What can a brand management system actually do?
‘Brand management’ systems are used to centrally store and manage marketing collateral and brand assets online, these systems become a marketing toolkit to assist in the creation and management of sales and marketing material within a company. Brand management systems can also store many other digital assets giving users the ability to access and download content from a central approved source. Having control over every user’s preferences a company can manage the flow of content and its use anywhere in the world.
Is the ultimate goal of a marketing department to centralise their assets?
The ultimate goal of any marketing department is to have all their content digitally stored in a central location, as well as the function for users to create new collateral that is always on brand and current. This helps marketing teams bring structure to their department and create workflows, however in a lot of cases these brand management systems are installed by the marketing department thinking that it would get the sales department of their back. Sales teams on the other hand will argue ‘why should we produce content as it’s not our job’ and that the only reason they are creating content is because marketing can’t deliver within the timescales. This is a common ongoing battle between sales and marketing that up until now technology couldn’t solve.
Can sales and marketing work together?
Brand management systems are seen as the solution to this problem, sales will always go and do something outside of brand guidelines because they have to react fast to win business, they can’t wait for a busy marketing department to come back to them in an hour, day, week.
So does it benefit everyone having a tool that can create on brand collateral when needed, or is it just ticking a box for the marketing department but not giving any real value to sales?
Even when brand management systems work well and content is centralised there are still issues. Even having the most up-to-date marketing material on the system doesn’t mean everyone has it, what tends to happen is that sales teams login and download the latest sales content, save it onto their local machine and use it forever. It is very unlikely that they will log back in and download everytime something has been updated by the marketing department, no matter how many internal emails or notifications they get telling them to do so.
How to give Sales the flexibility to create what they need, when they need it?
This happens a lot with centrally stored content, it gets downloaded once onto a local machine and never gets updated again. But there is a better way that not only guarantees everything is up-to-date when sent out, but gives Sales Teams the flexibility to create what they need, when they need it.
The Libris Unify System brings sales and marketing together with no extra work while being personal and relevant to each customer every time. It works by plugging the live brand management system with all the marketing assets directly into a personal Sales Tool, this in turn allows everyone in the sales team to create what they need, when they need it, with current information and data.
What is different using the Libris Unify system from other brand management software is every master document is live, meaning that a version is only created at the point when sales generate a new document for a customer. Working from these live artwork templates ensures that only the latest version is ever sent out no matter when and where sales create it.
Is it all smoke and mirrors in the marketing department?
Marketing need control over what is being sent out, their job is make sure content is correct and the brand guidelines are being adhered to, but sales also need some flexibility. With the Libris Unify Sales Tool it allows the marketing teams to have full control on their master templates and the ability to create unlimited content from them. Each time they create something new they can automatically share it with the entire sales team, in any language, in any country. Existing design files can be converted into master templates and uploaded into the system to allow further material to be created from them. User preferences can be set to help further brand management, for example locking the font style and size so that nothing can be changed by accident, colours can be set or a colour pallet can be pre set, images can be changed from a master library that have been signed off centrally. All these functions make it easy for anyone to create a new piece of marketing or sales collateral that will always be on brand.
How to empower sales teams with a direct link to marketing
The point of difference between Libris Unify and other brand management solutions is the live link between the artwork and the sales user. To give an example let’s imagine a marketing department has 10 brochures in the system and 5 case studies. All these are set up as live artwork templates in the system allowing the marketing department to make any changes from any location, at anytime. As soon as they make a change and save it that change is live across their entire sales team, ready for when they next create a sales document from their Sales Tool.
When the sales team log into their Sales Tool and create a new proposal or a sales document, part of their process is to choose any of the 10 brochures and 5 case studies that are linked and controlled by the marketing department. The sales team check a box to add their selection to their proposal, then when they are ready to create their final document the system builds a PDF at that point in time from all the live content. Having live artwork that is linked gives the marketing department the flexibility to make live changes to content at all times, knowing that everything that the sales teams have access to is the most up-to-date version.
How to give sales freedom from their marketing department
Having all the marketing collateral live in the system gives even more flexibility to both marketing and sales teams. If the marketing department want to create a new brochure they simply create one online using the master template, this is automatically set with the correct fonts, colours and brand guidelines, it can also be locked down further so that layout can’t be changed or unlocked to allow more flexibility when designing. The marketing team can also create new case studies in the same way knowing that everything is on brand. Once the marketing team are happy with the new content and it has been signed off internally, they can share it automatically with the sales teams by adding it directly into their Sales Tool.
Now when the sales team login in to create a new sales document they can automatically see the new brochures and case studies, all new content is available as soon as the marketing department make it live. This is the best way to control and manage content directly between Sales and Marketing and it works for any size team in any location or multiple locations.
Central marketing departments with offices in different countries can also create local marketing items from the master templates in the same way, then share directly with their local sales teams. Having the Libris Unify system means that a new version is created everytime, nothing is download and used again at a later date because it is personal to each client at the time of creation.
What effect more time and money can have on your business
This fountain approach to marketing saves so much time and effort across all departments. For example, based on it taking 2 hours to create a sales document (taking account an average time for both marketing and sales departments involved) if you have 10 sales people who create 1 proposal per day, the Libris Unify system would save 350 hours per month. If those sales people cost £15 per hour the Libris Unify system would save over £5,250 per month or an ROI of 1650%. If using the same calculation but the sales team created 4 proposals per day the Libris Unify system would save 1400 hours (£21,000 saved per month) and an ROI of 6900%. A real game changer in the sales and marketing world.
To find out what major savings your company can make using the Libris Unify system, contact us now for more information or a live demonstration.
Tel 01279 732436 or email [email protected]
