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Marq

Score9 out of 10

10 Reviews and Ratings

What is Marq?

Lucidpress, developed by Marq Platform, is a marketing resource management software that aims to streamline content creation, maintain brand consistency, and facilitate the creation of professional marketing materials. It is a web-based design and publishing tool suitable for organizations of various sizes, including small businesses and large enterprises. According to the vendor, Lucidpress is widely used by marketing professionals, graphic designers, content creators, brand managers, advertising agencies, as well as industries such as education, real estate, and non-profit organizations.

Key Features

Design a brochure: Lucidpress offers an intuitive, drag-and-drop editor that, according to the vendor, simplifies the process of designing brochures. Users can choose from a wide range of professional brochure templates to kickstart their design process.

Brand assets: Lucidpress provides a centralized hub to store and download custom brand assets such as logos, colors, and fonts. The vendor states that users can conveniently access their brand assets within the software, ensuring consistent branding in their brochures.

Web-based platform: Lucidpress is a web-based platform, eliminating the need for software downloads or installations. Users can access their Lucidpress account from any browser or platform, facilitating remote work and collaboration.

Data automation: Lucidpress offers data automation features that, according to the vendor, allow users to set up smart fields to automatically populate information in their brochures. This feature saves time and effort by reducing the need for manual data entry.

Easy Import: Lucidpress provides integrations with popular platforms such as Google Docs, YouTube, Dropbox, Facebook, and InDesign, allowing users to easily import existing content into their brochures. Additionally, the vendor states that users can utilize the Unsplash integration to search for and add stock photos to their brochures.

Online collaboration: Lucidpress enables seamless collaboration on brochure design projects. Multiple users can work on a single document simultaneously, providing real-time feedback and facilitating efficient implementation of changes. Users can assign different roles and permissions to team members, ensuring smooth team management.

Share anywhere: Lucidpress allows users to publish their brochures online, providing a unique URL that can be shared via email, social media, or embedded on websites. Users can also download their brochures as high-quality images or share them directly on Facebook.

Printing services: Lucidpress offers a printing service for users to order printed copies of their brochures. Printing and shipping are handled by a third-party printer, ensuring high-quality printed brochures.

Portal: Lucidpress provides a centralized portal for managing and organizing marketing assets. Users can access pre-approved templates, images, logos, and other brand assets within the portal, ensuring compliance with brand guidelines and standards.

Media

1 / 10

Marq is a Superior Product for Publishers!

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a publisher of sponsored content digital magazines, we started with LucidPress and continued with them until the re-branding to Marq. Along the way, we have never steered away from the platform as it consistently is the most flexible and affordable one to use for magazine layout and we just love it.

Pros

  • Custom page sizes
  • Drag and drop of images
  • Sidebar visualization

Cons

  • Automated page numbering would be amazing
  • Scroll button should be darker to find it easier
  • More template options

Other Software Used

Canva, Adobe PhotoShop, Pexels

Return on Investment

  • I am able to save over $10K per issue by doing the design and layout myself.
  • I am able to save at least 2-3 weeks per issue by doing the design and layout myself.
  • I don't need to employ a team to compile each issue, I do it all myself.

Alternatives Considered

Canva

Keeps us on brand

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have LucidPress set up as a supplementary service for campus partners to access multiple designs as templates they can edit and output independently. This allows us to provide a branded cohesive set of assets for staff use on smaller independent projects that we do not have the capacity for. We also have approval capabilities to monitor projects in the system and provide support when needed.

Pros

  • User management
  • Easy to create and edit templates
  • Able to install an approval layer to govern use

Cons

  • Variety of assets is somewhat lacking
  • Can be a bit of a learning curve for some users
  • A bit pricey now that there are more alternatives

Most Important Features

  • User management
  • Complete template control
  • Able to approve assets before they are released

Return on Investment

  • Allows our team to have more bandwidth
  • Flexible enough for us to add multiple templates for several assets
  • Keeps all assets up to brand standards

Alternatives Considered

Canva

Other Software Used

PageProof, ClickUp, Paymo