Brand consistency

Achieving brand consistency across borders: Your guide to marketing localisation

Papirfly
8 minutes read

As a business operating in multiple countries, you must do everything possible to tailor brand content to individual global audiences.

Why? Adapting content around the cultural nuances of different regions does more than help customers understand who you are and what you offer; it builds trust—an increasingly precious commodity in a world where misinformation runs rife.

Yet, despite the immense value localised collateral can provide, actually creating it can make maintaining brand consistency a headache. 

Whether that’s because new colour palettes are needed to respect the traditions of a specific country, or fresh straplines are required to suit different languages – brand localisation can quickly deviate from your pre-established guidelines.
If you want to reap the benefits of localised content while upholding worldwide consistency, this article will help you reshape your global brand strategy. Discover valuable strategies, and learn how Rabobank – a multinational cooperative based in the Netherlands – achieves unity in over 35 countries.

3 tips for achieving global consistency in localised content

When international customers are easier to reach than ever, and expectations for personalised content are on the rise, adapting your content to local cultures is a must. To execute this strategy while staying on-brand, the right approach is essential.

1. Build flexibility into your brand guidelines

When you first laid out the guidelines that govern how your brand presents itself, chances are you nailed everything down, from the colours you use to the position of your logo. 

Detailed style guides are a huge help for people in and outside your company, giving them the direction they need to stay on message. However, they can also become an obstacle to consistency when adapting your brand content to new markets.

That’s because stringent guidelines may offer little freedom over how you uphold your brand image. When new messaging, colourways, layouts and more are needed to resonate with specific communities, this can become a problem, forcing team members to think on their feet, which can then undermine your identity.

How do you maintain brand consistency while still honouring your target audience’s traditions? It all starts by introducing a layer of flexibility into your brand guidelines. Exactly how you do this will depend on the specifics of your brand, but as a general rule of thumb, consider:

  • Building in variable elements to your documents, such as unique colour palettes and straplines for different scenarios
  • Developing guidance on how regional teams can adapt brand content to individual regions and communities
  • Including checklists that local departments can follow to avoid causing upset or offence in certain countries 

These steps can give your teams either working in or responsible for certain regions complete clarity over how your brand should be showcased there. This in turn empowers them to create and adapt your messages with confidence that they aren’t overstepping your overall identity.

Furthermore, if you use an online brand hub to house your brand guidelines and other hallmarks of your identity, you could establish different versions for your international teams, written in their own language. Again, this extra layer gives your local teams the confidence to produce in line with their altered guidelines.

2. Empower local marketing teams to create

Another way to deliver content that aligns with cultural expectations – as well as your overarching brand identity – is to empower your regional marketing departments to get creative.

Your local team members play a crucial role in adapting your brand’s messaging to fit the needs of specific markets. Without the right tools to develop, translate and localise your marketing materials, your people might have to create new versions of this media from scratch.

This does more than simply slow their output. It can make it hard for regional teams to deliver personalised content to the quality and scale needed, limiting the efficiency and feasibility of your global brand strategy, and creating inconsistencies that deviate from your overall brand image.

To achieve a more coherent, self-sufficient approach to marketing, a Digital Asset Management (DAM) and content creation suite can be a wise investment. 

This equips your digital marketers with smart templates they can use to hit the ground running with on-brand asset creation. With the right tool, you can tailor these templates to suit location-specific imagery, colour schemes, languages and more, ensuring regional team members can generate content in line with your agreed-upon identity. In practice, that means great content can be produced quickly, with no margin for inconsistency.

As well as this, an attached DAM system houses all of your latest local and global assets in one place. From here, you can tag or categorise assets in accordance with their relevant location for fast, easy identification, or even manage visibility so people in a particular region can only see the items they need. Again, this means the right, on-brand content is only shared with the right audience.

Some brand management toolkits even incorporate approval workflows, so your central teams (or other leaders) can have final sign-off on any adapted assets before they go to market – a powerful way of unleashing your digital marketers’ creativity while retaining that all-important brand unity.

3. Establish clear avenues for internal communication

Finally, coordinating campaigns across multiple continents is tricky business. With so much scope for consistency-breaking mistakes and cultural oversights to rear their head, strong internal communication is a necessity for several reasons:

  • It gets everyone on the same page before committing time and resources to local content creation
  • It helps ensure content is released on the right channels at the right time for the right audience
  • It keeps the flow of assets from team to team seamless and straightforward

Fundamentally, good internal communication maximises the efficiency of your global marketing operations and prevents major brand discrepancies from country to country.

Having a clear line of communication from central headquarters to every regional office also ensures that changes, like new brand positioning and marketing messaging, are reflected as soon as they come into effect.

It also lays the foundation for collaboration between central and local marketers. This can raise creativity and confirm that every localised campaign meets the expectations of regional audiences, as well as your brand’s overarching goals.

All this is to say internal communication is at the heart of any globally consistent, locally relevant brand. To make it stick:

Again, a dedicated brand portal and DAM solution can unlock stronger communication between your worldwide teams. As a “single source of truth” for everything – both locally and globally – it can act as a key point of collaboration and education for every content creator.

For more on internal communication and tips to improve yours, check out our practical guide.

The advantages of globally consistent, locally-tuned content

Establishes deeper levels of trust

If you operate in multiple territories, taking a one-size-fits-all approach and publishing the same off-brand collateral in each region drastically limits the ability of your marketing materials to resonate.

Different countries and cultures have different beliefs, speak different languages, and value different things. By reflecting these nuances in a way that respects their traditions, while also preserving your core identity, you can lay a strong foundation to build that all-important trust with your audiences.

Improves global brand recognition

Creating content attuned to the communities you’re targeting is vital. But if every piece you publish varies in style from post to post, prospects may not realise they’re engaging with the same brand.

By taking an approach that balances local demands with your overarching brand image, you can ensure the key elements that define your business appear on every social post, banner ad, brochure and beyond in every location. A clear through-line that honours your individual audiences, yet makes it obvious who they’re interacting with.

Not only does this global recognition help you stand out among a sea of competition – it inspires confidence in your products and services.

Enhances customer loyalty

Going all-in on either brand consistency or localisation when reaching a global audience can spell disaster for customer loyalty.

Establishing a healthy balance of both – and delivering on-brand, localised marketing campaigns in the territories you operate in – shows potential customers you care about their experience as much as the sanctity of your branding. 

This is acknowledged by the right consumers, helping you convert them into loyal patrons.

Boosts conversion rates

Few things dampen the effectiveness of your campaigns like marketing materials that fall short of local expectations, content that strays from your localised guidelines, or assets that fail on both counts.

When you implement the strategies we’ve outlined above and craft content that balances the parameters of your brand and the demands of regional communities, your campaigns are in the best place to convert prospects.

Whether it’s translated landing pages for a product or job listings that reflect the country you’re recruiting in, treating different localities as any other marketing segment can be the foundation for superior marketing performance and increased sales.

How Rabobank adapts content consistently to international markets

To illustrate the real-world value of balancing global brand consistency and localisation, let’s round off by taking a look at Rabobank – a multinational cooperative bank based in the Netherlands, who transformed how they adapt content to local markets to achieve a new standard of consistency.

Rabobank was originally established by Dutch farmers in the late 19th century as a small cooperative. Today, the corporation is home to more than 40,000 employees, who operate in more than 35 different countries.

Serving a broad range of different customers, from civilians in the Netherlands to large wholesale clients in Australia, the company was finding it difficult to manage their brand consistently. With dozens of disparate sub-brands and products under their belt, they knew they needed to make a change.

This non-hierarchical structure was core to Rabobank’s cooperative nature and was what drew customers to their company. However, it was also clear this was their greatest problem, confusing other patrons and eroding trust in their global identity.

Rabobank needed a flexible framework to develop culturally relevant content for their international customers, all while retaining a thread of consistency throughout. An approach that used a brand hub as a one-stop shop for everything involving their brand.

From immersing staff in guidelines and streamlining Digital Asset Management, to empowering local teams to create and approve content. With the right solution in place, Rabobank transformed how it maintained cultural relevance in marketing, all while bringing its identity in line across every region.

By securing the buy-in of stakeholders from across the organisation, and listening to their thoughts and feedback, Rabobank continues to evolve with this technology at their core.

In doing so, it has seen widespread adoption internally and improved the unity of their global image. It also resulted in the production of over 23,000 assets in 2023 alone, a figure which has helped them improve brand reach and resonate with regional communities, all while avoiding costs.

Elevate your global marketing strategy to new heights

To unleash the full potential of your promotional material in target markets around the globe, you need to deliver collateral that acknowledges the local nuances of every region.

Whether that means updating messaging to work in new languages or swapping out imagery for something that reflects the communities you’re targeting, adapting to the expectations of different countries can make it hard to maintain the global consistency you need to succeed.

We hope the tips, tricks and technology we’ve introduced in this article – and the real-world case study of Rabobank – give you what you need to strike the perfect balance between regional flexibility and global brand consistency. A balance that enables you to speak to your local audiences directly and personally, while maintaining a rock-solid reputation at a worldwide level.

Table of contents:

  1. 3 tips for achieving global consistency in localised content
  2. The advantages of globally consistent, locally-tuned content
  3. How Rabobank adapts content consistently to international markets
  4. Elevate your global marketing strategy to new heights

Employer brand

7 elements every world-class employer brand should have

Papirfly
8 minutes read

Employer branding is crucial for any organisation. Executed well, it can position your company as a compelling place to work, help attract and retain top talent, and enable you to stand out in an ever-expanding sea of competition.

In fact, in a recent survey, 1 in 6 UK workers said they would accept a new role without a rise in pay, if it led to better job security and development opportunities.

However, get it wrong, and you could risk falling short of candidates’ and employees’ expectations – a poorly maintained employer brand that can lead to greater employee churn, sluggish hiring processes, lower morale and engagement, and potentially hurt your brand’s reputation beyond the talent pool.

So, how do you build a great employer brand? It all starts by understanding exactly what makes some of the world’s greatest so successful. Organisations such as Google, Salesforce, HubSpot and Bain & Company are consistently ranked as tremendous places to work, and a large part of that is their commitment to strengthening their distinct employer brands.

With all this in mind, in this article, we’ll be diving into research and drawing from our decades of experience to bring you the standout characteristics of effective, well-rounded employer branding.

7 hallmarks of world-class employer brands

1. A clearly defined employer brand strategy

Like most successful elements in marketing, a world-class employer brand starts with a well-conceived strategy.

Without an overarching idea of how your employer brand is perceived, who your ideal candidates are, where prospective recruits spend their time, and the messages you must share both internally and externally – your efforts can quickly become inconsistent, unstructured and unsuccessful. 

You don’t have to look far to see the correlations between solid strategizing and employer branding success. Take energy drink giant Red Bull, for example. They wanted to seek out the most promising candidates from their expansive talent pool – all while providing a memorable recruitment journey.

