Marketing Resource Management

Marketing Resource Management (MRM) represents low-hanging fruit for most

companies.  MRM is concerned with economically providing collateral materials such as flyers, brochures, cooperative advertising, and promotional items for sales and marketing groups.  It’s not sexy, but it is a major opportunity, as you can see from the following personal example:  http://yourcmo.com/collateral-sales-materials-cost-control/

Everyone has seen examples of abuse such as the following: 

·        A group of sales people are manning a booth at the county fair.  At the end of the fair it is raining, and they don’t want to carry the heavy box of brochures back to the car, so they dump $155 worth of perfectly good materials into the nearest dumpster.

·        In the absence of what brokers consider “appropriate” materials, they create their own, diluting your brand equity.

·        Marketing is changing the logo on a product line, and instead of running out the current inventory (which was heavily overbought), they just print new pieces and scrap the old collateral, at a cost of $2,150.

While the main benefit of MRM is cost control, it also creates the ability to

1) offer customized/personalized materials

2) better track usage of materials so as to tie them to specific marketing initiatives and events, improving ROI calculations.

It is relatively painless to impose discipline on the ordering and use of collateral materials.  Often, just letting users know the cost of what they are ordering will impose a measure of economy.  This can be leveraged by creating a “just-in-time” ordering system (to permit customization and discourage stockpiling) and a “budget” to force users to prioritize the quantity and type of collateral material they order.

MRM can be handled internally or by a vendor, such as Marcom or (locally) DocuStar.  It can be instructive to talk to a vendor first, to learn more about potential MRM benefits and capabilities, before you decide whether or not to tackle the project internally.

Interested in exploring Marketing Resource Management?  Give me a call.  Been there.  Done that.