Humorist and politician Will Rogers once said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” These days most marketers agree that the “right track” is moving your marketing toward providing customers more personalized, relevant offers and continually updated information. As sophisticated technology facilitates more timely, targeted marketing messages, customers expect more individualized interactions, and companies that don’t provide them are “just sitting there.”

However, those who market through a distributed sales force may have difficulty continually providing new, up-to-date marketing materials to different geographic locations and integrating messages across multiple sales channels. Rogue marketing in the field, waste from unused materials, and the expense of inventory control and storage are common challenges. Fortunately, technology offers a solution that combines a Web-based online system for ordering marketing materials with digital printing that is customizable and produced on-demand.

Keeping you and your sales force on the right track
This combination of technologies lets corporate marketers maintain brand consistency and ensures that marketing messages are in line with the company’s objectives as well as empowering sales channels to manage their communications with customers and prospects. For example, a financial institution could use this type of system to allow a branch located in a neighborhood of retirees to mail a promotion on investment products, while a branch located in an area of mostly young families promotes home mortgages. In the hospitality industry, each property in a hotel chain needs marketing materials that can be customized with variable local information. Managed care organizations could use this system to provide sales representatives with marketing materials that maintain brand consistency and avoid compliance issues. For cable and telecommunications companies, this system would allow customization for different coverage areas or retail locations.

Personalized, powerful prospecting
Channel Options offered by First Marketing is a turnkey Web-to-print tool. In addition to its online ordering platform and digital printing component, a Channel Options system can be configured for your company with a new prospecting engine as well as data tools to facilitate tracking and follow-ups. Above all, Channel Options is a tool that empowers your distributed sales force to more effectively generate revenue and profits.