To do this, the company devised a strategy that centred around the creation of a new tool, Wingfinder. This started by working together to identify the core traits, skills and experience of their ideal hires, which were then programmed into Wingfinder. This made it faster to find prospects that fit Red Bull’s hiring criteria, while providing unsuccessful applicants with helpful career development advice.

This has allowed Red Bull to improve the quality of its hires and the public standing of its overall business. And while Wingfinder is the tool at the heart of this, it would not be nearly as effective without the well-considered strategy behind it.

With all this in mind, how can you formulate a successful strategy for your employer brand? Here are some top-line tips for you to mull over:

For more insight on composing a top-tier plan, check out our in-depth article: How to develop and deliver an effective employer brand strategy.

2. A receptive attitude to listening

An employer brand, while a formidable recruitment tool, really centres around delivering an experience that resonates with your existing talent. 

Placing your full focus on attracting new job seekers, and consequently leaving your teams on the ground feeling undervalued or ignored, only hurts your ability to recruit, retain and engage staff in the long-term.

This is all to say that it’s important to listen to your staff. The insights they provide can pave the way toward a future where your brand and your people are closely aligned, empowered and engaged. 

And this is exactly what L’Oreal – world leader in beauty products and globally regarded place to work – did when it came time to craft a new Employer Value Proposition (EVP). By soliciting input from its staff, the organisation established a compelling EVP that authentically represented the company.

So, how do you gain the information you need to make changes for the better? One way is to simply ask, sending out an internal survey with questions like:

  • How would you describe the company culture to a friend?
  • What made you decide to join our organisation?
  • What aspects of our workplace do you find most and least motivating?
  • If you could change one thing, what would it be and why?

3. An authentic company culture

Another core tenet of any successful employer brand is authenticity; your ability to ‘make good’ on your promises and incorporate them into your everyday company culture.

Is your business rooted in tradition, or are you laser-focused on the future and globalisation? Is your corporate structure formal and hierarchical, or do you take a more free-flowing approach to employee participation?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. The important thing is that you genuinely reflect these values in the day-to-day environment at work. If you don’t, you could risk alienating your new and existing talent.

For example, imagine you’re a candidate who joins an organisation because it’s positioned as a forward-thinking company and a global leader in its field. But, when you get there, you’re greeted by dated equipment, a stringent dress code, and a restrictive management structure. You’d probably feel misled and disconnected from the get-go.

What can you do to ensure your company culture more closely aligns with your employer brand and values? Consider the following:

4. A localised approach to communication

The world’s best employer brands are great communicators. It doesn’t matter if they’re speaking to employees in Europe or appealing to candidates in Asia, global leaders in this sphere all nail one thing – localisation.

Whether you’re a national corporation or an international conglomerate, the last thing you want to do is take a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to messaging. Doing so could exclude individuals who ‘fall outside your central narrative’ and damage your reputation within certain groups and cultures. 

You only have to look at when the Jolly Green Giant became the ‘Intimidating Green Ogre’ in Arabic, to see what can happen when localisation goes wrong.

With that in mind, what does success look like here? For multinational software company SAP, adapting content to local audiences meant they could present an entirely consistent brand – one capable of empowering employees, supporting talent acquisition, and maintaining a vast talent pool of over 150 nationalities.

Despite the immense benefits of localisation, adapting your employer branding to different markets is hard work, especially if you operate in multiple territories. That’s why some of the largest enterprises, like SAP, rely on dedicated content creation solutions to expedite this long and involved task.

While different content production tools will vary in their capabilities, giving anyone on your team the power to quickly change elements like colours, imagery and messaging – instead of having to build each new version from scratch – unlocks the speed and flexibility essential to achieve effective localisation.

In addition, harnessing a capable Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool alongside this can allow your teams to categorise social media graphics, recruitment ads and more based on location and audience segments. This greatly reduces the risk of inappropriate or ill-fitting content reaching the wrong market, cutting down inconsistencies that threaten your communications.

5. A forward-thinking commitment to DEIB

DEIB stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging – four concepts at the heart of any leading employer brand.

Without them, you run the risk of excluding talent. Not just by limiting who you directly consider for your roles, but also by alienating anyone who places real value in working at a company that honours diversity and inclusivity. 

So, how do you embrace and establish a more equitable culture in your organisation? For global payment service Mastercard, they made a commitment to equal pay, and invested in establishing Business Resource Groups (BRGs) to represent communities across 47 countries. These are impressive milestones that feature prominently on their career pages.

That doesn’t mean you need to champion these exact initiatives or invest in developing your own career page to succeed. As we’ve mentioned above, taking your employer brand to the next level is all about listening to your people and what matters most to them. So for you, that could mean:

  • Establishing diversity & inclusivity champions internally
  • Fostering a culture of greater transparency
  • Setting up inclusive recruitment processes
  • Using AI to sense-check recruitment materials for inclusive language

For more industry-leading insight into crafting an equitable employer brand, don’t miss our in-depth guide: DEIB in the workplace: Top trends to activate an inclusive employer brand.

6. A consistent employer brand

Maintaining a consistent brand is important – not just for your paying customers, but also for your prospective and high-performing talent.

Why? Because all of the hard work that goes into creating your employer brand strategy, refining your EVP and building a culture of authenticity can all be undone when you deviate from your playbook and defy brand consistency. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s slightly off-brand colours in a social graphic, a mismatched tone of voice in an employee handbook, or an outdated logo on an offer letter. Inconsistency breeds distrust, confusion and disengagement, sinking your reputation as an employer.

That’s why leading employer brands like Rolls Royce and Google place immense value in consistency, never deviating from their brand guidelines regardless of the channel they’re using or the region they’re in.

But how do these pioneering brands achieve unbreakable unity? While approaches will undoubtedly vary, in our experience it’s essential to:

  • Create a robust set of employer brand guidelines your teams can follow
  • Set up a digital brand hub to centralise every aspect of your brand identity
  • Use content creation tools like design templates to minimise human error
  • Recycle assets to remain on brand economically

7. A proactive drive for employee advocacy 

Now more than ever, trust and transparency are at the forefront of many professionals’ minds. 

To tap into this emerging trend and craft an identity that meets this criteria, many of the globe’s leading brands leverage their employees as ambassadors, showing others what life is really like at a company from the perspective of a team member.

It’s why Adobe’s channels regularly feature employee stories, and the thinking behind Nokia’s investment into employee generated content (EGC).

The way this strategy works is simple. By nominating people who personally embody your employer brand’s values and genuinely love working for you, you can inspire these frontline employees to create a positive, honest window into your working environment – insight that helps top talent picture themselves in your organisation.

For these programmes to work best, the right approach is key:

Discover how to encourage employees to advocate for your employer brand. Read our insightful article: 6 steps to turn your employees into true brand ambassadors.

Ready to take your employer brand to new heights?

In such a highly competitive landscape, properly managing your employer brand has never been more important. To ensure you’re getting it right, you don’t just need to implement the right strategies; you need to understand what separates good employer brands from the greatest – and these seven elements are the starting point.

By analysing some of the best identities out there, and employing our years of unique experience in this area, we hope the information we’ve compiled in this article acts as a helpful benchmark to guide your identity to greater success. 

Coupled with a powerful end-to-end branding solution, you can revolutionise your ability to attract and retain top-quality talent, stand out in an increasingly crowded market, and drive your company to further success with the right people behind it.

Table of contents:

  1. 7 hallmarks of world-class employer brands
  2. Ready to take your employer brand to new heights?

Digital Asset Management

Serving assets on a silver platter

Christer Lorichs
4 minutes read

No matter how many features and how big a capacity a DAM system has, the only really relevant question is: How good is it at making effective use of the assets?

Procuring a DAM system usually begins with drawing up a list of requirements. Sometimes this is laid out in the form of a number of use cases about what is expected in different situations. A “Request for information” is then sent out to a number of possible suppliers for an initial selection.

The obvious goal of a central DAM solution is that it should constitute a “single source of truth”. But that requirement is only a declaration of intent that can be solved with technical functionality. It says nothing about ease of use, complexity in the configuration of the technology, etc.

From my own experience with over 20 years as a consultant and supplier of DAM solutions, the majority of the requested information has focused on functions and technology that are mainly aimed at the work to be performed by those, often rather few, who shall manage and maintain the system, the DAM editors or librarians. This is work done in what most call ”our DAM”. I say that this is just one part of the DAM, the backend.

Pretty much all leading systems today have a good “backend” in the form of an interface for uploading and maintaining assets. The variations between different systems are mostly about details and some special functionality. 

But a DAM’s most important function is to make the content available to anyone who shall see and consume the material.

A DAM project should therefore have the overall goal of finding the system that is easiest to use and most efficient in supporting the needs of mainly the end users.

The DAM editors must of course have a strong tool for their work, but regardless of which solution is chosen, they will learn their new tool. For the backend you naturally must ensure that all important basic requirements are met in order to manage assets throughout their entire life cycle.

But for the end users, the requirements are completely different. Most are infrequent users. They have different wishes at different times. They want to get hold of the right material from different units and in different contexts.

Therefore, it must be possible to make the navigation simple, obvious and inviting. A goal for the DAM project can e.g. be defined as the possibility to… 

“Serving assets on a silver platter”

By that I mean that it should be super clear and obvious to find the relevant assets. And it should be possible to communicate and present how the assets can and should be used for best results.  Also there shall be ways to present assets in different views, with logical filtered groupings, very visual and clear navigation, tailor made to suit each organization’s needs.

A similar requirement could be to find a system that enables a relevant selection of assets to never be further than two or three clicks away. 

“Assets always within reach, 2-3 clicks away”

I’ve seen great examples made by clients where instead of having the user do searches and try to find the right stuff, the DAM editors have presented all materials belonging to e.g. a specific campaign, on one long page. 

To communicate the campaign, a link is sent, one click and the end user has all needed information and ready to use assets on the screen.

And it should be just a few clicks away for the editors to achieve this, without needing to hard code anything. 

DAM center portal

A very difficult question to handle is where to find what you need. All companies have lots of different system solutions. A new DAM system is another one to keep track of and could be lost in the wind.

Therefore, the DAM project should aim to establish a place for all the DAM assets of the business, that is easy to remember. The most important way to achieve this is by making the portal really useful and inspiring to navigate. But also, just by naming the portal smartly, could have a huge impact on remembering where to go. 

All leading DAM systems have some form of end user portal aimed at regular users. For this you have to set high demands and test:

  • What are the possibilities to create a solution exactly the way you want it?
  •  Is it easy to modify and maintain?
  •  Is it consultant-intensive?
  •  Can it facilitate communication around assets?
  •  Can it facilitate searching, sharing and downloading?
  •  Can you add on functionality afterwards?

