In the modern world a large budget for advertising campaigns and carefully selected employees are not pillars of success for prosperous business. Over the last few decades more and more companies have implemented different software solutions for sales increase and cost reduction, such as CRM and ERP. Nowadays there is no doubt that such investments are indeed of paramount importance.

This article presents a PIM as an innovative tool for effective implementation of marketing activities and answers the following questions:

• Why do retail and production companies need a PIM?
• How to increase the efficiency of marketing campaigns with a PIM?
• What do you need to implement a PIM system?

What is PIM?

The PIM system was developed for managing product information. This is a software application for processing various types of product data. Product information is marketing data (e.g., SEO texts), product images, and videos in various resolutions.

The PIM software is developed as a central repository for all product information and as a user interface where data can be viewed, edited and analyzed. An important differentiator of the PIM system compared to others is that data can be automatically provided and verified. There is also the option of exporting and publishing them on appropriate channels (for example on websites, in online stores).

PIM for Marketing - why do you need it?

A PIM solves at once several tasks that marketing managers have to do. One of the key benefits of PIM is the central repository for all product information. This will give a company an optimal solution for better-structured data storage. The data access can be adjusted according to the role of an employee.

A PIM system allows you not only to save, but also edit and unify data. No other software has similar features, and each company saves many hours of work by implementing a PIM.

In addition to the above-mentioned features, PIM systems are used to distribute high quality and unified product data through various channels. For example, you can create a USP for a new sales channel. It is possible to add products to the assortment on the basis of a specific feature (e.g., products that have an attribute with YouTube links).

Today the market offers many PIM solutions – cloud-based (Pimberly, inRiver, Propel) as well as open source (Akeneo, Pimcore, AtroPIM) - every company can choose the right system depending on its requirements.

How can a PIM increase the efficiency of collecting and editing marketing information?

One has to consider that PIM systems are an innovative tool to increase sales. Their functions are geared towards increasing sales and reducing costs. The most important is that PIM software reduces time for searching, editing and collecting all product information. Marketing managers do not need to search for information on multiple sources before the start of the project, because a PIM system offers centralized data storage. These data are stored in a repository of a PIM and are about one or two mouse clicks away from each other. In addition, marketing managers can make the use of their work time more efficient with the help of the automated data processing function for selecting a channel (for example, creating product images in a specific resolution).

How can you use a PIM to make a USP more effective?

As it was mentioned above, employees should not spend time for collecting and unifying data (e.g., image sizes) since they are supposed to pay more attention to "human" work, e.g. develop a new sales promotion strategy. In this case, PIM software is also useful because new attributes can be used to create new relationships and regularities as well as product catalogs for your partners and customers.

With a high-quality digital product catalog, marketing managers can engage with more sophisticated partners and customers. Furthermore, a PIM can automatically adapt the entire product catalog to the needs of each partner. Providing high-quality product information with a PIM system positively influences the image of the company and improves the quality of business relationships.

How can you publish more qualitative information with a PIM effectively?

Marketing managers get a powerful tool that stores product descriptions, media and technical data by virtue of a PIM. At the same time all files, images, and links are checked for correctness and whether they meet the requirements. However, the availability of data is only half the battle. Once you have decided to publish your product on a website, you should take the most important step: publish the selected product catalog.

A PIM offers the possibility to publish products directly from the interface. In this case, there is no need for marketing managers to publish products manually and specify their attributes on each channel anymore. With the use of a PIM, collected, sorted and verified data can be published with just one click. All these advantages increase the efficiency of marketing measures to a qualitatively new level.

Why is AtroPIM an appropriate solution for product marketing?

When it comes to the inquiry of improving the marketing efficiency through a PIM, it is important to mention  Open-Source AtroPIM system. This modern and configurable PIM software offers a wealth of features out of the box. Another remarkable advantage of AtroPIM is that this software is open source and free.
AtroPIM can be integrated with many external systems (e.g., online stores, ERP marketplaces, etc.), what allows a very quick implementation of this advanced software. If there are multiple sales channels, centralized product information management can help marketing managers to save time and also improve information quality.

By flexibly configuring products and data, which are published on each sales channel, you can not only create different category trees, but also add different attributes, descriptions, and prices to your products. In addition, the roles and user access to the system can be flexibly configured (e.g., the right to edit images of a particular product group for a particular sales channel).

The independence of platform makes it possible to use AtroPIM on different devices. The system is developed in such a way that users can also work remotely. The implementation of data reviews, the sequence of actions and workflows leads to the automation of marketing measures of your company (e.g., if a product is published from a certain group on certain channels after filling in certain fields).

If you are thinking about how to improve the efficiency of your company's marketing measures, then the implementation of a PIM is the best solution in modern market conditions. Are you still in doubt and do not know what a PIM looks like? If it is so, you can test the demo version of AtroPIM on the website. Registration is not required. Make sure that product information can be easily managed!