Numerous analysts and marketing publications are recommending that organizations take a hard look at incorporating a Multi-Channel Distributed Marketing Platform into their enterprise marketing strategy. In fact, just this week Forrester published a new report titled “Emerging Technologies for CMO’s to Watch: Q3 2012” where again, distributed marketing technology was highlighted as something that many large organizations should be evaluating in the second half of 2012 if they haven’t already.

– Multi-Channel Distributed Marketing Automation Platform —

So why are enterprise distributed marketing technologies getting so much attention as of late?  Put simply, its because almost all marketers today have a huge content distribution problem.

Up until recently, when the concept of distributed marketing was brought up the discussion was limited to those organizations that rely on local sales and marketing efforts to market and sell their products and services.  These organizations often support agents, partners, and franchise operators that for the most part act as independent entities that focus on local markets.  Organizations within the insurance, pharmaceuticals, multilevel marketing, automotive, franchise operations and financial services industries typically are the first to come to mind.  There is a common set of challenges these traditional distributed marketing organizations face:

• Corporate needs to provide marketing support across all channels and encourage marketing activity at the local level but also needs to ensure quality, brand and legal compliance.
• Addition of new marketing channels such as social media and mobile need to be leveraged but add new complexities from a tool, content and compliance standpoint.
• Local representatives need the ability to customize corporate marketing collateral in order to conduct their local campaign efforts.
• Disparate local marketing programs make campaign measurement a complicated exercise.

However, many of the same challenges that distributed marketing organizations face now apply to almost all large enterprises.  Today, just about everyone has a huge content distribution problem.

With the proliferation and advancements we’ve all seen in communication technology, organizations are almost overwhelmed with how to effectively leverage and control the multiple communication technologies being utilized by their employees, agents, prospects and customers.

Organizations are realizing that expectations have changed forever.  Technology is no longer feared but embraced.  Technology is no longer for a few select individuals in the marketing or IT department to control but rather to be distributed throughout the entire enterprise.  Today, we all expect to be able to easily find and access content, customize it, and distribute it with a click of a button.  In essence, the sales and marketing tools within your company should be as quick and simple to use as those used to manage your Facebook page and everyone must have access to them.  The speed at which business must operate today in order to remain competitive almost makes this a mandate.

In order for organizations to live up to this new standard they must implement a Distributed Marketing Platform that has the ability to centralize all of their content, control how that content can be customized and then provide the ability to distribute that content across all channels including social media, mobile, web, e-mail, direct mail and more.  By having all of those communications centralized, organizations can drastically improve efficiencies, optimize distribution channels, ensure brand and regulatory compliance, get better insight through a larger aggregated data set, and make better, more informed decisions.

In the end, almost all organizations must leverage some type of an enterprise distributed marketing platform that allows for the instant assembly of personalized content that adheres to corporate standards and can be delivered immediately and in the manner the customer or prospect wishes to receive it.  Organizations that don’t subscribe to a distributed marketing technology approach will surely be at a huge competitive disadvantage in the very near future.

If you’d like to learn more about gaining a competitive advantage through the use of multi-channel marketing automation software, contact us today!

About the author:

Tim Storer is the President & CEO of Distribion, Inc., a leading provider of web-based multi-channel marketing automation software that optimizes marketing distribution while maintaining brand and regulatory compliance for large enterprises. To learn more about Distribion’s Distributed Marketing Platform visit www.distribion.wpengine.com.