Creating a strong brand is essential, 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 and what your audience can expect. It 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 consistently aligns 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, especially if you have multiple locations.

Luckily, there are Web-to-Print Portals, or Brand Portals. These private, online solutions protect and safeguard your brand’s identity and uniformity across all your company’s sales and marketing materials.

What is a Brand Portal or Web to Print Portal?

A Brand Portal—also known as a “Print Portal,” "Web-to-Print Portal," or “Ordering 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, digital assets, promotional items, and more. Even better, they offer branded templating that allows users to customize specific information like phone numbers or names while maintaining the overall branded design.

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?

Let's use a franchised business as an example to get a clear idea of how Brand Portals work and how they protect your brand.

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

Management at each location oversees ordering posters, flyers, direct mailers, table tents, apparel, and similar materials for their 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 damage the company's image. Companies that manage multiple brands or sell through distributors also face these risks when attempting to reinforce consistency and preserve their reputation.

An essential benefit of Brand Portals or Web-to-Print Portals is the capacity to safeguard brand identity during purchasing through asset management and regulation, which standardizes and simplifies the ordering of essential branded assets. In addition, the system’s interface is straightforward to use. It's like ordering from your favorite online store; placing an order takes seconds. Most users find little to no need for training, and graphic design skills are unnecessary.

How Does a Brand Portal Protect My Brand?

Access Can Be Granted & Controlled

You align your Brand Portal rules to your needs. For example, you can set approval requirements where orders will only be processed once the administrator approves them, serving as an extra guard against unwanted orders or typos in personalization. You can hide products from specific users or departments. You can also set limits so that, for example, new employees can only order business cards of a certain quantity. At the same time, the marketing team has access to all promotional and direct mail assets.

Preconfigured & Approved Branded Assets

When a new employee needs business cards, your location across the country needs new signage, or your sales team needs polos and flyers for an upcoming event, tracking down those art files, finding a printer, and ensuring those items are distributed to the correct individuals is time-consuming. You also risk using the wrong design files or accidentally modifying them, resulting in inconsistent branding.

With a Brand Portal, all designs are in one place with branding locked in so individuals can quickly and easily access and order the preapproved branded materials they need. In addition to the design, the product configurations are locked in. For example, suppose your hats are a specific blue, your business cards are printed uncoated on thicker paper, and your brochures include gold ink and special die-cutting. In that case, these specifications are preconfigured within your portal, ensuring users only order what is on brand.

Brand Templating Locks in Branded Designs

Portals utilize pre-designed templates, or brand templating, into which users can personalize approved elements, such as location-specific information, contact details, or even images, without changing the branded design.

Brand identity elements, such as logos, fonts, messaging, and colors, will remain the same for every order and are impossible to modify. However, the components that you allow to be customized can easily be configured by either typing information into the design field, selecting from a dropdown, or uploading a file.

Any customized element will remain on brand and align with the original design. For example, if you have multiple locations, a user who needs to order postcards can simply select the appropriate location address for them, and it will pre-populate in the area of the postcard where the address needs to be. Or, if you include headshots in your business cards, users can simply upload their image, and their image will be placed within the designated spot of the business card design where headshots go without compromising placement or size.

Brand templating is essential when protecting your brand because while you need every material across every department and location to have brand-compliant materials, you also need to ensure materials that need personalization can easily be personalized without compromising your brand's identity.

User Actions are Restricted

You or other administrators control which components in your branded collateral remain static or the same and which options are customizable. For example, business cards and postcards may be customizable. At the same time, catalogs and banners stay the same no matter who orders them.

This process allows for the personalization of company materials while maintaining standardization and ensuring that your entire organization uses the correct branding when ordering branded materials.

In addition, you can remove, edit, or add branded materials and assets to your portal at any time, ensuring that everyone within your organization has access to the most recent and on-brand materials. This is extremely important when your business is growing fast, new products are needed, or locations are developed.

Brand Extends to Online Interface

Brand Portals go beyond brand-compliant materials. The portal's interface, from the logo, colors, messaging, and typeface, can align with your brand guidelines and the style of your corporate presence.

Everything within a company's Brand Portal is customized to fit their brand. This makes it easier for users to navigate and create professional quality products while reinforcing the integrity of corporate branding.

Support For Your Brand

If your Brand Portal provider is like Kingston Printing, they will work with you to implement the best system and ordering process that serves your brand.

By analyzing and understanding your needs, we can help determine the materials and assets best suited for your portal and offer recommendations for streamlining your entire brand asset management and ordering process. In addition, we maintain a full staff of customer service experts, programmers, and account managers who are available when you or your users need them, ensuring your organization has the support it needs to promote its brand consistently and professionally.

To begin protecting your brand effectively with a Brand Portal, click below to schedule a quick demo today. Our portal experts will walk you through the ins and outs of portals and show you how these streamlined solutions can benefit your company in protecting its brand.