3 Hot Industries for Marketing Portals in 2019
As companies search for better ways to centralize and distribute marketing collateral, many are turning to marketing portals. These private, branded websites provide a way to consolidate and share several types of items – print, promo, apparel, and digital. Marketing portals allow marketers to create groups of users which determine viewing rights and ordering permissions. This means the company creates the rules – which products are relevant to which users and how much money a user can spend (if the company charges for products). The company can ensure their brand’s integrity and the users (employees or clients) get the benefit of a centralized, intuitive, powerful marketing collateral storefront.
With marketing portals, companies can consolidate all their marketing assets in one place and give their employees the ability to personalize and order anything from business cards to flyers to promo and much more. Sophisticated customization features make it possible for users to personalize and edit marketing materials to fit their needs while staying within branding guidelines. With a few clicks, a user can populate business cards and flyers with all their info, add them to their cart, and complete the order.
It goes further than that. This technology can drive your entire marketing material supply chain. Any number of vendors, producers, and shippers can be integrated and orders can be submitted, tracked, and out for delivery with minimal touch points and room for human error along the way.
Marketing portals aren’t new, but they didn’t spread overnight either. Some industries have caught on to the exceptional usefulness of this marketing management technology quicker than others. We detail three (3) types of businesses figuring it out the fastest (in no particular order):
1. REAL ESTATE
WHY: Have you checked your mailbox recently? Real Estate Agents love to market – Just Listed, Just Sold, Housing Statistics, etc. Corporate real estate marketing teams are embracing portals to provide generic collateral for agents to select and personalized to their liking. Marketing portals make it easy for these companies to provide a large team of agents across several cities with access to print and promo marketing materials.
Since real estate is an industry where product details are constantly changing (as new properties go on and off the market), the on-the-fly customization features of marketing portals are a huge time saver.
TYPES OF PRODUCTS: Post Cards, Flyers, Business Cards, Yard Signs
BONUS: In some cases, custom integrations allow a platform to ingest data from MLS databases for advanced customization. These data points (house descriptions, images, etc.) can be pulled automatically to fill templates on materials like flyers, yard signs, and digital display ads.
2. FRANCHISES
WHY: The biggest nightmare for a franchise occurs when several hundred franchisees create their own collateral – brand guidelines become compromised, logos get stretched, pricing becomes inconsistent. By locking down certain details within a marketing asset, franchisors can determine if they want users to modify the (changed from documents) marketing material and to what degree. Essentially, franchisors can create boundaries. Franchisees know where to find corporate-approved material and branding items.
Traditionally, the way franchisors retain strict control over their brand standards is by disseminating materials to their franchisees using pre-determined packages that are bought by the franchisee either directly from the franchisor, from the franchisor’s distributor, or from one of their pre-approved vendors. This means that marketing materials are either generic, and therefore not as successful at targeting local customers, or require a whole bunch of extra steps for customization.
Marketing portals allow franchisors to ensure brand compliance across a huge network while also giving franchisees a centralized location to find, customize, and order all their marketing materials and branded inventory.
TYPES OF PRODUCTS: Signs, Logos, Training Manuals, Apparel, Menus & Table Tops (Food and Beverage Industry)
3. MORTGAGE INDUSTRY
WHY: Highly-regulated industries translate nicely to a controlled marketing portal. Mortgage companies can support a wide range of employees with collateral specific to their roles – Loan Officers, Outside Account Executives, Clients, etc. By grouping users, a mortgage company can dictate which roles see which products and who has permission to order what.
The flexibility of marketing portals makes them incredibly useful for mortgage companies, which often deal with a varied and always changing inventory of assets. Because portals support both printed and digital marketing materials, depending on the web-to-print solution, users can submit orders for production or download for their own use.
Features like direct mail support also make a lot of sense for mortgage companies, who rely heavily on retargeting and sales cycles that can last anywhere from months to years.
TYPES OF PRODUCTS: Sales One-Sheets, White Papers, Product Overviews, Promo Items
These three industries are making the most of the power of marketing portals. But they are by no means the only ones. A complete marketing management solution can transform the way businesses of many shapes and sizes handle their marketing materials, branding standards, and budgeting goals.
