A common mistake a company can make when they begin to expand to more locations is maintaining brand consistency. You need to make sure your customers will enjoy the same experience at a new location that they have come to expect from your established stores. In addition to the same quality product you deliver, you need consistency in your color palette, logo usage, signage design, marketing materials, and messaging. Managing your brand from store to store is more than what the customer sees every day. You need consistency with your business cards, stationery, invoices, social media voice, and advertising – anything relating to your brand. You don’t have the time to do this yourself, but you also need to be able to trust employees and vendors to adhere to your strict brand compliance.

A marketing portal can provide the solution to maintain this branding consistency. The marketing portal provides a platform to manage your communication assets and safely distribute all marketing materials to your local stores and franchisees. Your marketing materials – logos, digital assets, and templates – are loaded to your portal and access parameters are set for each user. In addition, portals use web-to-print technology that allows you to print shorter runs on demand for marketing collateral, business cards, forms, etc. The result is saving money and reducing waste.

A marketing communication portal provides many options, including:

• Management of all communication channels, including print, direct mail, email, personalized URLs, text messaging and landing pages.
• Brand control over all downloadable materials.
• Storage of ordering, billing and contact databases.
• Customization for flexibility among variable levels, including the franchise, locations, users, and accounts.

In addition, the portal allows users to access and download digital marketing assets such as:

• Photographs
• Customizable PDFs
• Audio and video files
• Print advertisements
• Commonly used forms and documents
• Logos
• Videos

Besides saving time and money, and keeping your brand consistent from location to location, some additional advantages to a marketing communications portal include:

• Reduction in fulfillment errors
• Reduce errors and duplication in design
• Reduction in storage costs
• Reduction in obsolescence costs
• Savings in print and postage
• Faster response time
• Improved marketing effectiveness
• Administrative cost savings

This blog, plus more information to help you determine if a marketing portal is right for you, is included in the NextPage free ebook, How to Save Time and Money Using a Marketing Portal.