DAM access from applications

If you are to fulfill “Assets always within reach, 2-3 clicks away”, you also need to give end users direct access from the applications they use.

Connect the DAM to Powerpoint, Word, Google Docs, etc. This is where the absolute largest number of users will get a better everyday life by having direct DAM access. Just by installing a connector.

For a smaller group, the Adobe connection is important. Make sure it supports Indesign image links. Explore the possibility of creating a creative process with agencies.

Other users who also benefit from simple DAM access are web creators who work with Figma and web editors should have direct DAM access from the CMS.

DAM access via API

For PIM systems and web shops, a connection to DAM is a big advantage. Investigate if it can be solved with connector or direct DAM linking via API.

Conclusion

By focusing on the delivery of assets to end users in the most comfortable way possible, you will ensure that a new DAM solution will not be just another system but an essential tool for, especially, all in marketing and sales. But it will reach further into other parts of the organization as well. 

In almost all parts of an organization there are assets waiting for a better home.

So to get the most out of the huge investment and effort put into creating brand and marketing assets, they really should be… served on a silver platter.

Learn more at DAM NY

At Papirfly, we are dedicated to revolutionizing digital asset management with innovative solutions that streamline content creation and management. We’re thrilled to be participating in the DAM NY event, where we’ll dive into the latest trends and advancements in the DAM landscape.

Visit our booth to discover how Papirfly’s solutions can enhance your asset management and support your content creation needs. We look forward to engaging with you at the event and exploring the future of DAM together.

For more information about how Papirfly is driving the evolution of digital asset management, click here.

Table of contents:

  1. Serving assets on a silver platter
  2. Assets always within reach, 2-3 clicks away
  3. DAM center portal
  4. DAM access from applications
  5. DAM access via API
  6. Conclusion
  7. Learn more at DAM NY

Content Creation

Build self-sufficient marketing teams by empowering everyone to create content

Papirfly
9 minutes read

Planning out a marketing strategy is no easy feat. But turning these concepts into content is where the biggest challenge lies for 44% of marketing teams. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re a startup trying to get a foothold in your industry, or a long-established name with an extensive marketing department – even the best-laid plans can fall apart if you can’t keep up with content creation.

To meet the rapidly growing demand for high-quality, on-brand assets, a recent study revealed that 69% of digital marketing departments rely on one or more third-party agencies to create the content they need to build trust, attract leads and drive success.

While the relationship between an agency and an internal promotional team can often reap wonderful results, utilising these specialist skills for day-to-day content creation can come with a high cost. At a time when marketing budgets continue to fall across the board, this is a burden that is far from sustainable.

Even those blessed with the privilege of in-house design and development teams find it difficult to maintain pace with the rising call for marketing content. When creatives are pulled away for vital tasks and projects, their focus on the day-to-day churn of content can slip, leading to broken campaigns or drops in quality and consistency.

With all this in mind, how do you empower your marketing teams to deliver the masses of branded collateral you need to reach new and existing customers, aid lead generation, and achieve the long-term goals laid out by your leadership teams? 

It all starts with self-sufficiency. Below we explore what this means, the challenges involved, the practical steps you can take to promote independence in your company, and the benefits associated with this approach.

What is a self-sufficient marketing team?

A self-sufficient marketing team operates independently, efficiently managing all aspects of campaigns without relying on frequent support from outside the business. 

This means that, with the right skills, tools and resources, independent marketing teams can meet the increased demand for content throughout your organisation, creating collateral, executing campaigns and adapting to changes to drive positive results.

However, self-sufficiency doesn’t necessarily mean zero involvement from design agencies or external partners. Instead, it’s about reducing the dependence on these groups for the daily demands that drive campaigns and keep marketing content rolling at a consistent pace.

The greatest barriers to self-sufficient marketing

Thanks to rising customer expectations, the prominence of personalisation and a growing fight for audience attention, the burdens on marketing communication teams are heavier than ever.

Even if these challenges aren’t hampering the capacity and capabilities of your content supply chain right now, two-thirds of marketing professionals expect the demand for promotional materials to grow between 5 and 20 times in the coming years.

To make sure your marketers are prepared for this future, they need to be independent and equipped to handle content creation themselves. However, making this a reality is easier said than done.

Quality content is in high demand

When you consider how multichannel marketing has become the standard for the majority of brands, and that more than 50% of companies use at least 8 channels to interact with their customers, you can start to see how insufficient capacity is such a prevalent problem for professionals in this space.

Coupled with the predictions for even higher levels of collateral being required to make an impact, and it’s immediately obvious the sheer scale of this challenge.

Put simply, your team needs a lot of content going out to make an impression. Content that not only covers multiple touchpoints, but is also completely consistent and able to deliver genuine value to your audiences.

With each platform having its own additional specifications, such as file formats, aspect ratios and sizes, creating the various types of content your marketing teams need to get campaigns off the ground is one of the biggest hurdles to self-sufficiency.

Production processes can get crowded

It’s rare for a single person to be responsible for the end-to-end creation of an asset; this presents a key problem for true marketing independence.

Whether a piece of collateral first requires strategic input from the department head or the assistance of copywriters and graphic designers along the way – being reliant on so many individuals from start to finish leaves room for mistakes, oversights and inconsistencies.

Organising these moving parts is essential to mastering the art of marketing self-sufficiency. Getting it wrong can delay projects, strain resources and impact your business’s bottom line. Furthermore, crowded content supply chains tend to be slow and cumbersome, making it harder for your brand to tap into timely marketing opportunities. 

To independently produce the pieces of content that guide your brand to long-term success, it’s crucial to streamline the important parts of your content creation ecosystem.

Localisation can weigh down operations

If you have a presence in multiple territories, you know your identity must be more than consistently presented. Resonating with regional audiences demands content that is localised to specific markets.

In practice, that could mean updating imagery to respect the cultural sensitivities of a certain group or producing collateral in the local language of your audiences. 

These added layers of complexity go beyond extensive research and adaptation. In some cases, localising collateral means crafting entirely new designs, which can further strain the finite time and resources available to your self-sufficient marketers.

If you want to establish independence throughout your marketing department, your team must have the tools to tackle the immense burden that localisation brings to their day-to-day operations.

6 tools and techniques to unlock true marketing self-sufficiency

Despite the challenges involved, taking a more independent approach to marketing throughout your organisation can lead to meaningful long-term cost savings, greater brand consistency and true marketing scalability. 

But how do you enter this era of self-sufficiency? We’ve rounded up 6 essential solutions and strategies to get you there.

1. Rely on template libraries

Template libraries are an integral part of any self-sufficient communication department, giving marketing management and support teams the ability to produce high-quality content rapidly.

This means there’s no need to build materials like social media posts, infographics and email campaigns from scratch over and over again. With a library of digital design templates by your side, this technology helps solve the problem of speed and consistency in your content production pipeline. 

Templates can also democratise the design and delivery process, meaning your colleagues no longer need to rely on the costly services of an agency, or wait for a gap in your designers’ schedules to get creative. Couple this with easy on-brand asset creation tools, and you’re well on your way to building a truly autonomous marketing department.

2. Develop clear brand and style guidelines

Few things can disrupt the independence of your marketing operations as unclear brand guidelines can.

With no clarity on what elements should and should not be incorporated across your collateral, the job of content creation becomes increasingly difficult, forcing your marketing department to bring on outside help or rely on rounds of amends from higher-ups – outcomes that can slow production to a crawl and undermine your team’s self-sufficiency.

Solving this problem requires comprehensive digital style guidelines; a foundation from which your marketers can produce consistent, on-brand marketing materials across any channel, enabling them to take full ownership of this important task.

3. Establish a centralised brand portal

Another essential piece of technology to inspire self-sufficiency in your marketing is a brand hub or brand portal.

These platforms act as a single, central ‘home’ for all of your brand’s key building blocks, from style guides and colour charts, to tones of voice examples, exemplar assets and more. Everything your marketing professionals need to understand and represent your brand accurately in one destination.

But the advantages don’t end there. By placing all this information in one, easy-to-reach digital place, a brand portal can help ensure your people are spending less time finding the information they need, and more time managing your brand in-house, helping your campaigns go to market faster.

4. Implement robust marketing automation tools

Carrying out the entire content production and marketing pipeline in-house involves a lot of work, especially if this is something you currently rely on third parties for at the moment. 

Marketing automation platforms can streamline many of the more menial tasks to ease the pressure on your teams’ workload. Be it aggregating customer interactions, posting on social or coordinating email marketing campaigns – the more you can automate, the more self-sufficient you become.

This does more than free up the capacity of your marketing creatives. It allows them to focus on higher-impact activities that demand strategic thinking, so they can deliver greater long-term value.

With automated workflows to reduce the strain of your routine operations, your team can function with greater autonomy, better adapt to market trends, and become a more self-sufficient unit.

5. Use AI-powered content production tools

As we mentioned earlier, the call for content isn’t just becoming greater; audience expectations are also rising. Meeting the pace and quality today’s customers are looking for demands agile, intelligent technology, and marketing AI can be a game-changing addition to your content production workflows. 

Whether that means employing AI writing tools like GrammarlyGO to help you proof content and produce long-form blog posts, or ideation-focused software such as ContentShake AI to generate data-driven ideas for your content plan – this technology can turn your marketers into fast, multidisciplinary creators.

With the ability to do more themselves, your marketers can deliver a steady flow of content without completely depending on in-house creatives or third-party agencies, enhancing their overall self-sufficiency and productivity.

However, while AI can be a powerful tool, it’s important to remember that it works best as a complement to your marketing professionals rather than a replacement for them. Prompts still need human input and oversight to achieve the human-centred quality key to long-term success.

6. Commit to regular training and upskilling

Finally, when you invest in regular training for your marketing teams, you equip them with the skills to handle more tasks in-house. 

Be that mastering new tools or honing creative traits, enabling your professionals to become better at what they do reduces their reliance on external resources. 

Plus, upskilling your employees allows them to stay sharp in the rapidly-evolving landscape of digital marketing; knowledge they can draw from to enhance the overall performance of their ongoing campaigns.

After all, it helps if your marketing team not only understands how to accomplish their role, but also has the confidence to innovate and tackle the challenges that stand in their way.

What are the benefits of self-sufficient marketing?

When you empower your marketing teams to become increasingly self-sufficient, you unlock the ability to produce content, reach target audiences, build trust and achieve objectives without relying solely on outside assistance.

As you can imagine, reducing the costs associated with outsourcing marketing can be a great way to maximise your promotions’ bang for their buck, and allocate resources that can be used to drive your business toward greater success. 

Handling content creation in-house also opens the door to increased marketing agility. In practice, that means your marketers can react to timely opportunities and data-driven feedback much quicker.

