Benefits of Using a Marketing Suite vs. Point Solutions

When it comes to your marketing tech stack, it’s crucial that you invest in technologies that work hard for you and your distributed ecosystem — because the solutions you choose could be the difference between a well-oiled marketing machine and an everyday struggle.

Ultimately, you have two choices: a single suite solution or multiple point solutions. It’s important to understand the pros and cons of both to weigh your options and best determine which one is the most advantageous for your brand and partners.

Let’s dive into the key differences between a marketing suite and point solutions for brand-to-local marketing. .

A point solution is a program, tool, or software designed to address a specific use case. Because point solutions serve a single purpose, brands often acquire multiple point offerings for their tech stacks — one for each challenge they want to solve.

Examples of marketing point solutions include:

• Funds management software
• Email marketing solutions
• Search engine optimization tools
• Social media management tools
• Customer relationship management solutions

There are several advantages of investing in point solutions for your brand.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of using point solutions in your organization is that you can pick and choose which technologies best suit your needs. By hand-selecting each individual solution, you acquire a collection of tools that do exactly what you need them to. That means you’ll get exactly what you want — nothing more, nothing less.

Point solutions are designed to carry out a specific function, which means they’re hyper-focused on the intended use case. This is contrary to suite solutions, which are built to perform numerous functions, so they may not have the level of specificity you’re looking for regarding a specific use case.

Because point solutions don’t have as many moving parts as marketing suites, they’re generally less expensive to purchase. However, it’s worth noting that the more point solutions you buy, the more the total cost of this investment will rise.

While point solutions have their benefits, these tools also have various drawbacks to consider. Here are the main disadvantages of using point solutions in your distributed marketing tech stack.

For each point solution you accumulate comes the need to integrate each of them. In addition to the amount of time required to integrate disparate solutions individually, you’ll also have to ensure that each of these tools is compatible with one another. Any compatibility issues may result in the need to manually transfer data, which can be a tedious and time-consuming process.

Managing an entire collection of point solutions can be challenging. Because these systems are separate from one another, switching back and forth between them can be cumbersome and time-consuming. In addition, your teams and partners will need to take the time to learn how to use all of these applications, which may require a lengthy training process to cover each solution.

In addition, performing continuous maintenance and resolving technology issues for so many different technologies will add an extra layer of difficulty for IT teams.

When using multiple point solutions, you inevitably end up storing data and assets in various locations. With valuable information scattered across different places, it becomes more difficult for partners to find what they’re looking for. Plus, disparate asset locations pose serious version control issues, resulting in the risk of partners releasing outdated, inconsistent, or noncompliant materials into the marketplace.

Investing in multiple marketing solutions means juggling multiple vendors. When dealing with numerous technology providers, you’ll have to keep track of various contracts, bills, communications, and relationships, which can be complex and time-consuming. Plus, the more vendors you add, the more overhead you accumulate.

Point solutions aren’t great for long-term use because they’re difficult to scale. Because these solutions are typically designed for a single use case, there aren’t many opportunities to upgrade or adapt them as your business needs evolve. As a result, you’ll have to continue investing in new solutions to accommodate you and your partners’ changing needs — and these costs add up quickly.

A suite solution is a holistic platform built to accommodate a wide range of marketing capabilities. These robust platforms are designed to serve as an all-in-one solution for various use cases by carrying out an array of functions, eliminating the need to invest in more than one tool.

Marketing suites can cover numerous operations, such as:

• Design and asset creation
• Funds management
• Media management
• Analytics and reporting
• Email marketing
• Digital asset management
• Contact management
• Organic search management

Investing in a suite solution has many advantages that will streamline distributed marketing for you and your partners.

A marketing suite provides a centralized location for all your marketing operations. With everything in one place, there’s no need to navigate between solutions or learn how to operate multiple platforms.

Your partners aren’t marketers — but with everything they need in a single, user friendly platform, you can enable them to market more easily and efficiently. As a result, your partners enjoy a seamless user experience while generating better results for your brand.

With a suite solution, you can ensure all data and marketing assets are stored in a single, easily accessible location, making it simple for your partners to locate and retrieve compliant, up-to-date assets. That means you minimize version control issues and reduce the risk of your partners representing your brand with off-brand materials.

Suite solutions are fully consolidated into a single platform, ensuring all components work seamlessly with one another. That means you don’t have to worry about integrating multiple tools that may or may not be compatible or resort to manually transferring data.

Instead of having to invest in another one-off solution every time your business needs change, marketing suites allow you to easily expand your capabilities within your existing platform. Marketing suites are highly configurable, allowing fast and seamless scalability for you and your partners.

With a single distributed marketing platform that addresses all of your needs, you’ll only have to interact with one vendor, making for much easier administration. That means you won’t have to spend valuable time managing numerous contracts, invoices, or relationships.

Because marketing suites are fully consolidated to facilitate an end-to-end marketing experience, they offer a level of visibility into partner marketing that you can’t get with individualized point solutions. These platforms offer comprehensive analytics across every stage of marketing — from partner fund use to customer segmentation to campaign performance — so you can get continuous insight across your distributed ecosystem.

Like any piece of technology, marketing suites aren’t without their faults. Here are the downsides of using a suite solution for your partner marketing.

Because suite solutions are all-encompassing, they have many features, functions, and processes that your team and partners will have to learn. To leverage a marketing suite to its full benefit, your partners may need to undergo more robust training to ensure a complete understanding and mastery of the solution.

While learning how to use an all-in-one marketing platform may be difficult at first, you can expect greater efficiency in the long run since you only have to navigate the training process once — as opposed to point solutions where you need to learn each solution individually.

Implementing a suite solution across your entire distributed ecosystem often requires a lot of strategic planning and execution. As a result, the process of getting this platform fully integrated into everyday workflows may be complex and slow-moving. However, choosing a partner with strategic expertise in the brand-to-local space can help mitigate some of these concerns.

It’s no secret that comprehensive marketing suites are an investment. With so many built-in features and marketing functions, it makes sense that a suite solution would cost more. However, despite having a higher upfront cost than point solutions, suites tend to pay for themselves quickly in greater productivity, faster speed to market, and increased adoption.

Synchronize your partner ecosystem and elevate your marketing outcomes with Ansira. Learn how you can fuel brand-to-local growth more seamlessly than ever.

Get in touch with a marketing expert to learn more.