easier than that. Want to learn more? Let’s connect.