Plus, with consistency the foundation of brand trust, another advantage self-sufficient marketing can bring to the table is wall-to-wall brand alignment. With everything handled internally, there are fewer opportunities for errors and inconsistencies to sneak into a customer’s journey.

Involving fewer external stakeholders in the marketing pipeline can also lead to effective communication. This promotes inter-department collaboration and allows proposed strategies to take flight far quicker.

Perhaps most importantly, self-sufficiency gives your team members a strong foundation from which to scale their operations. As well as priming your brand for the content-rich future ahead, this approach allows your departments to more readily adapt to your ever-evolving business needs.

Successful, sustainable marketing begins with a self-sufficient approach

Content is the lifeblood of every campaign. It’s what reaches your target audiences and entices them to become repeat customers.

But keeping up with the ever-growing demand for collateral is hard. Many teams rely on the assistance of third parties to deliver the quality and scale required, even as marketing budgets continue to decline – an unsustainable combination for even the most well-prepared brands.

As you’ve discovered, self-sufficiency gives you a competitive advantage in your ongoing efforts to engage, inspire and delight your consumers. By harnessing the tips and tricks we’ve showcased in this article, you can unlock the shackles on your staff and make content creation a seamless, swift and structured process across your departments.

By striving towards self-sufficiency, you free your company from unwanted bottlenecks and breakdowns in communication and guide it towards a future of sustained, effective performance.

Unleash your clients’ brand consistently on every channel. Empower your partners with the Papirfly Digital Asset Management and Content Creation suite

Table of contents:

  1. What is a self-sufficient marketing team?
  2. The greatest barriers to self-sufficient marketing
  3. 6 tools and techniques to unlock true marketing self-sufficiency
  4. What are the benefits of self-sufficient marketing?
  5. Successful, sustainable marketing begins with a self-sufficient approach

Brand management

10 rebranding tools and technologies you need for a successful rebrand

Papirfly
8 minutes read

Anyone who has been involved in a rebrand or brand refresh will gladly tell you how complex and stress-inducing it can be.

There are many moving parts to stay on top of, from managing the personnel at the heart of this change, to implementing updates to your visual identity across your entire suite of brand assets.

Done right, a rebrand can revitalise your organisation, cut through to a whole new audience, and take your brand’s visibility to a whole new level. But, if handled poorly, it can burn precious time and money, and alienate your most loyal customers.

To put your team in the strongest position to overcome the plethora of rebranding challenges, it’s imperative you equip your employees with the right tools and technology to deliver an effective rebrand on schedule and on budget.

Here, we’ll show you 10 tools you should prioritise to ensure your new brand identity is managed as efficiently and seamlessly as possible.

What are the steps to a successful rebrand?

Before we outline the rebranding tools and marketing technology crucial for the best possible outcome, let’s first break down the rebranding process. After all, knowing the steps to a successful rebrand is key to understanding where these tools can slot in.

While your specific checklist will be unique to your organisation and the scale of your rebrand, we have broken this down into 9 top-line actions that are typically essential to any effective rebrand:

  1. Conduct a brand audit, identifying your strengths and weaknesses and establishing any change in target audiences, vision or identity
  2. Carry out research into competitors and other brands as inspiration to guide the direction of your rebrand
  3. Determine your rebrand’s scale – are you planning on a partial rebrand, a brand refresh, or a full rebrand?
  4. Create your rebrand strategy, define your new brand identity and set your ambitions for this project
  5. Develop the assets needed for your rebrand – brand elements, marketing materials, designs, names, slogans, etc.
  6. Build new brand guidelines that encapsulate the visual identity, tone and overall essence of your updated brand
  7. Communicate your brand revamp with your internal stakeholders, marketers and employees
  8. Engage your customers and wider audiences about your rebrand so they are informed and prepared for this shift
  9. Roll out your rebrand launch and manage the post-rebrand journey

As you can see, there’s a lot to contend with – especially when you take into account the wide range of marketing channels you need content for and the importance of managing the expectations of your existing customers.

The right tools and technology can support you and your team at every step of the process, putting you on the path to a rebrand that achieves the success of Meta or Guinness rather than the unwanted results of GAP or Tropicana. Here are 10 to consider adding to your rebrand toolkit.

10 rebranding tools and technologies to activate your rebrand 

1. Market research tools

Great marketing is forged from great research – a rebrand is no different. High-calibre market research tools give you the data and insight you need to guide your rebranding strategy, from identifying the wants and pain points of your target audiences, to understanding the sentiment surrounding your existing brand.

With the right research behind you, you can make informed decisions about the scale of your rebrand, determine where to focus your attention to resonate with potential customers, and discover what competitors and other brands are doing to inspire your evolution.

Of course, market research is a large category in itself, so here are the specific types of tools you should look into in this area:

2. Brand portals

A successful rebrand must be applied consistently across all channels to stick with customers. You cannot afford for old designs, logos, slogans and beyond to creep back into your marketing – everyone in your team must be informed and educated on your up-to-date identity so they follow it as intended.

A brand portal (or brand hub) can be a valuable tool for achieving this requirement. By gathering everything that dictates your new brand strategy in one cloud-based, online location – guidelines, handbooks, tutorials, example assets, etc. – a brand portal becomes the “home” of your rebrand, communicating this change to every relevant user without hassle or confusion.

Bringing your brand values, logo policies, colour palettes, typography, visual elements and more into a single, accessible place, you go a long way to ensure brand consistency in the weeks, months and years after your rebrand launch.

3. Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems

In a similar vein, an effective Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution enables you to lock down the assets at the core of your rebrand. Many marketers have struggled with outdated logos or obsolete branding emerging from different areas following a refreshed identity.

A DAM system keeps all of the latest, verified and approved assets in one library, which your teams across the globe can refer to for their marketing campaigns and other activities. Plus, a good-quality version will include user permissions that prevent users from accessing outdated assets, so there’s never a risk of old materials resurfacing.

Through this “single source of truth”, investing in a DAM goes another step toward guaranteeing your branding is applied consistently on all platforms, and creates a sensible, easy-to-navigate repository for every asset created for your rebrand.

4. Project management tools

The many moving parts behind a rebrand mean strong project management is vital to keep these organised, aligned and progressing in the right direction. Any oversight or gap can cause mistakes that set your rebrand back weeks, send costs skyrocketing and lead to a rocky rollout.

There’s a wide variety of project management tools and software on the market to help you ensure tasks are assigned to the right people, maintain collaboration among the key players in this process, and track progress from start to finish. Here are a few of the leading names to consider:

Investing in one or more of these tools can keep your rebranding project on time and on budget, as well as support your marketing activities post-rebrand.

5. Team communication platforms

In addition to project management tools, team communication platforms are an essential element to keep everyone on the same page during the planning and execution of your rebrand. 

If your marketing teams are spread out across the globe or work remotely, relying on emails and phone calls will only slow down progress. A more instant, purpose-built communication tool such as Slack, Hive or Zoom will enable your people to interact more efficiently, leading to a more streamlined and organised journey.

6. Content creation and graphic design software

If you are handling your rebrand in-house, then powerful content creation and graphic design software is an absolute must. This will form the basis for your new logo, visual elements, designs, imagery and beyond, setting the standard that your wider teams will replicate moving forward.

So it’s crucial you choose this technology wisely. With many, many options out in the market, be sure to ask the right questions to locate the design software that’s right for you, such as:

However, if you are working with a dedicated rebrand company or design agency to oversee the development of your rebrand, this technology becomes less of a priority.

7. Design template software

Regardless of whether you are spearheading the creation of your refreshed brand identity in-house or leaving this task to an external partner, your teams must be able to recreate it for your day-to-day marketing demands.

As the demand for digital content and asset creation continues to grow, there will be limits on how fast your marketing team can keep up. Instead, using your rebrand as the basis for a wide range of on-brand design templates can empower anyone in your organisation to produce assets in line with your new identity, making your teams more agile and consistent.

With the right template software in place, your marketing becomes more self-sufficient and your teams can hit the ground running with asset creation as soon as your rebrand launches.

8. Campaign planning tools

Your rebrand launch is a make-or-break moment in this process. It should be built up through your marketing to build anticipation and gradually introduce your audience to your brand’s new look and feel – not forced out without warning like the transition from Twitter to X.

A successful rebrand requires a successful launch campaign. A capable campaign execution tool empowers you to map out this event with precision and care, plotting out the teases, rationales and explainers that will help your rebrand resonate with both new and existing customers.

Beyond the launch event, campaign planning tools can also add structure and consistency to your marketing activities long after your rebrand has taken centre stage.

9. Data and analytics tools

When you formed your rebrand strategy, you undoubtedly would have established targets and KPIs to measure the success of your rebrand. These targets may include:

To track your performance against these and other parameters, you should invest in robust data and analytics software.

From brand sentiment and social listening tools that enable you to gauge the reception of your rebrand, to financial analysis software to assess the tangible outcomes of this refresh – gathering data in the weeks and months after you rebranded will help you identify any areas for improvement.

10. Brand management suites

A successful rebrand is built on the strength of your brand management. This encapsulates the strategies, techniques and processes your organisation uses to maintain and improve your brand in the long term.

An end-to-end brand management suite incorporates several of the tools outlined above – DAM systems, content creation, brand portals, campaign planning – into one universal solution.

This consolidated platform can make it simpler to handle your numerous responsibilities without needing to juggle or invest in multiple disparate tools. This multi-layered approach streamlines your technological load, while still giving you the same all-encompassing support.

Make your rebrand stick with the right tools and technology

Rebranding is a heavy undertaking at any scale. You need the right vision, the right people and the right technology to deliver a result that places your new-look brand on the best footing possible. A direction that takes your company forward and builds deeper connections with your audience, rather than alienates people so much that you have to return to square one.

We hope this article helps steer you toward the optimal rebranding tools for your specific marketing efforts. By using our categories as your starting point, you can look forward to a more straightforward, efficient and stress-free journey, and start preparing for a bright future under your new brand identity.

Table of contents:

  1. What are the steps to a successful rebrand?
  2. 10 rebranding tools and technologies to activate your rebrand 
  3. Make your rebrand stick with the right tools and technology

Brand consistency

How to find success with a multichannel marketing strategy

Papirfly
10 minutes read

The path between your brand and your customers was once far shorter and simpler. With fewer established marketing channels and a focus on local or national audiences, there were only so many routes marketers could take to connect with consumers.

With the rise of the internet and the ever-growing assortment of apps, social media channels and other platforms at our disposal, today’s digital landscape couldn’t be more different. It’s vast, global and highly connected – presenting opportunities and challenges in equal measure.

Today, multichannel marketing is the only way forward for ambitious, forward-thinking and customer-centric brands. To reach modern consumers, you must cast a wider net to engage them on their terms while keeping consistent at each of these touchpoints.

