Marketing leaders today are facing a unique set of challenges around building and scaling their brands, while reducing marketing spend and costs. Marketing technology has grown into an intricate web of tools, some of which are not fully utilized leaving unrealized value sitting stagnant. According to Gartner’s 2023 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey, 76% of marketing leaders agreed that their marketing organization is facing increasing pressure to cut marketing technology (martech) spend to deliver better ROI. That leaves the question, do you trim back on the less utilized tools, or do you deepen the usage of these tools? 

A brand center can act as the key anchor to your martech ecosystem, further deepening your usage across more channels, and thereby realizing more value from your investment in martech overall. It serves as a cohesive source of truth for everything related to your company’s brand identity. The brand center helps streamline the development and deployment of marketing materials across multiple channels by ensuring that all marketing efforts remain consistent with the company’s values and image, and as a result, empowering you to deliver on the untapped value of your marketing infrastructure. 

The Challenge: Underutilized Tools and Demonstrating ROI 

There is a though challenge present today with marketing technology investments: the frustration of seeing valuable tools underutilized and not delivering their full potential. Despite significant financial commitment to advanced martech, it’s not uncommon for teams to struggle with fully leveraging them. Factors like lack of training, limited integration across departments, and the sheer complexity of modern platforms often result in features going unused, valuable data remaining untapped, and automation falling short of expectations. It’s a difficult position to be in—knowing you’ve invested in tools that could make a big difference but feeling like you’re not quite able to unlock that potential. 

On top of that, marketing leaders are under immense pressure to demonstrate ROI, often in the form of cutting costs to show quick returns. With tight budgets and a constant need to prove value, it’s easy to consider scaling back on technology spend. However, reducing technology investments without addressing the underlying reasons for underutilization can be a temporary solution that creates long-term problems. While it might seem easier to trim the budget now, investing in the right adjustments can ultimately unlock the true value of these tools, leading to sustainable growth and better results down the line. 

Deepening the Use of Martech Across Channels 

Rather than scaling back investments, the focus should shift to fully integrating and utilizing the tools already in place. Unlocking the hidden value transforms these platforms from underused assets into growth-enabling engines. The key is maximizing their impact across touchpoints and delivering a more personalized, efficient, and scalable marketing approach that drives long-term results. 

A brand center helps you do this by enabling messaging, visuals, and tone of voice to be consistent across all channels, creating a cohesive and professional image for your brand and driving a unified experience. It provides a centralized, easy-to-access repository for all brand-related materials. Ensuring that teams—whether in marketing, sales, or product—can quickly access the assets they need to create content and campaigns that align with brand guidelines. 

Instead of constant searching, employees have a reference point to scale approved communications, whether the content team is creating blog posts, the social media team is developing ad campaigns, or the customer support team is crafting email responses. It is a critical component in coordinating a multichannel marketing strategy. 

Overall, a brand center increases revenue by 20% due to enabling consistent, on-brand usage (Lucidpress 2021). It delivers significant time and cost savings to teams across your organization by making brand resources accessible and digestible. 

Integrating the Brand Center with a Multichannel Strategy 

One of the challenges of multichannel marketing is ensuring that each touchpoint reflects a deep understanding of the customer’s preferences, behavior, and journey. The integration of a brand center with other martech tools, such as CRM systems, data analytics platforms, and marketing automation solutions, creates a unified data hub. This enables marketers to create more personalized campaigns, while still meeting the customer on their channel of choice. 

This integration also opens the door for streamlined campaign creation. With tools like pre-approved templates and guidelines, marketers can quickly generate on-brand assets for social media ads, website banners, email newsletters, and more. Enabling faster time-to-market and reducing bottlenecks while maintaining brand integrity. This consistent brand representation can translate into higher brand value overall. In fact, companies with strong internal brand adoption see an average 25% increase in their brand value (Brand Finance, 2019). 

The optimization found in creation is also found in operations. Workflow automation and a self-service culture reduces the manual effort behind the work and gives time back to your team to focus on other priorities. The quality of your performance reporting also improves with real-time tracking, giving you the insights you need on how to adjust your strategy for better results. 

Best Practices for Coordinating Martech and Multichannel Strategy  

1. Ensure Consistent Data Management: Be sure that the tools you select for your stack integrate seamlessly with each other and your brand center. Look for platforms that allow for data sharing across systems, so you can create a connected ecosystem that streamlines processes and improves the user experience.

2. Automate Where Possible: Automating key marketing processes – such as campaign delivery, content creation, and reporting – will free up your teams to focus on strategy and creativity. Integration between your brand center and your marketing automation tools will guarantee that your efforts are aligned with your brand. 

3. Align Cross-Functional Teams: Foster collaboration between teams to assure that all departments are using the brand center as their single source of truth for content and messaging. With a brand center like Beam’s, you can this further promotes a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints. 

4. Measure, Optimize, and Iterate: Continuously monitor the performance of your campaigns with real-time tracking. Use data-driven insights to optimize and refine your messaging, content, and targeting strategies. The flexibility of an integrated martech stack will allow you to pivot quickly when necessary, improving overall campaign performance and ROI. 

Integrating your marketing technology with a multichannel strategy – and positioning the brand center at the core of that integration – will dramatically improve your ability to deliver cohesive, personalized experiences that resonate with customers. A well-organized brand center enhances brand consistency, streamlines content creation, and fosters cross-team collaboration, while working with the rest of your martech stack to provide the tools and data necessary for data-driven decision-making and performance tracking. 

When done right, this coordinated approach leads to increased market efficiency, improved brand equity, and ultimately a higher ROI. You are spending the money for your martech ecosystem, so it’s time to realize the full potential of this powerful platform.