Maximizing your investment in digital assets

Each year, direct-selling companies invest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in producing and distributing their latest promotional materials to help distributors build their businesses. Traditionally, printed brochures, videos/CDs/DVDs and product sell sheets were the primary vehicles distributors used to sell.  The Internet and out-of-the-box applications like PowerPoint and Keynote have become the norm. While efficient, this fundamental change in the way distributors sell has created a dilemma at the corporate level.  What do they do with all of the digital assets such as photographs, videos and audio files they have produced? As they create new resources each year, what will be the best way to distribute or make these assets readily available in order to maximize their investment and usage in the field? 

Distributors are reluctant to continually invest in replenishing materials as their inventories are depleted. Corporations are discovering that their significant investment in digital assets is being underutilized. This has placed a burden on the parent company as these materials are critical to support new products, events and promotions and get them into the field. 

Embracing the Change

Technology has changed the way we communicate in business.  It’s fast, efficient and provides a variety of options regardless of whether distributors are recruiting, selling product, informing, training or just keeping in touch. Whether solutions are corporate-driven or out-of-the-box products, there are plenty of options in the market for companies and distributors. A host of software tools are readily available—from email-only programs to complete package solutions such as contact management solutions (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) and presentation programs (e.g., PowerPoint). While these options can certainly be used in communicating and selling, they do so without the ability and flexibility to access the extensive repository of assets that the parent company has created.

Single-Source Solution

There are certainly lots of different products that can be used throughout an organization to communicate within the network and to customers, prospects and peers. But what seems to be missing is a single solution that addresses all of the industry’s communications needs.

Through its original work in the production of corporate videos for direct-selling companies over the past ten years, RoqLogic recognized that companies rarely maximized their investments in videos, photography, printed materials and recordings.  As the need for richer media to help build their businesses continues to increase, corporate marketing departments have recognized the need to find a cost-effective communications solution to meet the demands of their distributors and put their investment to work. Meetings with direct-selling organizations and their distributors quickly revealed the need for an integrated solution that would provide:

• Easy access to, and usage of, a corporation’s assets
  
• Flexibility within the network
  
• Better asset management
  
• Overall control over the brand.

A result of direct user input, the RoqLogic Media Center was developed to deliver a myriad of robust offerings to meet the dynamic communications and marketing needs of the worldwide direct-selling industry. It establishes an online media community where video, audio, images and documents are centrally stored and organized. The real power of the Media Center is that it links a company’s robust pool of assets to a building and publishing environment where distributors can create, customize, personalize, email, share and track high-quality online SlideShows and eCards. For the parent company, the Media Center cost-effectively streamlines the distribution of new materials and makes updates seamless and easy.  For the distributor, they now have complete access to a wide range of materials to communicate their story. The result is efficiencies for both the parent company and its distributors. It promotes sales and recruiting, thus sending more profit to the bottom-line.