So, how do you truly deliver multichannel marketing? What are the benefits? What hurdles do you need to overcome? We outline all this and more below, so you know the secrets to executing high-performance, multichannel campaigns for your target audiences.

What is multichannel marketing?

Multichannel marketing is a way of reaching your customers by promoting your content on multiple channels simultaneously. 

Whether that’s more traditional mediums like print and TV, digital platforms like social media and search engine advertising, or a combination of both, the ultimate goal of a multichannel strategy is to reach your audiences wherever they spend their time.

With many possibilities for consumers to discover and engage your brand – be it a web banner on their favourite news site, a compelling email marketing campaign, or eye-catching posters outside your high street outlets – a multichannel approach extends the potential touchpoints for your potential customers.

Multichannel marketing vs omnichannel marketing: What’s the difference?

Multichannel marketing is far from a new concept – its origins stretch back to the 1990s and early 2000s coinciding with the growing maturity of the internet and digital technologies. However, it has also been tied with omnichannel marketing, a term that started to gain prominence in the 2010s.

Although they share much of the same meaning, in that they both promote the use of multiple marketing channels to connect with consumers, there are key differences. The biggest of these is scope. A multichannel approach involves producing content for more than one platform; omnichannel means having a presence everywhere. 

Another factor is the form these campaigns tend to take. In most cases, multichannel marketing is about fostering engagement, acting as a straight line from your brand to your customers. Omnichannel marketing, on the other hand, centres around creating a seamless brand experience.

Essentially, it’s possible to view omnichannel marketing as an evolution of multichannel marketing, where the fundamentals of the multichannel approach are supercharged into one flawless, integrated customer experience. But, in order to take that step, you must first be adept at multichannel marketing.

Why is multichannel marketing so important?

Did you know more than half of marketers create content for at least 3 or 4 channels? As the possibilities of the digital landscape become better understood and more accessible, more marketers are escaping the limitations of single-channel marketing strategies.

But just how powerful is multichannel marketing? Here are just some of the top-line benefits a broader approach can unlock for your brand.

Increases client lifetime value

As well as enabling you to reach a greater number of customers, sharing your marketing messages across multiple platforms empowers your brand to build a seamless customer experience wherever your audiences choose to spend their time.

This helps you create a base of loyal customers who trust your brand and are more likely to make repeat purchases. This improves customer lifetime value in the long term, giving you a sustainable platform for growth.

Boosts brand awareness

When your brand is present on the numerous channels and devices in your customer’s buying cycle, you are better able to reach and engage your prospects at the times and places that suit them and their natural behaviours.

This naturally breeds familiarity, which boosts people’s awareness of your content. With the right messaging across each touchpoint, a multichannel approach can be a powerful marketing tactic to keep your company’s products and services at the forefront of our audiences’ minds.

In fact, multichannel marketing is such an effective brand awareness tool that as many as 48% of promotional teams employ this strategy to get the word out.

Elevates customer understanding

As the old adage goes, knowledge is power. This is especially true in sales and marketing. It’s why the best salespeople listen more than they talk, and how the best marketing campaigns resonate with their target group.

And herein lies another key advantage of multichannel marketing: gathering customer insights. When people interact with your brand across multiple platforms – be that social media, email, websites or physical stores – you can build a clearer picture of your prospects’ behaviours, wants and pain points.

What kind of messaging resonates with them? What times are they most active? What are they interested in? All this insight becomes far more attainable and widespread when you move beyond a single-channel marketing strategy.

With solid data the backbone of any successful marketing campaign, this broader network of information can significantly elevate the performance of your promotions.

Expedites time to conversion

Did you know that it can take as many as 8 interactions with your brand before customers consider making a purchase?

If you’re limited to a single platform, it can become increasingly difficult and time-consuming to guide your potential prospects to the all-important conversion stage. But by leveraging several platforms at once, you can speed up the time involved in reaching this threshold.

Whether that means utilising direct mail in combination with social media advertising, or TV and radio together, building familiarity through multiple mediums is a proven way of empowering patrons to make a purchase. 

Reduces overall cost per contact

As well as being associated with higher engagement and financial performance, taking a combined approach to your next marketing campaign can reduce your annual cost per contact by as much as 7.5%.

In a time when competition is becoming increasingly fierce and marketing budgets feel tighter than ever, being able to repurpose content and maximise the impact of your resources can be a huge boon for your campaigns’ performance and long-term return on investment.

Building your high-performance multichannel marketing campaign in 8 steps

Multichannel marketing has been at the forefront of countless growing brands. From Asana to First Direct, these are just some names that have unlocked the true potential of this medium to grow their reputation on a global stage.

But, like with any promotion, the right approach really matters. Success is never a given, especially when you consider the hurdles involved in rolling out a campaign of this scale.

If you’re keen to revolutionise your marketing performance, here are 8 steps to follow when building your own multichannel campaign.

1. Define clear objectives

The very first step in any productive multichannel marketing campaign involves establishing clear objectives. 

Whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness and improve lead quality, or stimulate website traffic and build trust, defining what a successful multichannel marketing campaign looks like from the outset will inform every decision you make and the performance of your efforts from here on in.

For your goals to contribute to the wider success of your business and brand, good marketing objectives:

  • Are informed by your business’s insights
  • Align with your company’s mission and goals
  • Are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-sensitive

2. Understand your audiences

Next, you need to truly understand your target audiences. After all, if you don’t know your audiences inside and out, how will you select the best channels to reach them?

Ideally, you’ll want to establish strong buyer personas that give you and your team valuable insight into what your typical customer looks like, where and when they spend their free time, and what kind of messaging appeals to them.

Look into your in-house data to determine the attributes your most loyal consumers share. If not, conduct your own research by arranging interviews with people you think could fit your audience or analysing your competitors.

As we mentioned previously, knowledge is everything when it comes to the world of marketing. So, taking time at this early stage to define your customer journey, segment your audiences and build detailed customer profiles is critical.

3. Select the right channels

If you could show up everywhere, you would. But executing a fully-fledged omnichannel campaign isn’t a realistic goal for every business. To make the most of your existing resources, you must choose the most relevant, powerful platforms.

There is no right or wrong answer here. What avenues work for your brand is probably going to differ from other companies, even to those in your same industry. 

By analysing the data you’ve gathered on your customers, as well as analytics acquired from your in-use channels and competitors, you can gain a clearer picture of where your revised focus should lie.

Whatever your initial data tells you, be sure to remain agile. Channels that seemed ideal from the outset may not reap the rewards you anticipated, and customer attitudes and behaviours are constantly shifting.

If your campaigns aren’t resonating on a particular platform or compromising your ability to manage your brand, be prepared and willing to pivot.

4. Create a multichannel marketing plan

With your objectives set, your audience defined and your channels locked down, you need to lay out your marketing plan and establish your roadmap for long-term success.

Although marketing plans will vary from campaign to campaign, a comprehensive proposal will typically include specific guidance on:

To inform each of these core areas, look over the data you have and be realistic about what you can achieve. Your marketing plan is your blueprint for success; by setting overly lofty goals, you risk going off-piste and falling below expectations.

5. Streamline content production

Now you have an idea of what needs to be achieved and how to do it, the next step in your multichannel marketing campaign is all about execution.

You can’t just speed into this process gung-ho. Rushed content doesn’t only reflect poorly on your brand, it can lead to inconsistencies that water down your brand equity, breed confusion, and shatter the trust your company has spent so long nurturing.

In order to give your marketers and frontline employees the power to produce content that is on-brand, high-quality and engaging, you should look into effective content creation software that incorporates simple, instant design templates.

Rather than requiring new collateral to be designed from scratch, the right templates give your users a strong starting point to base their content on for maximum consistency and efficiency. Design jobs that would have taken hours can instead be handled in minutes, even if the person making the assets has no design background. 

With predefined colour palettes, logo positions, layouts and imagery, technology like this also significantly lowers the barrier to content production. That means anyone from your marketing department (or beyond) can build the collateral required to get campaigns off the ground, without needing to wait for spaces in your designers’ or agency’s schedules.

Your distributed teams can enjoy autonomy from your central marketing team, enabling you to greatly increase the volume and diversity of your content, without sacrificing quality or brand identity.

Additionally, solid content creation tools make it far easier to repurpose content for different platforms. A long video for your website can be easily carved into a series of mini-videos for social or photos in your brochures. Repurposing is a vital practice to master for multichannel promotions, allowing your teams to scale your content to greater heights.

Want to learn more about building a coherent, unified identity? Check out our ultimate guide to brand consistency.

6. Implement marketing automation software

Creating, planning and launching a multichannel campaign is a big job for even the most experienced marketing teams.

Good-quality marketing automation software can help manage the countless small tasks involved in running a clear campaign, avoiding common marketing pitfalls and presenting a consistent brand, such as:

  • Personalising marketing emails
  • Nurturing leads
  • Scheduling social media posts
  • Aggregating customer data

There is an abundance of marketing automation software out there vying for your attention. So, when selecting the right tools to support your ambitions, it’s important to understand the hallmarks of a trustworthy solution:

7. Coordinate campaigns effectively

Before launching your multichannel campaign, coordination between your channels and departments must be perfect.

Without supervision, it can be easy for targeted messages to find their way to the wrong segments, outdated collateral to go live on certain platforms, or your presence across regions to conflict. 

Strong internal communication is the key to keeping everyone aligned and establishing a seamless customer experience across all platforms, but sometimes emails and video calls just don’t cut it.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems are a strong starting point. These solutions allow you to contain and categorise all of your content according to asset type, campaign, channel, location and more, so your teams can methodically coordinate each campaign.

Furthermore, robust campaign execution tools organise the flow of your collateral and enable seamless, global collaboration – again vital for consistent, successful multichannel campaigns.

8. Measure performance

To ensure you know how to assess the ongoing performance of your campaign when it goes live, establishing the metrics you’ll measure from the outset is a crucial final consideration.

This doesn’t mean examining absolutely everything. Instead, focus on the metrics that give you the greatest insight into your long-term objectives. Some of the most common indicators to track are:

  • Social media engagement
  • Return on investment
  • Customer acquisition cost

As your multichannel marketing campaign matures, make it a habit to analyse the progress of your campaign. Ask yourself, are posts landing? Are sales being made? Is brand awareness improving? If not, be ready to adapt to achieve the best results possible.

Paving the way to a successful multichannel marketing campaign

In our increasingly complex landscape, multichannel marketing has become the new norm. Used by brands new and old to reach their customers and drive sales, this approach has proven its value in countless successful campaigns.

But mastering numerous channels at once is no easy feat. The right approach is vital to boost the bottom line of your business, elevate your brand’s awareness, speed up conversion and more. 

By following the tips and techniques outlined in this article, you put your team on a firm foundation to overcome the challenges of a multi-faceted approach and build bridges with your customers wherever they wish to engage with your brand.

