Optimize Your Marketing Supply Chain and Become a Marketing Rock Star by Deborah Carson

How much of your total marketing budget is spent on production, management and distribution of your marketing content - in other words, your marketing supply chain? According to the Chief Marketing Officer Council, the average cost of those operational processes ranges from 20 percent to 30 percent.

That's a hefty chunk of change.

Yet, says the Council, only a quarter of marketing professionals have performed a comprehensive analysis of their supply chain, missing a valuable opportunity for substantial savings.

If you're among them, now's a good time to take an in-depth look at your operation.

I know - improving your marketing supply chain's productivity isn't as sexy as developing compelling content and creative campaigns. But the possibility of freeing up a significant amount of your budget - money you could better use to explore new marketing channels and add additional touches to your campaigns - should pique your interest.

Think about it. What would it mean to your marketing efforts if you could:

Gain valuable insights into your current processes and identify areas for improvement;

Improve your distribution and logistics strategies;

Reduce your inventory waste and reduce your total print spend by 30 percent;

Leverage reporting to enable fact-based marketing decisions;

Boost speed to market;

Control your brand's standards while leaving room for customization, and

Manage your marketing efforts right from your desktop, laptop or tablet?

To help you get a better idea of the benefits of optimizing your marketing supply chain, here's a short video that can help you take that first step toward marketing rock stardom.

Remember, even with a terrific strategy, sound planning and outstanding creative, a great campaign can fall short of expectations if your marketing production and fulfillment is inefficient or inaccurate, if materials arrive in poor condition or if your brand is compromised. The fact is, most marketing consumables supply chains involve multiple vendors and lots of inefficient (possibly manual) processes. That hurts both responsiveness and reliability.

Iron Mountain can help you wring the waste out of your supply chain. We offer:

A centralized marketing resource platform, accessed through a customized web portal, that hosts all of your marketing assets, connects internal and external systems for seamless, end-to-end, real-time reporting and consolidated ordering and management. You can configure user profiles to limit access to materials and order quantities.

Online customization capabilities using digital libraries of pre-approved text, images and templates, to allow sales representatives, field agents, distributors and dealers to add dynamic content and personalization. Built-in rules protect your brand by controlling user access to your marketing materials and when and how they can be customized.

Automated compliance tools, to ensure compliance with government and industry regulations.

And a consultative approach delivered by an account team dedicated to developing a thorough understanding of your business and functioning as an integral part of your department.

For more information on optimizing your marketing supply chain, download 7 Steps to Optimizing Your Print and Fulfillment Program.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/service-lines/marketing-production-...
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