Do You Throw Away Obsolete Marketing Materials?
Summary: Just as important, obsolete marketing materials can have a major negative impact on marketing effectiveness. Forty-two percent of the respondents to the CMO Council survey said that fresh marketing content is critical to their go-to-market strategy, but 51% of respondents admitted they had used marketing materials that contained outdated content. In today’s business environment, every interaction with a potential buyer is important, and sales can easily be lost if prospects are provided outdated information.
Doc knows a thing or two about becoming obsolete, so I took notice when David Dodd over at Print CEO recently wrote about Curing the Epidemic of Obsolescence. There’s nothing worse than having to throw away expensive marketing materials because they are no longer relevant:
The obsolescence of marketing materials constitutes a major problem for many companies. The CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Council has said that obsolescence creates an “epidemic of waste” that undermines the development of an efficient marketing supply chain. Consider just a few of the findings from a recent CMO Council survey.
- 60% of survey respondents said they spend at least 20% of their total marketing budget on marketing “consumables” (primarily printed materials such as marketing collateral documents, promotional items, and point-of-sale materials), and 30% of respondents said they devote at least 30% of their budget to such materials.
- Over 70% of respondents said they do not track the obsolescence of marketing materials.
- Companies that do track obsolescence report large amounts of waste. Forty percent of respondents said they waste 20% or more of their marketing materials because of obsolescence.
Source: Mapping + Tracking: The Optimized Marketing Supply Chain (CMO Council, 2010)
Obsolete marketing materials represent a complete waste of precious marketing dollars. The cost of obsolete materials is essentially an investment in marketing communications that never reach the intended audience. A closet or storeroom or trash container filled with obsolete marketing materials is a tangible manifestation of budget funds that could have been used to support productive marketing programs.
Just as important, obsolete marketing materials can have a major negative impact on marketing effectiveness. Forty-two percent of the respondents to the CMO Council survey said that fresh marketing content is critical to their go-to-market strategy, but 51% of respondents admitted they had used marketing materials that contained outdated content. In today’s business environment, every interaction with a potential buyer is important, and sales can easily be lost if prospects are provided outdated information.
The good news is that obsolete marketing materials is no longer an inevitable “cost of doing business.” David has posted a new marketing resource at Scribd that describes how Web-to-print solutions can greatly reduce and, in some cases, completely eliminate the waste caused by obsolescence.
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ZDNet introduces Doc (The DocuMentor), sponsored by RICOH. Through his blog, Doc will educate you about Document Management. So who is Doc? Doc is something of an enigma. He was born to a Russian ballerina and a German electrical engineer who some believe was running covert operations for shadowy corporate interests. Doc grew up in various locations in the United States, although no one seems to know precisely where, least of all Doc. His early schooling was unremarkable except for the time he was caught trying to replace all the mimeograph machines with high-tech color copiers that had mysteriously disappeared from a shipment to Albania. At MIT, he made a name for himself by transforming a large printer into a robot that hunts and eats Roombas. Professionally, he reportedly has seen the insides of more brands, versions, and generations of printer and printer-related hardware than almost anyone. Some say his obsession with paper, printing, and mechanical movement was either started by, or evidenced by, a traumatic childhood episode when he crawled inside an old Xerox 2400 and tried to print himself.
Anyway, Doc has hands on experience with stuff like printer maintenance and fleet management, but his mastery of document management leaves no stone unturned. Important issues like sustainability, security, and regulatory compliance are top of mind for Doc, as are other business technology needs like networking and IT services, making him a true blue IT renaissance man.
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