Table of contents:

  1. What is multichannel marketing?
  2. Why is multichannel marketing so important?
  3. Building your high-performance multichannel marketing campaign in 8 steps
  4. Paving the way to a successful multichannel marketing campaign

Brand management

Looking beyond the launch: 5 tips to make your rebrand rollout stick

Papirfly
7 minutes read

From establishing the reasons for a refresh and conducting competitor research, to securing stakeholder buy-in and internally communicating changes – the challenges involved in launching any rebrand are significant.

In fact, so much energy goes into developing these new identities that by the time they are unveiled, companies often find they lack the infrastructure and energy to fully support and manage their brand as it enters the real world. 

History is littered with examples of rebrands that never captured the imagination of customers or pushed their companies forward – and a substantial number of these might have stood a better shot had their post-launch process been properly planned out.

So, how do you ensure your new brand identity sticks the landing? Preparing just as thoroughly for the weeks and months after a rebrand as you did for its development can make the difference between a rebrand that stands the test of time and one that falls flat on arrival.

Below, we break down the challenges your identity has to face post-launch, and share our top tips to overcome these pitfalls and empower your new look to thrive.

3 challenges your rebrand rollout has to overcome

The brand rollout checklist is complete: your style guides are built, your team members are on board and your new identity is off the ground.

To keep it there, it’s really important you’re taking the time to properly nurture and support your new look. Doing that effectively requires a considered approach – one cognisant of the challenges ahead.

Challenge #1 – Addressing customer resistance

Perhaps one of the biggest hurdles your rebrand will face is pushback from customers.

It’s not just because humans are creatures of habit. In a world where social media and personalisation are at the tip of every campaign, chances are that many of your customers have formed strong emotional connections with your brand and what it represents. 

Tampering with that balance by introducing a new name, image or identity to the mix risks causing upset among your customers and damaging that all-important metric: trust.

Although the route to rebuilding trust and customer loyalty can be a long and involved process, letting negative sentiment run wild in the weeks, months and years after launch can have severe repercussions for your rebrand.

You only have to look back at American retailer GAP to see what’s at stake when you get it wrong.

After investing months of time and an estimated $100 million into a new, more high-brow identity, customers struggled to relate. This gave way to a wave of negativity they never planned for, causing the brand to revert to its original branding just six days after launch.

Challenge #2 – Upholding a consistent brand

With the introduction of new visual elements, colour palettes, names and branding guidelines across your company, it’s imperative your teams do all they can to present a consistent image across every brand touchpoint.

The last thing you want when investing significant amounts of time, effort and money into new marketing materials is to water down your newly built brand identity with a disjointed appearance. 

It doesn’t matter if a single old asset slips through the cracks, or an office in another region is slow to catch up. In today’s hyper-connected world, incoherence like this breeds confusion, distrust and chaos.

To present a strong brand identity to consumers new and old, you need every employee to understand your new identity – as well as how to activate and apply it – regardless of the office they work in or their role in your business.

Challenge #3 – Managing the ongoing logistics of your identity

Another major challenge your new brand identity faces in the journey to long-term recognition is logistics.

From being able to deliver on-brand content creation at the required scale to express your new identity, to ensuring individuals from across your business are kept on the same page at all times, the details involved in nurturing your ongoing rebrand can be enough to make even the most experienced brand manager dizzy.

And as the library of new assets grows from the hundreds into the thousands, maintaining control over your company’s new image only becomes harder without the right content creation and Digital Asset Management tools.

Combined with the addition of new hires to your teams and the small adjustments you may make as your identity matures – you can start to see the immense hurdle that logistics presents to a long-lasting rebrand.

5 tips for long-term rebrand success

There are many hurdles involved in executing a successful rebrand launch. But by overcoming them, you position your new brand on the path of long-term success. 

To help you get there, these are our top 5 tips to give your new brand identity that all-important staying power.

1. Refine your communication strategy

Communication is one of the most important aspects to ensure your updated brand becomes a permanent fixture.

Whether that’s with employees throughout your business or customers across your markets, you need to ensure that anyone, at any stage in your journey, knows exactly what has changed, how it affects them, and why you decided to make this transition.

How you do this will depend on the specifics of your brand, but as a general rule of thumb, when you’re tired of repeating it, your target audiences are only just starting to get the message – so keep up the conversation as often as you can.

2. Invest in employee training and engagement

Over time, as your identity matures, your goals change, and perceptions shift, you’ll naturally start to make subtle changes to your tone, logo and more.

To make sure everyone throughout your company can remain both agile and on-brand from tweak to tweak, few things are as important to the ongoing success of your rebrand as employee training and engagement. 

Your colleagues are the true activators of your brand from the moment it’s launched – any deviation from your old branding will reflect badly on you and your company overall. So the fundamentals of your updated brand must be drilled into your personnel long after the rebrand is rolled out.

Tools like centralised brand hubs can be a real asset in this regard. Containing everything from style guides to brand strategies, these tools can make immersing your colleagues in your living, breathing identity a seamless formality.

3. Gather feedback from your audiences

Feedback is the cornerstone of any successful rebrand rollout plan. It’s how you align your image with customer expectations, and deliver an identity that sticks in their minds for years to come.

So, after you’ve revealed your new look to the world, make sure you listen to what your audiences have to say.

People will probably have an opinion on your new look, be it positive, negative or somewhere in between. By capturing this insight, spotting patterns and addressing common criticisms, you can put your rebrand on the best footing for success, and garner some much-needed goodwill along the way.

4. Track data and make refinements

When you initially embarked on the rebrand process, you will have had clear goals in mind with what you wanted to achieve, be it reaching new audiences, raising revenue or boosting your brand equity.

So, to determine whether your rebrand is delivering against the KPIs you set out from the outset, it’s crucial that you continue to track relevant data in the period past your launch date.

While the specific metrics you need to track will be individual to you, some of the most common figures to keep an eye on in the weeks and months after the big reveal may include:

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a measurement of customer loyalty, often gauged through the provision of a single-question survey
  • Social media engagement – a way of assessing how well consumers are responding to your new look and feel
  • Customer retention rate – a figure that demonstrates how well you are retaining patrons post-launch
  • Revenue growth – a way of determining the return the launch of your new brand has gained for your business

With this data in hand, you can gain the insight you need to make meaningful adjustments to your rebrand after launch and improve its long-term impact.

5. Utilise brand management software

Maintaining brand consistency. Educating global teams. Keeping on top of asset production. It’s no secret that managing the long-term deployment of your brand is a herculean effort – one you can’t afford to take your attention away from.

With so much on the line, you need to nail every campaign, keep teams on-brand, and manage your ever-growing library of brand assets. But that’s a huge ask for any brand manager or marketing team.

That’s why more and more organisations today are investing in broader, end-to-end brand management suites to ease the burden from their shoulders.

From enabling your entire team to organise, share and control your marketing assets in a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, to empowering everyone to produce professional, on-brand assets at scale – these broad platforms are enabling modern businesses to create and manage their content with unparalleled efficiency and consistency.

Create a brighter future for your new brand to thrive

Revitalising your brand is a complex, costly and lengthy undertaking – one that can require the combined effort of your entire marketing department, a six-figure investment, and months of hard work.

But simply forming this identity is not enough. To succeed in the same way Old Spice and Lego have, it’s up to you to carry that image into the minds of new and existing customers, day in, day out.

Even the smallest inconsistencies in appearance or oversights in logistics can send your freshly launched brand crashing down. But with the right approach after this moment, you can build trust back among your audiences, inspire new customers into your ranks, and secure the future of your fresh new identity.

All it takes is a considered approach and the right rebranding tools – topics we hope this article has given you the advice and confidence to progress towards. 

Table of contents:

  1. 3 challenges your rebrand rollout has to overcome
  2. 5 tips for long-term rebrand success
  3. Create a brighter future for your new brand to thrive

Employer brand

Employer branding for employee retention: Your complete guide to keeping top talent

Papirfly
9 minutes read

Replacing any employee is a long process. One that can cost your company thousands, undermine your teams’ productivity and impact your business’s bottom line in a big way.

However, when you consider that the average worker changes roles 12 times throughout their career, losing good employees seems like an expensive inevitability. But not all companies are built equal. 

Organisations that work hard to build a strong employer brand have seen their staff turnover rate drop by as much as 28%, allowing them to hold onto their highest performers for longer and reduce the strain on their hiring process. They achieve greater stability within their workforce, and reap the rewards through more sustainable performance.

But how do you build an employer brand that can support your ambitious talent retention efforts? In this guide, we’ll explore the greatest challenges your company faces in the fight to retain talent, the steps you can take to reduce employee turnover, and the wider benefits of investing in your employer brand.

Why do employees leave their jobs?

No company can realistically achieve a ‘clean sheet’ when it comes to retention. Many employees naturally progress from their roles, even if they’re completely engaged and satisfied at work. People move, life evolves, and preferences change.

However, these external factors aren’t the only reason why employees seek greener pastures. Whether a company cannot provide flexible work arrangements or their budget doesn’t stretch to meet salary expectations, there are many answers to why staff leave that can be addressed.

Poor onboarding experiences

One of the biggest hurdles to long-term retention is bad onboarding experiences. The process of securing talent starts from day one, so without a strong, well-established process for welcoming your newest joiners, as many as 80% of your recruits could be eyeing the exit door before they’ve even gotten settled.

Lack of recognition

If top performers’ efforts are rarely ever recognised, they may start to feel disheartened at work. Even simple initiatives like personalised thank you cards and internal shoutouts can be an excellent way of encouraging your employees to reconsider their next move.

Minimal opportunities for growth and development

Most employees don’t aspire to be in the same role for their entire career, especially the latest generations of candidates. If your staff feel that they aren’t being afforded the opportunity to develop, evolve and unlock their true potential in your company, then this can inspire them to look elsewhere.

Subpar company culture

Whether it’s down to a lack of flexibility or due to a feeling of overwhelming negativity, 73% of professionals say they have quit their jobs due to clashes with company culture. To encourage your top talent to stay with you for longer, it should be one of your top priorities to foster a strong sense of belonging at work.

Opposition to company values

When your teams can’t buy into your company’s overarching missions or values, they’re unlikely to connect with your organisation on a deeper level. If you want to give your staff a strong incentive to remain, you need to build an employer brand that aligns with their expectations and outlook.

High turnover

As well as causing employees to question their own position, high rates of turnover can create a feeling of uncertainty and disposition internally. Retaining employees for prolonged periods relies on the creation of a strong, stable organisational culture that rewards long service.

7 proven strategies to build a retention-focused employer brand

Holding on to your hardest workers takes more than great work and good pay. While these factors certainly matter to many, in a world where the competition for talent is reaching new heights, your employees need genuine reasons to stay.

