In the world of branding, there are basically three elements required to make an identity come to life: development, implementation, and management. Whether your business is B2B, B2C, non-profit, healthcare, or higher education, executing your business identity takes attention to detail and planning for the big picture. Here at RBO, we have the talent and experience to accomplish all three levels of branding, but this post will focus on the third stage: brand management.
Before we take a deeper look into brand control, let’s clarify the RBO approach to brand management:
- Know a client’s brand (as if it’s our own). That means we discover, study, and document our client’s identity guidelines, and make cross-training a priority among team members.
- Implement a client’s brand (as if it’s our own). Advertising agencies come up with great ideas for a client’s message, but often fall short when implementing the brand. We excel in expecting logistic and technical challenges to executing a branding game plan.
- Manage a client’s brand (as if it’s our own). We invest in the well-being of our customer’s business and take their marketing management seriously. We have invested and partnered with the best technology solutions on the market to help internal teams control their brand and collateral.
- Represent a client’s brand (as if it’s our own). With a team exceptional in combining technology, design, and brand management, we deploy your identity with precision and care.
Whether an extension of your in-house design team or agency partner, or developing your creative from beginning to end, RBO can hit your brand’s target.
Our experience has taught us how important customization, control, and ease-of-use is in brand management. We have found that it is often challenging for marketing departments to have their branding guidelines appropriately followed and approved, and also easily manage marketing assets and materials.
Our main tool at RBO against these brand challenges is to deploy a Web-to-Print online storefront that is customized to the needs of the client. Here is just a small sample of what Web-to-Print technology offers marketers:
- An online ordering interface for ordering static (the content is fixed and cannot be changed) or variable (the content can be changed or added by the user) print products. The products are pre-approved by marketing to adhere to identity guidelines.
- The ability to order promotional products that enable a user to choose multiple variants, logos, colors, and sizing options seamlessly within one product with multiple quantities. You can place these items inside your online cart as separate line items with no multiple visits to the product.
- Setup of ordering approvals that require department heads or other authorized users to sign off on any user order before being fulfilled. The simplest approval process includes a single step that is approved by a single user, but you can configure more complex, multi-step approval processes that include any of these properties: user, user group, cost center, product, payment method, shipment method, and custom field.
- Reporting to track spending and ordering across your entire site. You can define which users can see reporting and what data is available to their reporting utilities. Besides standard order, order line, and inventory reporting, the ability for custom reporting and custom dashboards is also available.
To show and not just tell, here are just a few examples of a customized Web-to-Print solution developed for the unique needs of the client.
- A local university reached out to RBO for a solution to control their branding guidelines and also easily manage marketing assets and materials. After several discussions, we designed a custom Web-to-Print storefront with agreed upon approval rules and marketing-approved templates. We also developed some custom forms in collaboration with the university for administrative requests to make changes or additions to the site. By working closely with the client, we provided the exact marketing management tool to address all their challenges and simplify their processes.
- To execute an international rebranding effort while meeting FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) sustainability requirements, a global architecture and engineering firm turned to RBO to help meet brand management and compliance. We created a Web-to-Print online storefront with branding restrictions and approvals to ensure identity integrity worldwide while production management ensured FSC compliance. After deploying the storefront, they have ordered hundreds of items online from around the world, all in compliance with new branding standards and FSC protocols. In addition, we manage the distribution from our state-of-the-art warehousing facility.
- A major Midwest bank with over 200 branches and over 900 unique printed pieces needed a streamlined ordering solution for management and delivery of materials. After a careful review of the bank’s goals, we developed a Web-to-Print online storefront for easy ordering by customers around the country. We fulfill these ordered materials from units stored in our state-of-the-art distribution facility. After training hundreds of users in less than two months, our client experiences over 90% of all online orders being fulfilled within 24 hours all while enjoying a simplified ordering workflow that saves significant costs and time.
- Flexible online ordering was key to a national sales company, as they needed their 600 nationwide agents to get promotional apparel without adding staff to process orders. They learned a Web-to-Print storefront would enable the products to be ordered as needed. The storefront also includes Google-branded items because the client partners with the Google Business View program. Agents involved in the photo shoots for the program order the Google products like business cards and shirts. Without having to hire additional support staff, the client nearly doubled their sales team by improving their ordering process using Web-to-Print technology.
Most companies could automate over 50% of their orders and improve their overall channel partner satisfaction. Online storefront solutions automate manual processes, reduces errors and decreases total order cycle times all while reducing the per order cost. This is why Web-to-Print is such a valuable technology in achieving maximum brand management.