Speed Check: Automating Time to Market

How long does it take for marketing resources and materials to filter through your local sales channels? The time to market period varies for most industries, depending on the product or service that is being highlighted. But for most companies, increasing the speed at which their product moves from production to marketing is crucial.

This is why automation is key to an efficient time to market strategy.

When a product or service is ready to be marketed, the window in which to promote and highlight these items can be affected by:

Competition – Companies that share similar industries often share a similar market audience as well. Activating campaigns for promotional messages quickly can often mean the difference in maximizing local market share.

Seasonal/Events – Holiday offers and promotional events require lead time. A pre-planning strategy ensures that customers will be available on event dates to take advantage of these offers.

Availability – Generating a “buzz” through pre-orders or “teasers” gives your market audience advanced interest in upcoming products and services. Without knowledge of new items and their availability, customers can be caught unaware, leading to a disappointing marketing response.

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Especially when relying on local sales channels, replacing traditional marketing processes with local marketing automation techniques help overcome time-to-market challenges and promotion lags. If you follow some simple rules, you’ll be a few steps ahead of your competition.

To get a jump on the market, make your promotions available to your sales channels immediately through an online portal. This allows your channels to access your latest marketing collateral in real-time, and highlight messaging to your marketing audience before your competitors do the same.

Knowing ahead of time when promotional events and offers need to be communicated helps you get a jump-start on planning. By centralizing these assets in the correct manner, you can plan for proper distribution within your channels, giving you and your channel more time to focus on activating the right marketing materials locally instead of scrambling to make these available last minute.

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Providing access to your materials is half the battle; the other – network engagement. Once your marketing materials are organized and well planned for, engage your sales channel network through co-op allocation practices and consistent and well placed communication about the new materials. Lack of adoption by local marketers would result in all your efforts going to waste.

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