Let’s face it, marketing is hard. Consumers churn through content faster than ever before, fueled by shorter attention spans and their addiction to scrolling. Moreover, the marketplace is so saturated with content that it’s difficult to stand out and capture even a few seconds of attention.
In today’s world, even small, niche brands have to create and present content on several channels, in several formats, at the perfect time. Words and phrases must be chosen strategically to please Google’s algorithms while also providing real value to the person searching for information. Marketers must take into account all these factors, in addition to managing and executing the actual creation of content on a strict deadline.
The marketer's job is even more difficult at organizations that don’t manage their digital assets effectively. The assets they create and use every day pile up, are difficult to find when needed, or get lost, never to be found again. To do their jobs well in today’s content-centric world, marketers need help in this area. In this article, we outline some of the ways that digital asset management (DAM), when properly implemented, can support marketers in this environment.
The Marketing Problems DAM Aims to Solve
Create, Find, and Use (and Re-Use) Assets Quickly
In today’s fast-paced world, new trends and ideas pop up every day that marketers at brands, regardless of industry, are expected to keep up with. In addition, consumers are bored by the same content more quickly than ever before and demand newer and higher-quality content on a daily basis.
A healthy DAM program helps your team keep up with these expectations without inflating costs by creating efficiencies where inefficiencies used to exist. For many marketers, the content creation and approval process can be the slowest part of the process, even if the content they need already exists. Pre-existing content often gets lost or buried, making searching for it next to impossible and eliminating the possibility of re-using content in new materials.
A core principle of DAM is to have a single source of truth. This means that all currently relevant content lives in one place and is made searchable through the application of metadata and, if necessary, an intuitive folder structure. This allows end-users to quickly search for and find content that perfectly matches their needs, whether they're creating something new or just need something to post immediately. With the proper workflows and platforms in place within your DAM program, your team will also be able to speed up the asset approval process and get new content out to the market faster.
Collaborate with Everyone, Risk-Free
It’s rare nowadays that a marketer works alone. Sometimes the team is small, but nearly every organization, given the rise of e-commerce, influencer marketing, guest posting, marketing agencies, and corporate partnerships, has several people involved in their marketing efforts. Even other departments in the same organization such as sales, IT, or leadership want access to digital assets.
Sharing content with others inside and outside their organization is yet another variable marketers must juggle. This isn’t as simple as attaching assets to an email blast or airdropping a coworker a product shot, though. Many assets today have strict usage and copyright permissions, especially if they were created by a freelancer or purchased from a stock photography website.
While marketers can’t keep track of Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) terms with every partner organization or which assets are approved for external sharing and which aren’t, their DAM program can. Using metadata, permissions hierarchies, other administrative tools, and DAM platform-specific features, marketers can collaborate with internal and external partners easily without exposing themselves and their employers to undue risk.
Deploy Assets Strategically and Precisely
While it may be true that in today’s world, “content is king,” it would probably be more accurate to say that “the right content, on the right channel, at the right time is king.” While producing and deploying content quickly is important, speed isn’t the only variable marketers have to account for. They also have to make sure that the content is on-brand, suits the channel, is in the right format, and targets the right audience.
DAM facilitates this process in several ways. For example, by applying custom metadata to assets, marketers can quickly filter them down to find the ones that fit their audience or moment in time “just right.” Workflows and DAM platform features also help manage formats, remove duplicate content, archive irrelevant assets, and integrate the DAM platform with other marketing platforms.
Many DAM platforms provide robust reporting capabilities to show what assets are used, by whom, and when. This allows marketers to be more strategic in future campaign planning and execution.
Conclusion
Digital asset management can provide marketers with the support they need to thrive in today’s content-centric workplace. Getting a healthy DAM program set up is a full-time job in and of itself, however, and many marketers don’t have the time to become experts and execute all the work needed to implement one.
If this is your situation, contact Stacks! We're a team of dedicated DAM consultants and professionals who can help you plan, build, maintain, and grow your DAM program to ensure your marketing efforts succeed.
