9 Marketing Errors That Cost Retailers Money
Marketing mistakes aren’t caused by careless teams, but by disconnected systems that force manual work. How can retailers build centralized production to reduce these risks?
Retail marketing operations teams have a lot on their plates. They must handle complex campaigns across a wide array of products, while also planning and executing them across a seemingly endless list of print and digital channels, each with its own
What are the common errors that impact retail marketing effectiveness?
requirements and user experience. (Oh, and don’t forget the need for personalization and regional versioning.)
Most planning, design, and production teams have all the necessary skills to meet these challenges. But despite their best efforts, they are still plagued by nine common problems:
- Incorrect product information,
- Outdated creative assets,
- Inaccurate pricing,
- Mismatched promotions,
- Missed approvals,
- Incorrect campaign versions,
- Duplicated work,
- Channel formatting issues, and
- Inconsistent brand execution
None of these errors result from carelessness or a lack of skill. But each one erodes retail marketing effectiveness, creates huge manual labor costs, and produces costly errors and delays. Each one occurs when marketing operations—both workflow and critical data sources—are fragmented.
Don’t Blame Your People
Marketing operations teams have been doing their jobs for a long time. Campaign planners, product line managers, designers, and production staff were all hired because they understand the need and have mastered the latest tools. Their skills and experience are not in question—nor are their tools designed to perform tasks well in isolation. The real problem is a disconnected workflow.
How can retail marketing operations regain control of a workflow that depends on ever-increasing data and channel complexity?
The real problem is not the people; it’s the chaotic complexity of today’s multichannel world. To regain control of that data-dependent workflow, you need to give your workforce the right tools to manage it well. After all, you wouldn’t demand that Usain Bolt “run faster” to win a Grand Prix; you’d give him a Formula One car—and train him how to drive it.
Retail teams can have processes and talented people yet still lose control. As our recent webinar explains, costly mistakes occur when product data, creative assets, pricing, feedback, and approvals are disconnected.
The Pain Is Real
In the competitive retail arena, even small errors hurt. Think about the long-term consequences of:
- A price change that happens after a proof approval (or worse, after a campaign has been pushed to mobile channels)
- A digital ad that includes the wrong image or the wrong logo
- A last-minute change that has to be manually implemented by a production artist across multiple versions of the same promotion
The bottom-line results are clear. Each of these errors means lost time, rework, and delayed launches—all of which increase marketing costs. Worse, they also mean consumer confusion, reduced confidence, and ultimately loss in revenue. The good news is that you can address all nine errors, not by hiring more people,
What are the bottom-line results of avoidable errors in marketing operations?
but by using a workflow that connects to all of a retailer’s data sources.
Control—Not Just Convenience
The solution is to implement a “single source of truth” approach to the oceans of data that fuel retail marketing campaigns. Each data source must be robust on its own. It must also be meaningfully connected to every other data source, and the entire data “universe” must be automatically accessible to those planning, designing, and producing the retailer’s multichannel campaigns.
How can retailers regain control of their data when creating a multichannel campaign?
and with other databases for pricing, inventory, sales history, and more. These, in turn, must be transparently available to every facet of centralized marketing production—from offer planning to design, production, review and approval, versioning, and repurposing print campaigns for online and mobile venues.
With a unified data approach—one that automates formerly labor-intensive tasks—talented planners, designers, and production artists will have time to focus on what they do best. This will mean fewer manual fixes and stronger error prevention, greatly
What are the business benefits of a unified data approach to marketing campaigns?
reducing production costs. More importantly, it will increase campaign visibility across all channels and create more reliable execution across large-scale marketing programs.
In today’s competitive retail environment, multichannel marketing leaves no room for error. Fortunately, Comosoft LAGO is the perfect solution.
A better production process starts with fewer places for mistakes to hide. Comosoft LAGO helps retail and e-commerce marketing teams bring product data, creative assets, approvals, and campaign versions into a single connected workflow. This makes every output easier to manage, verify, and publish with confidence. Schedule a demo to learn how Comosoft LAGO can do this for you.
