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As a marketer, you know the value of good content and how it impacts your company’s bottom line. These resources—from brochures to presentations—are pivotal in shaping a buyer’s perceptions and influencing decisions.
Yet, they get buried in a shared drive, never to be seen or thought of again. On the other hand, the sales team, desperate for the right collateral during a client interaction, struggles to find it. The result? A potential deal is lost, and your brand’s image is ruined.
That’s the cost of terrible marketing collateral management. The best way to solve that is to invest in a tool that lets you organize everything in one place.
In this article, we’ll review the granular impact of ineffective management, reasons to invest in marketing collateral management software, and what you should look for in one.
The lack of a collateral management system can lead to lost hours of productivity and potentially thousands of dollars in lost revenue due to mishaps. Let’s look at how that works:
It’s common for companies—especially larger ones, to struggle with cross-functional collaboration. Marketers create assets without speaking to sales reps, resulting in assets that never get used.
Over time, the ROI on such activities decreases, creating a tricky situation where everyone questions marketing’s impact on the company’s bottom line.
Without marketing-sales alignment, both teams work on the opposite end of the spectrum—resulting in confused prospects who don’t understand what your company does and how it can help them.
Sales enablement involves equipping the sales team with tools, resources, and information to sell more efficiently. Without access to relevant collateral, sales cycles become longer, and conversion rates lower.
A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works in sales. Targeted collateral caters to specific buyer personas or industries, making pitches more relevant and effective. But if sales reps don’t have this level of access, they’ll appear unprepared—ruining their credibility.
It’s common for marketing teams to receive a barrage of content requests from internal teams. And if they’re not prepared to tackle a large volume of submissions, especially with a system that lets them sift through business critical requests, they lose momentum in the market.
A slow content turnaround means sales can’t adapt quickly to new challenges or opportunities. But you can only keep track of these requests with dedicated systems.
It’s also possible that the content assets that you create are useful. However, terrible search features on status-quo options like shared drives make it impossible to find them.
Charlie Riley, vice president of marketing at Send, says, “If you add up the overall time for every member of the team searching for the right file when they are not labeled correctly or in the right place can add up to a lot of wasted time, and potential to send the wrong files/versions to prospects, agencies, etc.”
Ineffective collateral management also means nobody tracks which assets must be updated and when. Sales reps unknowingly use outdated assets, leading to a disconnect in sales engagement.
Plus, as branding evolves, all your assets become outdated with old messaging. And if you’re in a regulated industry where marketing has to comply with specific standards, it could lead to legal ramifications.
While you might think the cost to fix this is nominal, that’s not true. For example, companies like Showpad and Highspot charge upwards of $420 per user per month—resulting in you forking out a hefty investment.
“I find Google Drive too complicated, and I still have to ask my team partners to share their files with me which is time-consuming,”
Now that you know the issues of not having the right collateral management system in place, here’s the real impact of investing in one:
You can coordinate with stakeholders much more easily now. Marketing collateral management software provides a structured way to track assets, find them, and collaborate on them. Produce content assets faster with a consistent quality—resulting in a quicker time to market.
“I find Google Drive too complicated, and I still have to ask my team partners to share their files with me which is time-consuming,” says Kate Ross, PR specialist at Irresistible Me.
That’s a common complaint we see our users having, too. But with dedicated software to store and manage your content, your team members can locate and use assets without struggling for permissions each time.
If you’ve ever been in a situation where you ended up using an old content asset—you know how embarrassing it can be. Here’s an anecdote from Blake Smith, marketing manager at ClockOn:
“We once made a video for an event with award winners in different categories listed within. During editing, I was using dummy names as the winners weren’t announced yet. Unfortunately, when the video was being used at an event, someone had the earlier version with the ‘dummy’ names for a few categories. There’s now a process to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
You can avoid this issue with a content management system. You always have the latest version readily available whenever an asset is updated or revised.
Your brand identity evolves as you grow. With such tools, you always have the latest version in hand. Whether a designer needs the exact RGB values of the company color or a sales rep requires the latest logo for a presentation, it’s a few clicks away.
