Printer Friendly Version

Marketing managers these days are pressed to do more with less -- they need to deliver more marketing programs, more leads, and more selling tools in the face of reduced staffs and tight discretionary budgets.

It is well understood that global competition, new distribution channels, and the Internet are forcing marketers to work harder and smarter. What's more, shorter product lifecycles and increasingly informed customers mean that product launches must have more punch than ever.

One business-to-business customer recently noted, "We're doing more today with a department of five than we used to do with a staff of eight, and there's no letup in sight." For this marketing pro and for many others, efficient execution of integrated, multi-channel campaigns is necessary.

There are significant implications of this increased demand on marketers in the areas of marketing resource management, marketing automation, and marketing return on investment (ROI). One major imperative is that marketing managers must move from chaos to control within the mission-critical area of marketing asset management -- that is, in the management, control and distribution of their brand assets, marketing materials, sales tools, and creative materials.

That's why today's marketing managers are looking to technology for help. But searching for solutions to enable them to store, organize, track and communicate marketing assets of all types to all internal and external audiences is an often overwhelming task. There are many possible approaches, but which ones will best manage the vast range of materials organizations are now producing, while at the same time being easy to manage? Which ones will sales teams and selling partners actually want to use? Which will provide a high degree of marketing control, accountability, and responsiveness, while still being practical and affordable?

To address this situation, some marketing organizations, especially those with the most marketing materials to manage, have taken the initiative in recent years to develop their own Online Marketing Library (OML) with the goal of making all marketing and sales materials easily accessible online and always up to date.

An Online Marketing Library (OML) is a systematic, automated approach to managing marketing materials. The OML is a one-stop shop -- a single, centralized repository for all marketing materials, regardless of format and content, which otherwise would be divided among intranet, extranet and public Web resources. It empowers marketing departments by providing an online portal that can be customized for use by authorized sales and channel partners. With all marketing resources logically organized, easily searchable and updated, available upon request and readily shared with others, the OML has been proven to sharply reduce costs while boosting sales productivity and customer satisfaction.

Any marketing department can create and maintain their own database-driven internal and/or external Web site that integrates a company's existing marketing asset database with its various internal and external users.

But building such an online marketing library is breaking new ground and involves trial and error, which means it's time-consuming and expensive. The good news is that there are now commercial OML solutions available, so marketers have an alternative to developing a platform from scratch.

Regardless of which decision a company makes -- to build it or buy it -- the following are eight key requirements of a good OML. Making sure most are included in either your home-grown or commercial OML will ensure its effectiveness and will provide the maximum value for users.

Ability to partition materials by audience and/or application
It's important to ensure that users see/access only those items, assets, or materials appropriate to them. One size does not fit all! The OML platform must be able to partition different types of materials and provide different views for distinct audiences, such as sales teams, customers, channel partners, field marketers, etc., without excess cost or any re-programming. It also must deliver content on demand to intranet, extranet, public Web, portals and other destinations.

eFulfillment
Since email has become such a pervasive, fundamental tool, customer needs for handling fulfillment have become more sophisticated. A current example is accommodating fulfillment as Web Kits (a personalized web page that presents selected items). Specific eFulfillment capabilities include:

Complete infrastructure for managing and sharing electronic assets.

Tools to encourage the use of electronic assets.

Support multiple versions of each electronic asset if necessary.

Fulfill as "Web Kits," which let salespeople deliver marketing and product information to prospects within a personalized Web page. Instead of simply attaching files to an email, the Web Kits present the materials dynamically and visually on the Web.

Integrated shopping cart and order management
Most companies use a charge-back or other payment process when ordering marketing materials and purchasing products or services. Specific capabilities in this area include the ability to present orderable items, capture orders, distribute orders to multiple fulfillment locations, manage inventory, and view order history by item and customer. In addition, there should be streamlined support for online ordering of physical assets and print materials.

Time to Value and Scalability
This requirement refers to the ability to quickly get the OML up and running (time to value), but also to scale and expand in order to support larger, enterprise-wide deployment and applications, including international roll outs. Key considerations here include the ability to: manage thousands of items and many gigabytes of data; deliver materials to hundreds and even thousands of users; manage user accounts, permissions, etc. using automated tools.

Support for Print-on-Demand
Print-on-demand refers to the ability to access the current print specification for any marketing material. This allows far greater flexibility in awarding print jobs, and also eliminates the need for a manual proofing process. In addition, it's the ability to deliver the electronic asset specification as part of the print order

Notification facilities
This leverages the delivery infrastructure to save steps in the marketing process. Features to look for include the ability to provide each user with a personalized "new for you" list based on their interest combined with a self-service resource center for instant eFulfillment.

Support distributed content management and content submission
Characteristics of this requirement include the ability for multiple people to add materials and update materials dynamically. It also allows users to contribute content without affecting the existing system, and provides a support structure for basic materials management workflow.

Integration with other systems
OML solutions do not function in a vacuum. The most basic integration is to link an OML to an intranet and/or public website. The OML platform must also have the ability to access items or groups of items programmatically, and be able to export item, order, and/or user data for use in other systems, such as ERP and other back-end systems. In addition, the OML must be able to package data for use with other systems and Web sites.

Conclusion

It's estimated that 75 percent of large companies currently have a basic OML they've developed internally. But these solutions are not always comprehensive and often don't meet the evolving needs of Marketing and Sales. In addition, OMLs need to be maintained, every day, week, month and year. That is usually the most daunting aspect of internally developed OML platforms. But the benefits of an OML are many, and include measurable process and bottom-line improvements in:

Distribution of marketing materials to the field and other audiences.

Effectiveness of sales teams by establishing a push/pull system that enables individual views while ensuring that everyone has a common base of knowledge and information.

Increased ROI of marketing/sales programs by reducing waste in fulfillment activities and easing the manual burden on shrinking administrative staffs.

Increased customer satisfaction by being highly responsive to their needs.

Reduced wait time for requested materials.

Proper handling of brand assets by providing consistent, uniform access to, and distribution of, the right marketing materials at the right time to the right people.

With an OML, any marketing department can quickly create and easily maintain a database-driven internal and/or external Web site that integrates a company's existing marketing asset database with its various internal and external users. Salespeople, channel partners and marketers access the materials and then browse, view and download them for immediate use.

Build or buy an OML? There are two ways to go, and many things to consider, when making that decision. But to have an OML -- that may become a requirement as more and more companies adopt them and reap the benefits.

Scott Richardson is president and CEO of Longwood Software (www.tagteam.com) , which developed and markets the TagTeam solution. He can be reached at (978) 897-2900 or at scott@tagteam.com.

Printer Friendly Version

Other Resources

from Intranet Journal

Intranet Journal Discussion Board