Imagine using a different name everywhere you go. The people at the post office think you’re Joe, while the bank staff thinks your name is Pete. When you go to your favorite restaurant, everyone calls you Bob.
Talk about an identity crisis.
People aren’t the only ones who can have identity crisis. Brands can, too.
If your business has multiple locations, you need to make sure it doesn’t have multiple identities. That means each location needs the same branded marketing materials. Otherwise, your business will suffer from a serious identity crisis that will hurt your sales.
Fortunately, you can use an E-commerce marketing portal — or as some call it, a branded storefront for marketing materials — to allow easy access to all of your printed marketing pieces (like business cards, employee handbooks, direct mail postcards, flyers, brochures and more), digital marketing assets (like email banners, logo files, display ad graphics, presentations and other approved imagery), and promo items (like employee apparel, pens, notepads, giveaways and tablecloths).
After setting up this portal, team members or franchise owners at all of your locations can access the materials at will, ensuring the same look and feel from store to store. Print and promo pieces will be printed and delivered directly to the individual locations, and digital assets are available for immediate download. You can set up permission-based logins, so only some people have certain access. And, you can set it up that the locations pay or corporate pays, however you decide. It couldn’t be easier!
Related: Build Better Franchisee/Franchisor Relationships
Provide Up-to-Date Materials to Maintain Brand Consistency
With a cloud-based E-commerce marketing portal, franchisees and store managers can access your marketing materials from anywhere. You can use the system to deliver updates to standard marketing materials and push out documents for upcoming short-term events. You can even set expiration dates for the materials, so no one has access to outdated information. This greatly simplifies the need to maintain consistency across the board.
Customization and Personalization
You want your brand message to remain consistent, but you understand the need for personalization and customization. For example, if you have stores in Florida and Georgia, those stores can’t have the same contact information on their customer-facing brochures.
An E-commerce marketing portal gives the employees at the location level the ability to customize certain fields, such as employee names, store address, phone number and hours, on the appropriate materials. Other fields can be locked to keep them the same across the board. You can also choose to lock an entire document. By locking certain fields but leaving others open to customization, companies can maintain their brand messaging while still speaking directly to customers in various regions.
Related: Multi-Unit Brand & Asset Management
Social Media Marketing
If your business has multiple locations, it’s likely you have multiple social media accounts, as well. Each storefront might have its own Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts that managers use to create personal connections with customers. That’s an excellent way to reach customers, but it can also create quite the headache for brand HQ. Consistency is key, and putting various people in charge of managing social media accounts means you’re always attempting to weed out inconsistency messages.
An e-commerce marketing portal can fix this problem. You can actually create brand-compliant social media messages and load them into the platform. Then, each social media manager can access the posts and upload them for their location. That means that every social media page will stay on point and deliver your brand’s message.
Related: How To Get Started with an E-Commerce Storefront
Consistency Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult
If you give each store manager or franchisee ownership over brand messaging, your brand will be all over the place. Deliver one solid message with the help of an e-commerce portal. Then, when your customers travel from one location to the next, they will walk into a company they know and trust. They won’t be confused by variations in brand messaging, and you can build your identity and serve your customers.
Do you love the idea of creating a consistent brand identity, but time is not on your side? You have millions of little things to do, so hand this big thing over to Ironmark. You are just one quick chat away from learning how we can make your brand identity consistent across all locations. Connect with us today and find out how we can help.