That’s why employer branding is so important. Acting as a rallying point that your employees can get behind, strong employer branding is all about making your existing workers feel part of a united entity, aligning your people around shared values and goals.

It’s what separates good employers from the great, and how companies like Cisco and Deloitte have retained such a high percentage of their top talent for years.

So, how do you build a winning employer brand strategy to retain your existing employees? Like any brand management exercise, unlocking the true potential of your strategy demands a thoughtful, well-considered approach.

1. Improve internal communications

Arguably, one of the most important aspects of any employee retention effort is internal communication. Put simply, when your employees feel heard, understood and in the loop, they’re more likely to be actively engaged and committed to your company and their responsibilities.

While all companies are unique, initiatives like monthly newsletters, company-wide emails, ‘ask me anything’ sessions and internal surveys are all simple and effective methods you can try to help bridge the divide between individual departments, regional offices and leadership teams.

Just remember, effective internal communication isn’t just accessible – it’s regular, structured and works best when it begins from the top down. Establish these measures to give your teams a voice and network across your organisation.

2. Host team building and company culture-focused events

Another powerful way to bolster your employee retention programme is to host regular team building and company culture events, like wellness workshops, cultural celebrations and department days out. 

Providing opportunities for your teams to build stronger relationships is a great way to foster a tangible sense of community at work. Encouraging communication and collaboration company-wide can also be a great way to get your workers to feel like they fit in.

Why is this important? When employees feel as though they ‘belong’ at work, they’re 54% more likely to stay in their current role.

It can be easy to take a laissez-faire approach to initiatives like this, incorporating events and activities you think would resonate, as and when work schedules allow. But to get the most out of team building, consider taking a regimented approach by:

  • Sending out an employee engagement survey to gauge how people feel about your organisation
  • Using what you learn to set a handful of specific objectives you’d like to achieve
  • Planning out regular activities to help you resolve the biggest reservations about your culture
  • Polling your workers about their sentiment toward your company after the 6-month mark

3. Invest in career development and training opportunities

By committing to training and development throughout your company, you do more than just enhance the capabilities of your workforce. You also send a clear message to new and existing employees that you care about their long-term growth.

This is especially important to younger talent, as a recent study revealed that 74% of Millennials and Gen Z have considered quitting their jobs due to a lack of skill-building opportunities.

Whether this involves getting teams to attend industry conferences and events, or providing them with digital classes and webinars in the office, the best internal training and development programmes:

  • Are tailored to meet the specific skills gaps of your teams
  • Utilise technology for the best learning experience
  • Foster a culture of continued education
  • Remain adaptable and flexible to employee feedback 

4. Recognise and reward employee performance

When you consider that 79% of employees cite ‘underappreciation’ as a key driver for quitting their job, it’s clear to see the value that an employee recognition programme can have in your talent retention strategy. 

Not only do the uplifting effects of positive reinforcement strengthen your workers’ connection to your organisation. A rewarding work environment can also elevate overall job satisfaction, improve your workplace culture, and position your business as an employer of choice in the competitive global talent market.

For these programmes to work well, it’s important you give them the time and attention they need. That means ironing out specific details early on, like rewards and success criteria. You should also look to establish a process for monitoring other colleagues’ performance on a regular basis, and creating resources you can use to educate people about your scheme all across your enterprise.

With this in place, you can reward staff for:

  • Surpassing performance goals, like sales or reach
  • Spearheading helpful, innovative solutions at work
  • Displaying exceptional collaboration and leadership
  • Providing excellent customer service

5. Embrace DEIB initiatives at work

No member of staff wants to work somewhere they’re treated unfairly. To help nurture a culture of acceptance and understanding throughout your company, DEIB is the beating heart of any fair and equitable organisation.

Standing for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging, initiatives like this help instil a sense of identity in every worker, enabling individual employees to feel heard and respected at work, regardless of their background, preferences or beliefs.

As you can imagine, creating a culture where everyone feels included is one of the best ways to hold on to your top talent. In fact, in a recent poll, 92% of employees agreed that an inclusive culture had a big influence on whether or not they wanted to remain with their employer.

In other words, by aligning your company’s values with your employees, and creating a work environment where everyone feels seen and respected, you give your enterprise a solid foundation from which to retain talent.

6. Incentivise brand ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are another tried-and-tested strategy for improving long-term talent retention. The way it works is two-fold.

Firstly, by instilling your most engaged supporters with a sense of pride and ownership, you recognise their value and make them feel more connected to your employer brand. Naturally, these added responsibilities can form the basis for a strong and productive long-term partnership with your top talent.

Secondly, the genuine endorsements your ambassadors share can promote trust, credibility and positivity among your other colleagues, crafting an attractive image of your workplace that can entice people to stay far longer than industry averages.

To learn more about brand ambassador programmes and how to set yours up for success, check out our in-depth guide: 6 techniques to turn your employees into true brand ambassadors.

7. Integrate the right technology

Finally, to shape a bright future for your organisation and help your teams actually implement some of the winning talent strategies we’ve discussed, you need the right technology by your side.

In practice, finding the best platforms for your needs can be its own challenge. Countless tools exist that can streamline everything from remote working and employee advocacy to internal feedback and communication.

To help you narrow down your list, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite talent acquisition and retention tools that can transform your approach.

Our first pick is PostBeyond, a clever solution that allows you to harness the power of your employees on social media with greater ease, so you can empower your talent to get talking about your employer brand.

Another great solution is Small Improvements. From enabling managers to praise coworkers for a job well done, to allowing individuals to request feedback any time – this software can pave the way for strong internal communication and collaboration.

Finally, two more key tools for today’s employer brand experts are Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems and content creation software:

  • DAM systems directly engage people with the essential components of your employer brand, and enable you to oversee and share this content across the entirety of your teams and locations
  • Content creation software enables you to scale up the development of your employer brand assets, using templates to speed up production, simplify the process and lock-down consistency

These tools can be contained within a broader, end-to-end brand management suite, giving you a firm foundation from which to control and elevate your employer brand materials.

The value of a retention-focused employer brand

With the right steps, you can create an environment and culture that resonates with your teams, opening the path to stronger connections and longer tenures.

This does more than simply save precious resources. Uniting your departments behind your brand values can be an effective way of motivating your employees to work harder, boosting your business’s overall productivity by as much as 12%.

Pair that with the morale-lifting effects of a well-considered employer brand, and it’s easy to see how investing in a happier, longer-tenured workforce can minimise friction, conflict and absenteeism. This also enables your company to stand out when it comes time to hire someone new.

Transform your employer brand into a retention powerhouse

Few things benefit your long-term talent retention than a winning employer brand. But taking the steps to build one is often easier said than done.

With the right expertise and investment, however, the benefits can be astounding. Beyond creating a culture that entices your existing employees to stay for longer, you can drive productivity, improve job satisfaction, and cement your organisation as an employer of choice in an increasingly busy talent market.

Combined with the right employer branding software, your long-term employees can become a springboard for your company’s ongoing success.

Table of contents:

  1. Why do employees leave their jobs?
  2. 7 proven strategies to build a retention-focused employer brand
  3. The value of a retention-focused employer brand
  4. Transform your employer brand into a retention powerhouse

Brand management

Brand portals: Why a standalone DAM is not enough for full-scale brand management

Papirfly
7 minutes read

Most modern-day brand managers will tell you their job has become infinitely more complex in the last few decades. 

As organisations look to reach an increasingly global audience, navigate more marketing channels than ever, and work to stay consistent amid growing consumer expectations, controlling brand identity has become an ongoing battle.

In this battle, technology is your great equaliser. That’s why more and more brand marketing teams have enlisted the help of a DAM (Digital Asset Management) system to bring their sprawling collection of digital assets under one roof.

The right DAM solution ensures marketing teams know exactly where approved brand assets are, and can locate relevant content in seconds. Combined with the right user permissions, tagging systems and approval workflows, your DAM becomes a single source of truth for your organisation.

Sounds like the perfect solution, right? Well, not quite.

Don’t get us wrong, we know how valuable a great DAM system is – our own DAM is ranked one of the best worldwide according to Forrester. But this also means we understand its limitations and that, alone, it can’t deliver the end-to-end brand governance today’s marketers need.

DAM gives you control over your marketing collateral; a brand portal offers you control over your brand identity.

What is a brand portal?

A brand portal, also often referred to as a brand hub, is a dedicated cloud-based platform that brings together everything that defines your brand culture. A true “home” for your brand.

In its optimal form, this central hub provides a one-stop shop for anyone – from your executive marketing team to your ground-level employees – to understand your branding style and what your organisation represents. This includes:

  • Clearly defined brand guidelines and style guides
  • Your company vision and mission statements
  • Actionable on-brand templates for all types of marketing materials
  • Tutorials, handbooks and FAQs on brand application
  • Resources for employees to use your branding for their teams’ purposes

Essentially, a quality brand portal ensures brand consistency, educates users and empowers your marketing teams. It showcases the blueprint of your brand in a presentable, digestible way, so you can keep your identity locked down on every channel.

3 limitations of a standalone DAM that a brand portal fixes

You may be wondering: “Can’t DAM software offer this same level of brand management?”

DAM systems are great at what they do, which is manage your digital assets. But their potential as an end-to-end brand management suite falls short in several key areas:

1. Supports user adoption

Firstly, a DAM system is only valuable if people use it. Many DAM implementations never deliver a return on investment because employees don’t universally adopt it, meaning parts of their workforce retain the same cumbersome, inefficient approach to digital asset management.

There are many potential reasons for this lack of adoption: minimal training and onboarding, failure to inform employees, a set-and-forget mentality, etc. But in our experience, one of the major roadblocks is education. Put simply, users don’t know how to access the DAM system itself, let alone the brand assets within it.

A brand portal addresses this issue. Establishing an assigned “home” for your brand that your people know about and is immediately accessible on any work device can act as the gateway for your DAM system.

This helps your team understand that your DAM solution is part of your overall brand management ecosystem, enabling them to recognise its purpose and improve its adoption rate.

2. Educate, not dictate

Next, while a standalone DAM system brings together all approved brand assets – something that can effectively illustrate how future assets should look – it is not the same as someone truly understanding your brand.

This approach leaves room for misinterpretation and inconsistency. A user may create a brand asset based on one they saw on your DAM, only for it to be ill-fitting for that particular marketing channel, target audience or application.

A DAM is not brand management in the same way a centralised brand portal can be. By ensuring this incorporates guidelines, handbooks, tutorials and more alongside exemplary brand assets, you can properly educate your users on how to apply your brand correctly on every channel towards every audience.

3. Communicates evolution

Finally, a standalone DAM system is a snapshot of the current stage of your brand’s journey. If you undergo a rebrand or a brand refresh, how can your DAM communicate this to your users instead of them gradually seeing old assets being replaced by new ones?

