In a world where you need to stand out more than ever before there isn’t time to order business cards for new employees or worry about your 2nd location using the wrong size postcard or logo on digital ads.

There is only time to focus on meeting your goals and planning new ones.

Which means you need a way to maintain your brand’s identity while making it easy for team members to access the right materials so they can deliver the right message all on their own.

To do this, you have two options: Take advantage of a “Done for You” (DFY) Marketing Portal or create and keep up with your own materials using a “Do it Yourself” (DIY) Marketing Portal.

Let’s first take a look at what a Marketing Portal is and then walk through how a DIY and a DFY Marketing Portal works so you can choose the right way to protect your brand and make growing your business easier.

What is a Marketing Portal?

A Marketing Portal—also known as an “Ordering Portal,” a “Web to Print Portal,” or “Brand Portal”—is an online, on-demand storefront that empowers companies to keep their brand consistent across all departments and locations while also saving them time and money.

They are custom built to hold all print materials, direct mail materials, promotional items, and digital assets that are important to your company.

This makes it easy for your sales, marketing, and any other department to enter your company’s Marketing Portal, choose the materials they need and place orders. While also having the ability to make minor changes if acceptable like names on business cards or addresses on brochures while safeguarding your brand.

What is a “Do It Yourself Marketing Portal”?

Do it Yourself Portals aren’t technically a Marketing Portal at all. They consist of however you organize your design assets and templates. Whether that be ordering materials in bulk and storing them in your office or filing designs internally online for your marketing department to grab and order materials at various printers.

In a Do it Yourself Portal environment, all product updates are dependent on you and your team to build out new products, configure designs, show employees how to order or find designs, etc.

Which means if you change a design or resize your promotional postcards, or even rebrand, you need to reorganize and keep track of your new and old files to make sure employees are only using approved materials.

Disadvantages of a DIY Portal:

• If the person trained in setting up products/designs is not available or leaves your organization, your portal stagnates.
• Non-compliant designs may reach customers and jeopardize your brand’s identity.
• It’s difficult to keep materials, templates, and other assets organized and up to date.
• There is no way to guarantee that your overall company is distributing on-brand marketing materials.
• You and your teams waste time.
• Money is wasted with the time wasted.
• Keeping track of orders is nearly impossible.
• Overall, managing and ordering your print and digital assets is challenging.

What is a “Done for You Marketing Portal”?

A Done for You Portal, or what we call a “Marketing Portal,” is an online interface set up through a pre-approved vendor of your choosing where your various locations, departments, or employees can order materials on their own using your pre-approved design templates and materials.

For example, if you own a chain restaurant, your location across the country can login to your online Marketing Portal, order new menus that already have branding in place and abide by your brand’s guidelines. They can even edit the address or phone number using the exact font you have chosen while not being able to change anything else about the menu.

In a Done for Your Portal or Web to Print Portal, environment, all you need to do is choose the products you want included and provide the creative assets. Your printer then takes care of the rest while also making any changes for you, as you need them.

Advantages of a DFY Portal:

• Less work for you and more time saved.
• Your design team is able to focus on what they do best—design new materials.
• Your Web to Print Portal provider takes care of everything else and their expertise in product set up provides you with faster more flexible tools.
• You are able to make immediate use of new features, as the portal vendor manages the configuration for you.
• Your portal provider specializes in Web to Print Portals for many clients, so you gain a vendor who is naturally invested in expanding and improving functionality.
• You can monitor orders online.
• You can set up approval processes to approve orders before they are produced.
• Your printer can print materials in bulk and inventory them for you for faster delivery as you need them.
• Helps maintain brand compliance.
• Customization tools that don’t interfere with branding.
• A specially trained support team is included who will help show your team how to use your Portal and continue to help them with any needs they may have.
• Removes the risk of non-compliant designs reaching customers.

Conclusion:

Overall, the result of taking advantage of a DFY Marketing Portal is you gaining an environment that allows you to seamlessly manage and order materials so you and your team can focus on what’s most important—growing your business.

If you’re ready to effectively protect your brand and make accessing, ordering, and managing marketing materials an easy and cost-efficient process, click the button below to schedule a quick 10-minute demo and see if a Done for You Marketing Portal is the right option for you.