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In an environment increasingly reliant on content marketing, the pressure to produce a constant stream of engaging, relevant content is ever-present.

Whether it’s top-of-the-funnel content like blogs, white papers or social media posts, more overtly promotional materials like brochures or one-pagers, or content that supports proposals and tender documents, the demand is constant.

The challenges of creating content

The need for a steady supply of on-brand, up-to-date materials brings significant challenges – even before you consider the added issues of producing them when your Marketing team is working from home, or providing the finished documents to remote teams. Marketers working to deliver marketing content have to address:

1. The volume of content needed – in today’s content-heavy world, it’s commonly acknowledged that marketers can struggle to create the volume of content needed to attract and engage clients and customers. The requirement is relentless, creating a potential headache for even the most well-resourced teams.
2. The need for professionalism in your collateral. Design is the cornerstone of your brand – but without central design oversight, this can go awry.
3. The temptation to ‘go rogue’; when team members cannot easily find the document they need, all too often they respond by creating something themselves. This can spell trouble for brand compliance and professionalism.
4. A lack of resources; marketing teams are stretched, and content production can be time-consuming. In-house design teams are few and far between, and external agencies can be costly. The solution can be to adapt existing documents or use already-approved content rather than starting afresh – saving money and time. But the opportunity for this can be overlooked if your digital asset management isn’t up to scratch, with materials hard to find.

How working remotely amplifies the challenge

When teams work remotely, these problems can multiply. Brand consistency can go out of the window when your team is dispersed, with everyone doing their own thing. There can be a temptation to re-use old templates when getting hold of the latest version isn’t a simple matter of asking across the desk. This risks out-of-date branding, inaccurate data or company information and, for regulated businesses, non-compliant regulated statements, disclosures or disclaimers.

And then there’s the question of storage. Do you need one centralised digital asset management system to host marketing collateral? If everyone stores and accesses marketing materials on their own office- or team-specific drives, the ability to view your entire suite of materials and brand assets is limited.

How can you create professional, compliant content when your team works remotely?

1. Make the most of existing materials. In our example above of the team member under pressure to send out a brochure to a prospect, imagine how much easier this would be if they could easily lay their hands on the existing brand-compliant document. There are a number of on-demand marketing software solutions available that allow you to intuitively store your marketing assets and call them down as and when you need them – it’s worth exploring your options here to see if this approach would help you.

2. Ensure your brand assets are easy to find and access. Best practice digital asset management means approved imagery, wording, existing designed materials and – if you’re a regulated business – regulated statements, disclaimers and risk warnings are at your fingertips, leaving no excuse for off-brand or non-compliant collateral.
3. Explore the benefits of a template-based solution, which can help to ensure no one strays from the path of on-brand materials. Your first thought might be that templates stifle your brand and creativity – but use them correctly and they’re brand-enhancing, not brand-limiting. Enabling your teams to create consistent collateral benefits your brand in a number of ways, improving recognition and loyalty, signposting your professionalism and reinforcing your brand values. A martech solution that takes a template-based approach can support you in the production of consistent and compliant content.

4. And on-demand marketing software can help with far more than just templates. Especially when teams are working from home or from satellite offices, ‘just in time’ delivery is important. Remote teams cannot store hard copy materials just in case they’re needed; instead, they need to be able to call down a supply of collateral from an online or hard copy library. As a remote team, this brings flexibility and reassurance. As a business, it gives you an oversight of the materials being used, and where your marketing and sales budget is being spent.

5. There are numerous martech solutions out there, so it’s imperative that you make the best choice. But pick the right one, backed by a professional and supportive design team, and your supplier can take full responsibility for proofing and version control. As a result, your teams can have confidence that every document they call down is provided print-ready and compliant with your brand standards.

Best-practice marketing with a remote team – the St James’s Place approach

St James’s Place Wealth Management, the FTSE-100 wealth management business, is familiar with the need to provide professional marketing collateral for a remote team.

The company delivers face-to-face wealth management services to individuals, trustees and businesses via a network of advisers – or ‘Partners’ – and needs to be able to provide these partners with the collateral and sales support materials they need, when they need them.

By introducing Enable, Perivan’s marketing services technology solution, St James’s Place was able to provide partners with a robust, streamlined and centralised solution to manage the production, storage, print and delivery of all their marketing requirements. You can read more about how Enable powers St James’s Place’s marketing and new business operations in our short case study.

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