A brand portal can represent your brand’s evolution deliberately and transparently to your global workforce. Designing and moulding this central hub around your brand’s visual identity allows you to instantly communicate your updated identity after a rebrand or refresh.

No mixed messages. No opportunities for old assets to resurface. Immediately people know your new identity and have this reinforced with up-to-date guidelines and examples, making a brand portal a valuable ally as your company develops and scales over time.

Plus, for design agencies guiding a company through a rebrand, a brand portal is a perfect tool to visualise this change both succinctly and distinctly.

Remember – a brand portal complements a DAM

We are not advocating for a brand portal to replace a DAM system. Instead, a good brand portal acts as its perfect partner, encouraging company-wide adoption and providing much-needed context to the brand assets within your DAM.

Want to know more about making the most of your DAM solution? Check out our 7 steps to Digital Asset Management success.

4 more ways brand portals deliver true brand management

So, we’ve identified 3 examples of how a brand portal builds upon a DAM in the brand management landscape. But the benefits of a high-quality brand hub extend even further:

1. Absolute brand consistency

Fundamentally, your brand portal is the key to a consistent presence on all marketing platforms. By bringing everything that underpins your branding in one place, you can ensure a harmonious message to your potential customers, which goes a long way to building trust, raising awareness and improving user experiences.

2. Increased marketing efficiency

If your people are only a click away from the guidelines that steer your content creation, they can produce collateral faster. 

Combined with intelligent custom templates, this can mean less strain on your marketing team and graphic designers to produce around the clock. In turn, local teams are empowered to create for their own campaign needs, leading to a more efficient process.

3. Security over your brand culture

Allowing the right people access to your brand guidelines, style guides and wider resources preserves your brand’s equity. This can alleviate the burden on you and your brand management team, reducing your need to review and approve every asset created, so you can concentrate on more pressing matters.

4. Company-wide collaboration

Finally, having a cloud-based portal at the heart of your brand, shared across your entire workforce, can serve as a means for stronger collaboration workflows. Especially for teams with users spread worldwide, this single point of reference can help you keep everyone on the same page at all times.

What features should I look for in a quality brand portal?

Now you understand how a quality brand portal opens the door for comprehensive brand management, what does a good brand portal look like? 

Here are 6 of the key features you should prioritise in your hunt for the optimal brand portal:

  1. Customisable layouts: It’s crucial your brand portal feels like your own, so the layout and its components should be completely customisable using your visual elements
  2. Multiple languages and translations: Your brand portal should allow you to create dedicated versions for users who operate in different territories, written in their language and outlining any unique nuances to your brand in these locations
  3. Drag-and-drop functionality: You should be able to reposition content on your brand hub in a couple of clicks for absolute ease of use
  4. Simple section builders: Your brand portal should give you the flexibility to design page layouts and grids that maximise the impact of your content
  5. WYSIWYG software: A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) format allows you to update and refine your brand portal without any coding expertise
  6. Easy integration: Your brand portal should be an extension of your existing marketing technology and be simple to integrate within your existing ecosystem

As well as these key features, the ideal brand portal must also be backed by a reputable, reliable provider. With this in mind, we encourage you to research available options and ask the right questions to locate your perfect match:

Better brand management starts with your brand portal

To stay in control of an overwhelming wave of digital brand assets, a DAM system is your best bet.

From providing the consistency your brand and customers demand, to unlocking efficiencies within your marketing operations, we hope this article has helped you understand exactly why a solid brand portal is so important, and the ways a DAM system falls short on its own.

Similar to how you work alongside your marketing teams, agency partners and wider colleagues to push your brand to new heights, brand management technology is also a team effort.

Pairing up your DAM solution with a compatible brand portal allows you to control, share, and activate your brand as it is meant to be.

Table of contents:

  1. What is a brand portal?
  2. 3 limitations of a standalone DAM that a brand portal fixes
  3. 4 more ways brand portals deliver true brand management
  4. What features should I look for in a quality brand portal?
  5. Better brand management starts with your brand portal

Brand management

The agency guide to visualising branding and design projects to clients

Papirfly
7 minutes read

Whether your agency is in charge of crafting a complete rebrand for a client’s business, or putting together the design elements for a multichannel marketing campaign, creating content for your partners is a substantial undertaking. One that can occupy your focus for days, weeks or even months. 

With so much time and effort invested into these endeavours, the last thing you want is for clients to misunderstand your vision. Being forced into a complete rethink at this stage could mean lengthy delays, soaring client costs and damage to your agency-client relationship.

To ensure your projects succeed with minimal setbacks, it isn’t just important to deliver high-quality graphic design. Your agency needs to master the art of brand presentation.

Making a deliberate effort to immerse your clients in your ideas is essential if you want your clients to walk away fully comprehending exactly what your proposal entails.

It also gives you a valuable opportunity to fully showcase the design elements you’ve created, explain the rationale behind your creative process, and outline the guidelines your clients can use to successfully roll out their rebrand, brand refresh or new campaign.


But how do you make an illuminating first impression? In this helpful guide, we outline the techniques you can use to inform and excite stakeholders during your brand presentation, and explain how brand portals can help at this important stage.

5 techniques to elevate your brand presentation

Between miscommunication, confusion and a lack of clarity, securing client buy-in for your design project can be an uphill battle. Thankfully, with the right strategies and techniques, ensuring you and your partners are on the same wavelength doesn’t have to be a source of stress. 

1. Establish a mood board

Getting your clients in the right mindset early on in your brand presentation can immediately dictate how likely they are to understand and embrace your new vision, concept or marketing collateral.

To set the scene, mood boards are a useful tool you can use to showcase the influences that contributed to your design project, from images and themes, to colours, tones of voice and other pieces of content.

2. Showcase prototypes

Another way to get your agency’s vision across at this pivotal early stage is by mocking up or prototyping your concepts.

This could mean producing prototype packaging for your client’s final products, or building a set of social media posts to showcase a new logo design in use.

However you choose to approach this, developing these examples gives your clients something tangible to base their opinions on, which can be effective in helping them visualise your branding.

3. Create a style guide

It’s one thing to share your vision for a client’s new brand identity or marketing campaign. But taking the time to define their brand and showcase exactly how it will be applied is often a fast track to superior understanding and trust.

Acting as a playbook for every conceivable visual element, style guides set specific parameters for your clients’ visual identity, so they can see how your content works and what they need to do to present a consistent brand across every touchpoint.

These not only add another layer of explanation for how your brand concept looks and feels – they also reassure your clients that it will be ready to deploy as soon as they give the green light.

4. Weave a compelling story

Strong storytelling has been at the heart of successful branding for decades, with 55% of consumers saying they are more likely to buy from a brand if they love their story.

So, naturally, it can also be a powerful way of presenting your work to clients and winning over their hearts and minds.

Adding context to design choices made throughout the course of your project by laying out a narrative is a great way to convey meaning and get your partners invested from beginning to end. 

To do this, make sure your brand presentation story:

  • Aligns with your clients’ core values
  • Is clear and concise
  • Uses language your clients understand
  • Remains genuine and authentic

5. Leverage VR and AR

Finally, to fully immerse your partners in their new brand assets, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are emerging technologies that can place your clients at the heart of your experience.

From showcasing the look of a rebranded store to enabling clients to see how their new marketing materials look up close, taking a more direct approach through technology can bring your ideas to life and inspire an emotional connection towards your client presentation.

The value of a brand portal

As important as the right techniques are, few things trump the importance of medium when it comes to building compelling brand presentations.

What do we mean by medium? Simply put, it’s the method by which you present your ideas to your clients, educate them, and secure their buy-in.

Many design agencies turn to the dependable slideshow to present their brand concepts. And while sometimes you can’t beat a classic, the restrictive, static and non-immersive nature of this medium can be a hurdle to client understanding.

In its place, numerous forward-thinking agencies are turning to smarter technology to better showcase their marketing materials, manage their partners’ brands and secure client buy-in. And among these, brand portals stand out as an ingenious way to help people visualise your ideas.

Demonstrate the full scope of your vision

Digital brand hubs, alongside Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems, are used to store and share on-brand content internally within a company. Being interactive, this technology enables you to store every visual element you have created in a single place.

As well as allowing decision-makers to explore your materials at their own pace, having everything laid out in this dynamic format makes it possible for your clients to see how individual components work together, putting your proposal on the best footing for success.

Completely immerse clients in your work

With the added ability to create and tailor these online brand portals to your clients’ new identity or campaign style, partners can easily immerse themselves in your designs as they explore the compelling marketing materials and strong brand identity you have created.

Compared to the limited interactivity and visual branding of traditional presentation software, these platforms can effortlessly convey what your newly crafted collateral will look and feel like in real life.

Facilitate long-term collaboration

Iteration is an important part of any design process. Not even the world’s best marketing agencies get it all right the first time, so it’s only natural to have some back and forth with your clients on your journey to make the best materials possible.

To ensure you’re getting the highest quality feedback, brand portals give your partners the freedom to examine your brand assets up close.

From how their new brand guidelines are laid out, to the specific design templates they will use, placing your content in your clients’ hands through a brand portal allows for productive input that makes managing their brand more collaborative and less reflexive. 

Streamline content sharing

Lastly, if you’re an agency that relies on emails and content-sharing websites, you know that sending over files can be a time-consuming and cumbersome process. 

Hosting these materials in a single centralised hub means your design teams no longer have to spend hours setting up file transfers or clarifying which brand asset is the latest through lengthy email chains. This paves the way to better productivity and cost efficiency during the design process.

How brand portals empower your clients beyond delivery

As you know, for any rebrand or campaign to truly succeed, you need buy-in from everyone across your client’s organisation, not just top decision-makers.

However, educating all staff within even a small business can be a daunting prospect for your agency. You don’t have time to brief dozens of stakeholders, and sharing your initial presentation company-wide risks watering down the work your team just spent so long crafting.

That’s why a brand portal is valuable not just during the initial brand presentation, but as a tool that your clients can carry over into the day-to-day delivery of their marketing.

When incorporated within or alongside a wider Digital Asset Management and content creation suite, this gives you the capacity to not only help your clients truly understand your vision, but also efficiently execute and manage the assets and campaigns that will bring this project to fruition.

Enter a new era of agency success

For an agency, few things are as important as brand presentations. They’re how you educate your clients, deliver top-notch content creation, and establish a strong working relationship with your partners.

But getting every client on board with your vision takes more than a simple run-through of your concept, project and ideas.

To help you elevate your brand presentation, we hope this article has given you insight into the techniques and technology you need to cement your clients’ understanding, so you can focus on realising concepts that contribute to their long-term success.

Table of contents:

  1. 5 techniques to elevate your brand presentation
  2. The value of a brand portal
  3. How brand portals empower your clients beyond delivery
  4. Enter a new era of agency success