Why Web-to-Print? Because It’s Hard to Keep Marketing Budgets On Track

If your marketing department says they’re overworked and understaffed, they’re probably half right. I explored this topic in a previous article as I introduced some of the main reasons to research Web-to-Print solutions.

Then, in my most-recent article, I discussed another common frustration for marketing departments: sales teams sometimes go renegade with marketing programs and end up breaking the organizational brand that Marketing has worked so hard to develop.

These are some of the most obvious problems caused by broken marketing processes. Today we’ll explore a less-obvious issue caused by this chaos: the inability to keep a marketing budget on track. If you’re a CFO, much of this is going to sound familiar.

How Realistic Is Your Marketing Budget, Anyway?

When you let your marketing team know their budget for the year, they may be disappointed by the dollar figure they see. And they may very well want to make an argument asking for more money.

“OK, I’m all ears,” you may respond. “Make your case.”

That’s where the conversation often ends. Most marketing departments don’t have the data they need to make a case for a larger marketing budget.

But you don’t just want to win arguments. You want to give your marketing department the resources they need to do their best work, and to deliver the greatest possible impact for your organization.

In other words, you want to partner with them to achieve marketing excellence. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. Where to begin?

Well, for starters, you’ll need to work with Marketing to determine the impact of the collateral they produced this past year. Have they tracked how many pieces got used, and in what ways?

Do they know how much collateral they currently have in storage? Do they know where the boxes of unused collateral live and what they contain?

Also, how realistic are your marketing team’s commercial printing plans for the coming year? In other words, are their projected printing runs aligned with your organization’s needs? You can receive major price breaks for making larger print runs—but how has this worked out for your organization in the past? Do you have closets full of outdated—and now useless—collateral that you mass-printed in the hopes of saving money? If so, how will you prevent this from happening again? 

By giving your marketing team the tools to answer questions like these, you can help ensure a smarter, more strategic spend—and greater ROI.

How Web-to-Print Services Help You Track Spending

Now, here’s the rub. If your marketing department is tracking its processes in a spreadsheet—or in the brains of individual employees—it’s going to be tough for you to evaluate whether they have the budget they need to get the job done.

This is an area in which Web-to-Print solutions can help you. Not only do they streamline the process of producing collateral—which minimizes wasted time and effort—but they also help you track everything you’re doing in one place. Web-to-Print (sometimes written Web2Print) can give you complete visibility into what you’ve produced, how much you’ve spent, and when it will be time to order more collateral.

With numbers like these at your fingertips, talking budget with Marketing suddenly becomes much easier. But enough about problems. In my next article, we’ll start talking about Web to Print solutions.