A key reason to use such tools is the ability to create curated content for prospects. Imagine talking to a sales rep, only to have them send you a link to their blog’s topic cluster to find what you need.
Move to a microsite-based approach instead. These are curated by a human and are tailored to your prospect’s specific needs—creating a more engaging experience for them and a higher conversion rate for you.
Even though these tools make your life much easier, you still need to do a lot of work to find the one that fits your workflow. To save you some time on research, we’ve compiled a list of features that are absolute must-haves:
Compatibility is one of the first things you should consider because if the software has all the features you need but doesn’t integrate seamlessly with your tech stack, your investment will be a waste.
For instance, integrating with a CRM can help automatically match content to specific customer segments.
Content Camel integrates with popular marketing/sales tools like HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Pipedrive, and more—letting you bring everything in one place.
Integrations offered by Content Camel
Shared drives and wikis offer simple keyword-matching capabilities. You need something more robust and efficient.
Courtney Werner, co-founder at Fiesta and project manager at Apps Beyond, mentions how she spends hours searching for collaterals:
“This morning, I spent over an hour searching through old emails, both of my Google Drives, and text messages looking for a document. I still haven’t found it. This is a regular occurrence. I’ve tried using Airtable, Notion, and Asana to help keep track of things, but those tools are insufficient at helping me keep track of all of my business marketing collateral from clients.”
For example, Content Camel uses advanced search to track no-hit searches and find assets based on the name, date, usage frequency, or tags you’ve added. This lets you find what you need quickly—significantly reducing wasted time and effort.
Sales reps might need access to collateral during an off-site client meeting, while marketers might need to update assets at a conference. So, you need a tool that functions flawlessly across devices like a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
These capabilities allow you to track metrics like how often an asset is accessed or shared or how it contributes to sales conversions. It also shows you which assets are unused and which ones to archive or update.
Use this data to create better content strategies, sales assets, and engagement processes.
In the example below, you can see which assets are being engaged with the most in which stage of the sales funnel. For example, it makes more sense to use ebooks for the evaluation stage of the sales process.
An engagement heatmap of assets that are present within your dashboard
Every company has its way of doing things. For example, a seed-stage company might still be testing its sales processes and content formats. While a larger company has fleshed out and distinct stages in place.
With Content Camel, you can customize your dashboard to reflect these changes. It frees you from rigid systems not aligned with your workflows, letting you tag and categorize your content more efficiently.
Customization capabilities present within your dashboard
Instead of sticking to default options like docs or spreadsheets that don’t offer an intuitive reading experience or tracking capabilities, it gives sales reps better tools to engage with prospects.
For instance, we offer the option to create microsites that let sales reps brand the site, add only relevant content assets, and track engagement with each asset. Instead of adding 5+ links in their emails, they add one link to the special microsite they’ve created—streamlining the whole process. This lets you attribute the value of content and quantify the exact deal amount specific assets are bringing in.
Create branded microsites for every prospect that comes your way
Most solutions today have set annual contracts with costs beyond the high figure mark, depending on the number of reps you have. (We’re looking at your Showpad and Highspot 👀)
“If I was in-market for marketing collateral management software right now, I would love to decide by trying a solution for free and not being locked into a contract,” says Joe Kevens, founder of B2B SaaS Reviews and director of demand gen at PartnerStack.
“A marketer like me often makes this purchase decision, how impactful the tool will be depends on if and how sales decides to use it. It’s difficult, if not impossible, for us to determine which platform sales prefer, even if they’re involved in the buying process.”
Finding a tool that offers a free version or free trial is a low-lift way to test it out and increase product adoption internally.
P.S. We offer both options—so why not give it a try?
We live in a time where buyers expect personalized experiences. It’s on you as the marketer to enable that.
Invest in tools that improve the collaboration and sales engagement processes, as it massively impacts how content influences closed won deals.
While it might seem like finding an all-in-one tool for an affordable price is tricky, that’s not true. Give Content Camel a shot today. Sign up for free and organize your marketing collateral in one place.
Enable sales. Get visibility. Track results.
Content Camel is a sales enablement tool used for sales content management. High-growth sales teams use our system to quickly find and share the right content for each specific sales situation and measure content use and effectiveness.