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All you need to know about marketing collateral management
Intro
Marketing collateral management is an important method for brands to ensure consistency and enhance their marketing efforts.
However, it can be challenging to ensure all material is in line with brand guidelines.
Read on to learn how Templafy can help brands streamline their marketing collateral management processes to achieve a consistent and compliant brand!
In this article
What is marketing collateral?
Marketing collateral is any media used in marketing products or services. Historically, collateral referred to physical objects such as brochures and flyers. However, in the digital era, web content is a central part of marketing collateral as companies have moved to digital advertising. Digital marketing collateral includes blog posts, social media posts, videos, images and other visual content.
What is marketing collateral management?
Marketing collateral management is the process of managing a company’s marketing collateral. This involves setting up efficient workflows for storing, organizing, enhancing, and distributing the collateral.
With effective marketing collateral management, companies can ensure all material is consistent and compliant with internal and external guidelines, enhancing the brand in the eyes of stakeholders and protecting it against risks.
Why is it important to manage marketing collateral?
In a competitive landscape, companies have to stand out to get the attention of customers. One of the central ways of doing this is by producing great marketing collateral.
However, marketing collateral has to be consistent to have the wanted effect. Without consistency, it’s difficult to achieve brand recognition which can lead to the resources spent on the marketing effort being wasted. With marketing collateral management, companies can ensure consistency in all their marketing efforts.
marketing collateral management
What are the different stages in marketing collateral management?
There are several stages in managing marketing collateral.
- Planning
Before marketing collateral can be developed, there has to be a plan in place for what content to produce and what the goals are for the marketing effort. Marketers will consult the brand’s guidelines to refresh their memory and ensure they start off aligned with the guidelines. - Content creation
Once a plan is in place, marketers develop written or visual content that will be the content of the marketing collateral. Different brand assets such as the brand’s logo, font and color palette will often be included. - Approval
When the marketing collateral has been developed, it’s time for brand managers to approve it. This is often done manually by sending it over to the relevant party and asking for their feedback or approval. - Distribution
Now, the marketing collateral is planned, developed, and approved. It’s time to distribute it. Most marketing collateral today is online, so distribution often takes place on social media or other digital platforms.
Challenges in marketing collateral management
Looking at these different stages of developing marketing collateral, different challenges arise.
Content developers have to check the branding guidelines, manually search and retrieve brand assets, and get marketing collateral approved. Brand guidelines may be outdated, assets may be difficult to locate and approval may take time, all of which can disrupt the workflow of the employee.
Luckily, tools have been developed to accommodate these challenges. The brand compliance platform Templafy has implemented features to automate the marketing collateral management process. Here’s how the platform deals with the challenges of manual content production
Asset management
Templafy integrates with any digital asset management (DAM) tool and brings the approved visual assets for document creation into the natural workflow of the employees. This saves valuable time that would otherwise be spent locating brand assets – 69% of employees say they use Google to find company assets. With Templafy, these assets are made available within the existing editing application such as Google Workspace or Office 365 that the employee uses, enabling employees to spend time on producing more creative marketing collateral instead.
Compliance with guidelines
When developing marketing collateral, employees will have to stay up to date on the most recent branding guidelines. Marketing collateral will have to be checked against the guidelines before distribution. Templafy enables automatic brand compliance by continuously monitoring the users production process and highlighting any inconsistencies with applicable internal or external guidelines.
Approval
With Templafy, assets used by employees are pre-approved and ready to be used for marketing collateral. This enables employees to skip the approval process and immediately start distributing the collateral to relevant platforms without having to wait until the marketing material is signed off on – it already is.
case
How Condeco use Templafy to manage their digital assets
Condeco is the market leader in meeting room scheduling and workspace reservation solutions. The company needed simplified access to digital assets and a faster way to update and distribute content.
Condeco got onboarded to the Templafy platform and enabled employees to quickly and easily locate the right digital assets and pre-approved company templates in one central hub. This resulted in a more consistent and professional brand profile.
“We’ve now taken away the excuse of ‘I didn’t know where to find it’ as the latest document and templates are now provided in the place they work,”
Condeco’s Creative Marketing and Brand Director Lauren Robertson says about the advantages of implementing Templafy.
Advice for effective marketing collateral management
There’s a series of steps that companies can take to ensure smooth marketing collateral management.
- Implement strong brand guidelines
With strong brand guidelines, marketers have a great starting point for creating marketing collateral that is in line with brand guidelines. - Educate employees
By educating employees in how to adhere to brand guidelines, administrators can ensure a consistent face of the brand as employees are all on the same page. - Implement automation software
Tools like Templafy can help brands manage their marketing collateral by having a central hub to organize their assets, ensure compliance, and save time spent on getting content approved.
Manage your marketing collateral with Templafy
One of the best marketing collateral management software solutions on the market is Templafy according to software review site G2. Once onboarded to the platform, you start by uploading brand assets to the central hub. Templafy gets to know your brand guidelines, and when employees develop content, the Validator tool ensures all content is compliant with branding guidelines.
Why Templafy is the go-to marketing collateral management platform
There are several reasons why Templafy is one of the primary choices for companies looking for better ways to manage their marketing collateral. Here’s a few key benefits of using Templafy:
- Integration: Templafy integrates into employees’ existing workflows and gives direct access to company-approved digital assets without the need to switch to a separate platform. It all happens right within the office application.
- Compliance: Templafy monitors employees’ content production processes to ensure that assets are used as defined by the company guidelines. This automates compliance and saves valuable time.
- Security: Templafy is one of the most secure platforms in the industry. The software solution runs penetration tests, scans for vulnerabilities, and backs data up with Microsoft Azure to protect companies digital assets.
Get started using Templafy as your marketing collateral management system
Collateral management is important to ensure marketing efforts are not wasted. With Templafy, you get access to a brand compliance platform that ensures all digital assets are stored, managed, and used correctly. Schedule a demo and try it out today!