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Test Author Mar 15, 2023 3:17:12 PM

How to Stay On Top of Market Changes and Keep Your Print Collateral Updated

How to Stay On Top of Market Changes and Keep Your Print Collateral Updated

In a perfect marketing world, favorable market conditions would last forever. And, should a change to the status quo occur, it would come with advance notice, giving marketing teams plenty of time to plan and execute a flawless campaign.

The reality is that many marketers operate in dynamic or volatile business environments, and change is not a matter of if, but when.

Beth Comstock, former CMO of GE, said it best when she expressed, "Marketing's job is never done. It's about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day."

In other words—change is unavoidable in the marketing world.

The past few years proved the importance of preparing for sudden market shifts, thanks to supply chain issues and pandemic-related challenges.

Successful businesses and their marketing teams must be flexible and adaptable in their print marketing strategies to compete in 2023. But how are marketing teams supposed to keep up with the constant challenge of change?

It’s easier than you may think. Here’s what modern marketers need to know about staying on top of market changes, including:  

The Importance of Up-to-Date Print Marketing Collateral 

Having up-to-date marketing collateral shows that your company cares about the needs of its customers. After all, a brochure, flier or business card is often the first impression target audiences have with your brand.

With that in mind, it's essential that your print marketing collateral clearly and consistently convey the following:

  • Your brand identity and who you are.
  • The product(s) or service(s) you offer, along with key details.
  • Messaging that reflects the value your business can provide today, not six months ago.
  • Up-to-date business information, including addresses, phone numbers, and links to your website and social properties.

For example, brochures that include products that have been discontinued, last year’s pricing, outdated branding, or incorrect company information can be indicative of a business that isn’t trustworthy. Worse, incorrect information could cause your sales team to get caught up in preventable discrepancies or require reputation management.

But arranging an entire library of marketing assets and guaranteeing each asset is up-to-date can be a job in and of itself. Plus, editing assets to reflect constant changes in dynamic and volatile business environments requires even more bandwidth and resources.

Don’t worry, there are two steps you can take to make managing and quickly updating your print marketing collateral easier than ever.   

How to Consolidate and Centralize Your Print Marketing Collateral

The first step is consolidating and centralizing all of your print marketing assets.

We know that trolling through all of your marketing materials sounds tedious, but consolidating all of your assets in a marketing portal is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to manage your marketing asset library. While we're not talking about a portal to another dimension, the benefits of using a marketing portal are genuinely out of this world!

Like a digital filing cabinet, a marketing portal makes it easy to access all your assets in one place. Accessible 24/7, a web-based marketing portal gives users self-service access to order and distribute the marketing materials they need while giving marketing teams enterprise-level control over what assets are available, who can access the portal and how much can be ordered.

When marketing resources are kept in a centralized, web-based location, marketing teams can quickly upload up-to-date marketing materials for users to order, from anywhere in the world, such as:

  • Pre-printed or pre-bundled packs of brochures, flyers and presentation kits.
  • Promo items, product samples and trade show displays.

A marketing portal even allows users to customize materials using pre-designed, pre-approved templates. For example, sales reps can personalize marketing materials with hyper-targeted content that speaks specifically to the pain points of prospects.

Once your print marketing assets are up-to-date and housed in a centralized location, you’re almost ready to rock.

Next, you’ll want to ensure you have a rock-solid marketing fulfillment strategy in place for processing print marketing orders and ensuring your brand gets into the hands of target audiences fast.

Speed is the name of the game in 2023.

Responding quickly to changing market situations, customer behavior, and other unexpected events can set your company apart from the competition and boost sales numbers skyward.

So, how do you do this? 

Prepare to Move Fast: The Need for Speed

Fast production and distribution times will be of the utmost importance in 2023.

One of the easiest ways to expedite the fulfillment and delivery of print marketing collateral is to 
decrease the number of vendors in your marketing supply chain.

Unfortunately, in a daisy chain of independent vendors for design, printing, and distribution, each vendor creates a potential weak link in your supply chain. This can wreak havoc on time-sensitive campaigns.

Find a single-source marketing fulfillment partner, like Jet Mail, that can handle everything under one roof. For example, Jet Mail will print, assemble and store your print marketing collateral in one or more of our three fulfillment centers in Maine, Boston or Dallas. Having multiple fulfillment centers means that shipping times are drastically reduced since we’ll ship assets from the fulfillment center closest to target audiences or prospects. Here’s how businesses across every industry benefit from lightning-fast fulfillment:

  • B2B: Sales reps customizing brochures and thank you letters to send to prospects after an introductory call.
  • B2C: Processing information kit requests or product sample orders on your website.
  • E-Commerce: Order fulfillment with hyper-targeted print inserts included in shipments.

A single-source marketing fulfillment partner comes with another major benefit: agility.

As mentioned earlier, change comes often and fast these days. And while changes can bring lucrative opportunities, they can create a fire drill for marketing teams when unforeseen events occur.

Here’s how a single-source marketing fulfillment partner gives your business the agility to capitalize on change. 

Welcome Change with a Modern Print Production Model 

Let’s pretend you just got word that your company will be discontinuing a product, effective immediately. This change needs to be reflected in all of your print marketing assets. But what if you just printed 50,000 product brochures last month?

All of those brochures are now out-of-date and need to be updated and re-printed.

Think of all the other scenarios that require immediate updates to print marketing collateral, such as:

  • Pricing spikes or dips due to supply chain issues.
  • Regulatory or policy changes.
  • Changes in customer behavior require a change in messaging or positioning.
  • Opportunities that come from unforeseen business or political events.

Any changes to print marketing collateral can cause delays and missed opportunities. 
Additionally, the cost of re-printing in bulk may cause delays due to budget limitations.

To prevent this, Jet Mail created a hybrid print management solution that blends the speed of on-demand printing with a just-in-time manufacturing model. This assures that just the right amount of ready-to-ship print marketing collateral is always in stock and ready for same-day processing.

But what does just the right amount really mean?

We’ll monitor usage reports and historical data to ensure you never run out of inventory, but also ensure that you don't print too much. When the stock runs low, our automatic shelf top-off technology will alert you that it's time to re-print.

Should a change occur, send us an updated file, or we can update the file for you. Then, we'll either wait until the current assets run out or pull them from the shelf and immediately replace them with an updated brochure.

For example, we will pre-print, assemble (if needed) and store 200 product brochures on the shelf of one or more of our fulfillment centers. As orders come in, we’ll process them for same-day fulfillment and professionally package and ship them directly to your business, prospects or target audiences. When the inventory reaches a designated threshold, let’s say 20 brochures or less, you’ll receive an email requesting your approval to re-print and replenish inventory levels back up to 200.

Should print marketing collateral need to be updated, changes can be made easily, quickly and without 50,000 outdated brochures going to waste.

Stay Ahead of the Sudden Business Changes with Jet Mail 

Since 1993, Jet Mail has helped businesses across all industries stay ahead of the curve in dynamic business climates.

Whether you need a marketing portal to facilitate customized collateral for sales reps, solutions for marketing collateral management, or even order fulfillment for your actual products, we’re here to create the perfect solution for your business thanks to our extensive menu of modern marketing and lightning-fast fulfillment services.

Contact us today to learn more about our solutions for print marketing, direct mail and fulfillment.

Editor’s Note: This blog was originally published in January 2022, but has been updated with relevant information.  

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