Why It’s Time for You to Make the Move to an Online Marketing Portal

By LeRay Warrior, Principal at MEDiAHEAD.

Marketing a company is often a complex process that involves many moving parts. However, it doesn’t always have to be this way.

Here at MEDiAHEAD we’ve been helping our clients consolidate and centralize the marketing process for over 15 years with our tailored online portals. But what exactly are online portals, and how can they dramatically improve the marketing process?

What is an Online Marketing Portal?

As a company grows, so do the marketing and sales departments. Marketing teams located in different regions can often begin to diverge from agreed branding guidelines. And last-minute customizations to print runs have to pass through several hands before being approved. After a while, even the simplest of tasks such as finding the latest version of a sales brochure can become unnecessarily difficult.

An online marketing portal provides an online media warehouse for all of your marketing materials in one handy, central location.

Not only will all employees know where the latest versions of marketing materials are, but businesses can track every penny spent on developing and printing marketing campaigns.

But the benefits to switching to an online marketing portal don’t end there.

What are the Advantages of Moving to an Online Marketing Portal?

Perhaps one of the biggest savings afforded by an online marketing portal is time.

By streamlining all marketing assets into one online repository, undertakings such as customizations or updating of information can all be handled in a matter of a few clicks and will instantaneously take effect across the whole organization. There will no longer be any guessing as to where the latest version of a file is when using a searchable online media warehouse.

Integration with suppliers can make last-minute print orders a cinch. Furthermore, Field reps and sales agents don’t have to worry about liaising with their local marketing department to print the latest needed materials.

Cost Reductions

Have you ever authorized a huge print run of marketing materials only for the information contained within those documents to become obsolete a few months later? Let’s face it, no company wants to get stuck with thousands of flyers or brochures they can no longer use.

With an online portal you can order what you need, when you need it, reducing costs and unnecessary waste.

What’s more, you can set budget restraints on individuals, departments, or divisions to ensure they stay within their allocated budget. Employees can see their spend in real-time, allowing them to make informed choices with their assigned resources.

Improved Return on Investment (ROI)

Online portals produce fully-customizable reports, meaning ROI suddenly becomes easier to measure. By running cost reports against campaign performance you can immediately identify high-performing marketing properties and those that are hurting the bottom line.

By using reports on usage trends and inventory costs, companies can also utilize that information to make some serious savings; leading to further increases in ROI.

Increased Flexibility

Browser-based marketing portals give employees the opportunity to log in from anywhere in the world to access marketing materials. Sales reps who’ve managed to secure last-minute meetings with potential clients no longer have to worry about getting marketing information together. It’s all there, ready to go on one easy-to-navigate platform.

Leaning on a trade show to give you a discounted stand rate but sweating under the pressure of getting marketing assets printed in time? With an online portal, materials can be sent for print and turned around within 24-48 hours. Allowing you to secure the best possible deals on expos, trade shows, and industry forums.

Increased Control Over Branding

Regional variations are a necessity for most businesses’ marketing assets. A message crafted for inhabitants of New York is not going to have the same impact in California or Kansas City. However, maintaining a consistent look and feel across marketing materials is important.

Online portals give management teams the ability to approve materials, ensuring controlled versioning for regional and strategic partners. With a consistent look across all products and materials, changes can be made much quicker and disseminated across the company in an instant.

We are Experts at Creating Online Marketing Solutions

As mentioned, we have well over a decade of experience in delivering game-changing online marketing portals to our clients. We’ve used that expertise to help clients deliver marketing campaigns they could only dream of previously.

After a successful installation, targeted cross-media campaigns can be launched with a few clicks of a mouse. Companies can place orders with a variety of vendors across the country all in one place; and they can print what they need, when they need it, instead of running up huge print overages or costly small print runs.

Management can use the portal to ensure brand guidelines are being adhered to and there’s no more time wasted on collateral, proofing, editing, or searching for the latest version of important marketing assets.

If you feel that your company could benefit from a streamlined, centralized, and fully-functional online marketing portal then don’t hesitate to contact us today.

Take advantage of the following benefits:

• 24/7 access to all sales and marketing collateral wherever employees are based

• Create and customize all documents in one location

• Monitor all orders and materials company-wide to make sure they adhere to brand guidelines

• Keep better track of marketing spend and determine ROI of campaigns

• Track and manage inventory of all sales and marketing assets

• Set budget allocations on individual, departmental, and divisional levels with real-time spend analysis

• Save time and money on printing costs by only ordering what you need, when you need it

• Launch campaigns across various media formats with regional versioning from within one central hub

• Gain access to additional marketing lists and segment them for targeting within the portal