By: Ethan Rogers

If you are a marketing team member or a business owner selling through E-Commerce, you probably face pressure to achieve results across multiple sales channels.

If you are like most marketers it takes a ton of effort in developing campaigns and investing in creative talent and technology, and yet, you might still struggle to reach your goals.

One determining factor for many teams is the big percentage of your time is eaten away by access and management of information. A costly oversight that ends up consuming valuable resources and slowing down progress, especially when speed and precision are essential to stay competitive in today’s fast-moving digital landscape.

The Invisible Performance Killer

It’s estimated that, due to poor information management, teams spend up to 12 hours per week updating and searching for information about products.

But why does this happen?

As your business grows, so does your product catalog. Each item comes with its own specs, descriptions, pricing, and media assets.

The more products you add, the bigger the file or database that holds all that information becomes.  And if you’re storing it the traditional way, using spreadsheets and shared files, finding the necessary data turns into a complex task.

Imagine finding images and videos for one product, buried in over 500 sub-folders. That’s the day-to-day routine for many marketers. But this isn’t an isolated case; thousands of companies across different industries, cultures, and countries have dealt with the same problem while scaling.

Three Ways Poor Product Content Undermines Marketing Success

1. The Campaign Delay Ripple Effect

Delays in new product launches are a big red flag. When product information is incomplete, outdated, or inconsistent, the ripple effects can be significant.

It might take weeks to update seasonal descriptions for over 500 products across four different platforms, forcing the team to reschedule launches. And this doesn’t just mean missing the prime promotional window; it also gives your competitors a head start in the market.

For many businesses, delays in product launches can lead to missed revenue opportunities.

2. The Credibility Crisis

One statistic shows that 87% of customers who encounter inconsistent product information across different platforms end up trusting the brand less. Moreover, mismatches between the product and its specifications can lead to returns and higher rates of abandoned purchases.

3. The Creative Compromise

If time is reduced, many aspects of a team’s productivity are impacted. Creative strategy development is one of them. On the other side, when teams have quick and organized access to the information they need, they can focus on storytelling and emotional connection, resulting in improved campaign performance.

The Multichannel Multiplier Effect

As brands adopt new communication methods, these obstacles can increase. Each new platform requires a customized strategy, new captions, content creation, and more assets to achieve better performance.

Without a structured system in place, your team may end up making these updates manually, leaving room for human error, inconsistencies, and missed opportunities.

Quantifying the Impact

The consequences of not implementing better product content management systems can be summed up as:

• Extended time-to-market: Products take longer to be launched, giving competitors a competitive advantage.
• Increased operational costs: Valuable resources like time and money are spent on inefficient processes, potentially leading to higher spend on related activities.
• Reduced marketing opportunities: Without sufficient time for creative development, campaign performance is often suboptimal.

The Solution

If your company is facing this situation, there are ways to solve it by implementing better systems and a fresh approach to how content is created and managed.

Primarily, you should centralize your information.

Implement a single source of truth that not only stores your product data, descriptions, specs, and media assets, but also acts as a central hub to distribute that content across all your sales channels. That way, when everyone is working from the same verified information, consistency becomes automatic.

Modern digital asset management goes beyond storing files; it connects visual content to product data, making it easier to automatically link media to their products and share them.

Platforms like Catsy PIM/DAM combine product information management with digital asset management in intuitive interfaces designed for marketing teams rather than technical users. With integrated systems in place, your company has a centralized source that automatically flows into marketing channels in the right formats, eliminating manual updates and version control issues.

Conclusion

Modern challenges require modern solutions. Thankfully, with today’s technology and automation, we can access systems that simplify how we manage and organize information.

Solving this often-overlooked issue can have a direct impact on your company’s marketing performance. When teams have immediate access to accurate product data and assets, they can focus their energy where it really matters—creating meaningful customer experiences that drive results.

Disclaimer: The content of this article is for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not constitute professional or technical advice.

Published by Jeremy S.