Creating a strong brand is an essential strategy and it's important to remember that your brand is far more than just your logo and brand colors. It’s everything that defines who your company is, what your audience can expect, and is what separates your business from your competitors.

The goal for your brand is to attract and retain loyal customers by delivering a product or service that is always aligned with what your brand promises and stands for.

Developing your brand is a process and, once established, should be protected to maintain uniformity and professionalism. Yet, that can be easier said than done.

Luckily, there are Web-to-Print Portals, or Brand Portals, that are designed to protect and safeguard your brand’s identity and uniformity across all your company’s marketing materials.

What is a Brand Portal or Web to Print Portal?

A Brand Portal—also known as an “Ordering Portal,” a “Web-to-Print Portal,” and a “Print Portal”—is a custom-built from the ground up, online storefront that houses all your company's branded assets. This includes printed materials, direct mail materials, digital assets, promotional materials, and more.

Basically, any branded materials your company needs access to are stored in your company’s Brand Portal so you can easily manage them, and you and your employees can easily access and order them while ensuring consistent branding.

How Does a Brand Portal Work?

To get a clear idea of how Brand Portals work and how they protect your brand, let’s take a closer look at the needs of a franchised business.

For a franchise, brand adherence, brand guidelines, and brand management are crucial due to representation by multiple locations. Ensuring that all sites conform to the same corporate branding guidelines is critical to uphold in presentation and marketing collateral. For example, restaurant corporations manage numerous chains throughout the country.

Management at each specific location oversees ordering posters, flyers, direct mailers, and similar materials for their own restaurant.

Without a system in place, employees or franchisees could easily use design elements that are not approved and aligned with the corporate brand. This could lead to a decrease in quality control and create damage to the company image. Companies that manage multiple brands or sell through distributors also face these risks when attempting to reinforce consistency and preserve their reputation.

An important benefit of Brand Portals or Web-to-Print Portals is the capacity to safeguard brand identity during the print purchasing process through asset management and regulation, which standardizes and simplifies marketing efforts. The system’s interface is very intuitive. Most users find little to no need for training and graphic design skills are not necessary.

So, How Does a Brand Portal Protect My Brand?

Access Must Be Granted and Controlled

Brand Portals are set up so that an administrator is assigned to control access to content and editing capabilities.

Franchise and other business owners can provide access to employees at their various locations and departments and allow them to order their own marketing materials with pre-approved guidelines. For example, an employee could change the name, email, and phone number on the business cards they order but the overall design of the business card remains the same.

The administrator can also choose the content and products that users have access to and delegate different levels of visibility. Limits can also be placed on individual spending.

Online Templates are Loaded and Ready to Use

Portals utilize pre-designed templates into which employees can enter customized information, such as address and phone number.

Brand identity elements, such as logos, fonts, messaging, and colors will remain the same for every order and are impossible to modify. No design skills are necessary.

This is an essential ability to have when protecting your brand because if your location on the west coast has a different catalog design or modified logo on its t-shirts than your east coast location, it can become confusing for your audience and your brand’s identity is lost.

User Actions are Restricted

The administrator has control over which components in their branded collateral remain static or the same and which options are customizable.

This process allows for personalization of company materials while maintaining standardization and ensuring that all employees are using the correct branding when they order marketing materials. The automated approval processes serves as an extra guard against any unwanted edits or errors.

The administrator also has 24/7 access to managing who has access, what products can be visible by certain users, they can update or remove designs and branded materials at any time, and more. This is extremely important when a business is growing fast, and new products are needed, or new employees enter the team and locations develop.

Brand Extends to Dashboard

Companies have the option of designing their portals to align with the branding and style of their corporate presence.

Basically, everything within a company's Brand Portal is customized to fit their brand. From the products, the layout of the portal, the colors, and more.

This makes it easier for employees to navigate and create professional quality products while reinforcing the integrity of corporate branding.

Support Available for Any Needs

Conquest Graphics will work with you to help construct the system that best serves your needs.

Through analysis, we can help determine the existing materials suited for integration and offer recommendations for streamlining your processes. We maintain a full staff of customer service experts, programmers and sales staff who are available to you by telephone or live-chat on the computer during business hours.

We would love to provide you with a personal tour of this system and its capabilities. We can do this over a quick 10-min demo and all you need to do is sit back and watch in real time how our Brand Portal solution can benefit your company in protecting its brand and saving it a lot of time and money. Just click below:

Protecting Your Brand with Portals

Branding dictates how the public perceives the values, products, services, and personality of your business. Upholding this perception is key to the execution of a strong marketing strategy and keeping your company top of mind for consumers.

By Conquest Graphics