If you're a marketing leader, you've probably had this conversation dozens of times: "SharePoint just doesn't work for marketing." Your team grumbles about it daily. Simple tasks take forever. Creative work grinds to a halt while waiting for approvals. And everyone has secretly subscribed to Dropbox or Canva to actually get their work done.
But here's what I've learned after watching hundreds of marketing teams wrestle with this exact challenge: the problem isn't SharePoint itself. The problem is that we've been asking SharePoint to be something it was never designed to be.
The Fundamental Disconnect
SharePoint was born in 2001 as a document management system. Its job was to store, organize, and secure files—essentially a digital filing cabinet with excellent security features. And it does that job remarkably well, which is why IT departments love it and why 85% of Fortune 500 companies rely on it.
Marketing, however, doesn't need a filing cabinet. Marketing needs a creative enablement platform.
Think about what your team actually does with those files stored in SharePoint. They don't just view them—they adapt them for local markets, customize them for specific campaigns, translate them into multiple languages, and update them constantly as offers change. Every "file" is really a living, breathing piece of creative work that needs to be both protected and flexible.
This mismatch creates a cascade of problems that marketing teams know all too well:
The time tax: A simple headline change that should take 30 seconds requires finding the file, downloading it, sending it to a designer, waiting for updates, getting approvals, and re-uploading. Three minutes of work becomes three days of process.
The permission paradox: SharePoint's all-or-nothing permissions don't match marketing reality. A franchisee needs to change their store hours but shouldn't touch the corporate tagline. A partner needs to add their logo but shouldn't alter the layout. SharePoint can't handle this nuance.
The collaboration breakdown: Modern marketing involves extensive external collaboration with agencies, partners, and franchisees. But adding external users to SharePoint is so complex that teams resort to email and file-sharing services, completely defeating the security purpose.
The Hidden Costs Nobody Calculates
Most organizations never add up the true cost of their SharePoint-marketing mismatch. When we help companies audit their actual expenses, the numbers are shocking:
A Fortune 500 retailer discovered they were spending $3.2 million annually on SharePoint workarounds. This included $1.2 million in agency fees for "simple updates" like changing dates and swapping images, $800,000 in shadow IT subscriptions as teams quietly signed up for unauthorized tools, and $550,000 in lost productivity from administrative tasks.
But the financial cost is just part of the story. There's also the human cost—talented designers spending their days managing permissions instead of creating, strategists drowning in administrative tasks instead of developing campaigns, and entire teams feeling frustrated and undervalued.
Why Traditional Solutions Don't Work
When marketing teams hit the SharePoint wall, they typically consider two options, both of which create new problems:
Option 1: Buy a separate Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. This sounds logical—get a purpose-built tool for marketing. But DAM implementations typically take 6-12 months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and create a new silo. Now you have two systems that don't talk to each other, doubling the confusion about where files live and which version is current.
Option 2: Build a workaround culture. This happens organically as teams find their own solutions. Personal Dropbox accounts proliferate. Canva subscriptions multiply. WeTransfer links fly back and forth. The result is a shadow IT nightmare with massive security risks and zero brand control.
The Integration Approach: Making SharePoint Work for Marketing
The solution isn't to fight SharePoint or replace it—it's to extend it with capabilities that marketing actually needs.
This is where solutions like We Brand come in. Instead of creating another silo, We Brand integrates directly with SharePoint, adding a creative layer on top of your existing infrastructure. Files stay in SharePoint, maintaining all the security and compliance IT requires. But now those files become instantly usable through smart templates that enable customization while protecting brand standards.
Here's what this looks like in practice:
A marketing manager opens SharePoint and navigates to their campaign folder as usual. But instead of downloading a file to edit it, they click "Edit with We Brand." The poster opens in their browser with the design locked but content areas editable. They update the headline and date in 30 seconds. The file saves back to SharePoint automatically with full version history.
A franchisee who doesn't even have SharePoint access logs into a branded portal. They see only approved templates, add their location details, and download print-ready materials. Required legal disclaimers are added automatically based on geography.
An agency partner accesses exactly the assets they're authorized to use without complex SharePoint permissions. They customize within brand guidelines and submit for approval without email chains or file transfers.
The organizations that successfully transform SharePoint from a marketing bottleneck into a creative accelerator share three characteristics:
First, they accept that SharePoint isn't going away—and that's actually fine. It does what it was designed to do very well. The goal isn't to replace it but to extend it.
Second, they focus on user experience over system architecture. The best solution is the one your team will actually use, not the one with the most features.
Third, they measure success by business outcomes, not technical metrics. The question isn't "Is SharePoint working?" but "Can our marketing team respond to market opportunities fast enough to win?"
If your marketing team is struggling with SharePoint, you're not alone. This challenge affects thousands of organizations worldwide. But unlike many business problems, this one has a clear, proven solution.
The question isn't whether to fix the SharePoint-marketing disconnect—it's how quickly you can make it happen. Every day you wait, competitors who've already solved this problem are moving faster, responding to opportunities while you're still waiting for approvals.
The good news is that transformation doesn't require a massive project or budget. With the right integration approach, most organizations see dramatic improvements within 60 days: creative requests drop by 70-85%, turnaround time goes from days to minutes, and user satisfaction soars above 90%.
The path from SharePoint struggle to marketing success is well-traveled and clearly marked. The only question is: when will you take the first step?
Chris ConnellSeptember 27, 2025
