BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

Brand Management Software

Brand Management is a critical priority for marketers who must ensure every touchpoint with a prospect or customer is consistent. Since content is often the first impression a customer has with our organization, every asset must reflect our brand promise in a cohesive way.

Brand management is the process of setting standards and providing guidance for anyone developing branded materials, both internally and externally. Stakeholders here include vendor partners, printers, or agencies acting as brand and marketing extensions of your department. Brand management is a discipline that matters for anyone who represents your brand on any channel, including email, social media, print media, signage, and more.

Marketers who struggle to manage this task risk the integrity of their company’s image and promise in the context of the market. Brand management software helps an organization manage their brand globally and market locally while ensuring 100% brand control.

How to choose the right brand management software? There are several features that must be present in it. A good brand management system can:

• Maintain the consistency of the message across all channels

• Solve challenges that marketers face in today’s environment

• Create and execute a content-based campaign, especially when it comes to a company with a complex strategy that features both online and offline channels

• Allow for workflow automation

It’s also worth noting that good brand management software can work in conjunction with other technological solutions that the company relies on (allowing easy integration with asset management software, for example).

Making the most of brand management software, however, necessitates the completion of several preliminary steps.

Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the marketing team and having a highly specific vision in mind will both be imperative for utilizing a tool in the best possible way. Thus, you need to start with strategic intent and base software choice/usage on it.

Next, you need some understanding of how staff currently works in terms of asset management and maintaining brand integrity. This step is essential for the adoption of a new system and making sure it is in line with current processes. If necessary, you will have to carry out staff training so you brand management software should have clear guidelines for its use.

To adopt a brand management platform effectively, you’ll also have to focus on several points.

• • • Creating a sense of involvement and ownership on behalf of the staff– Processes that are already working will need to be retained and integrated with the new system. It will be much easier to get everyone on board if you offer a solution to an existing problem and you value the good work that has already been done.

• Creating a brand management software usage strategy and distributing it across the organization

• The document should explain why the introduction of the software is necessary, how it can solve existing problems and how it can meet the demands of the marketing team. A well-established protocol will reduce confusion in the very beginning and ensure a smooth transition to a more innovative brand management approach.

• Verifying workflow capabilities

• What are your current marketing processes? What kinds of workflows can you create on the basis of those? Make sure that the system you choose can fully support and even automate the processes that you engage in on a daily basis.

• Keeping track of results and measuring outcomes

• Brand management is an ongoing process that changes all the time. The best aspect of management platforms is that they track performance through the collection of relevant data. Understand which metrics matter the most for your company and track performance to determine whether a change will be needed in the future.

• Branding isn’t stagnant, and new technologies are evolving all the time. The right brand management software will increase your adaptability and help you focus efforts where these will matter the most.

• Considering system customization

• No two companies have the same branding needs. Thus, tailor-made solutions and customization can come in handy. You need to have a clear idea about the degree of system customization that will be required. For many small businesses, tailoring isn’t necessary because platforms feature a wide array of tools. If you choose a solution that is flexible enough, you will ensure its long-term usability. When a business has highly specific demands, however, custom-made solutions may be the only choice.

• Final thoughts– Information, whether online or offline, is valuable when it is consistent and properly structured. To accomplish these goals, you need to make the transition to brand management software. Asset organization and utilization is becoming an increasingly complex process. Making digital and offline assets easily available and capable of supporting business processes will save you time, increase efficiency, and potentially enable you to grow your brand exponentially.

Why is brand management software important?

Brand management software provides a solid foundation for everyone in an organization to communicate services across any channel, on-brand, and in a compliant way. It serves three distinct purposes:

1. Protection for brand identity and integrity – Your brand is the sum of all touchpoints a customer has with your organization. That means every asset carries an enormous responsibility to maintain brand identity. If an asset is fragmented, with incorrect branding, messaging, or design, it carries a real risk of degrading the brand as a whole.

2. Sales enablement tool – Sales teams rely on speed and relevance. They need fast access to content that is not only on-brand, but relevant for the prospect or customer they’re serving. Brand management software can help a sales team get the approved assets they need – quickly – while giving them the ability to personalize emails, PowerPoint decks, handouts, or other asset types. Without it, sales teams tend to “go rogue” and create unapproved, noncompliant, fragmented assets in their attempt to be localized.

3. Self-serve marketing portal – With approved, branded assets available from anywhere, anytime, employees in the field spend less time asking the marketing team for collateral, and more time self-serving. This reduces the need for one-off asset creation, by allowing team members to customize approved assets from anywhere, anytime.