Marketing managers today are facing pressure to produce more content and marketing assets than ever before. Not only are marketing teams asked to build more original advertising content, these marketing assets often require to be ready for distribution across multiple channels including both print and digital.
Organizations that succeed against the growing pressure to develop and publish more content are adopting tools and processes that support effective asset storage, retrieval, and repurposing. In the year 2017, a marketing “asset” isn’t just the groundwork for advertising, it’s potentially a building block that can be edited, revised, and modified for future campaigns.
There is an overwhelming number of digital asset management system offerings on the market, and I talk to people every day who are struggling to decipher between the many options. One of the questions people ask me the most frequently at the beginning of our conversations is whether they will even be able to find a vendor that can meet their business needs.
Brand managers should always ask themselves the following questions while switching to a new Digital Asset Management Software to better understands the true needs of their organizations for scalability, asset volume, workflows, compliance, and more:
Number of new assets produced Annually
How much time does your design team have time to develop new projects and assets? Are they consistently working to help local outlets update assets for one-off use? Understanding the status of your asset flow encourages you to focus on the needs of the design team, the needs of the local affiliates, and helps with a greater understanding of where your process of asset creation is bottlenecked.
While estimating the number of assets you produce annually, it is important to understand the number produced by your design team and local versions. If your design team is creating one-off assets every day for hundreds of franchisees, your current workflow is not working. Preferably, your team should be able to create a series of customizable templates, which can easily be localized by the local marketer.
Average Lifespan of an Asset
The lifespan of assets is largely determined by how long it is usable in-market. If a direct mail piece is stale after using it one’s, because of an in-the-moment cultural reference, then it has a very short lifespan. Measuring the average lifespan of an asset enables you to understand how long every asset should live in the DAM software at each stage of its lifecycle. If many assets of your brands are only good for one-time use, the ROI on the DAM system that you select needs to account for the constant cost of creating new assets.
One of the best methods to extend the lifespan of your assets is to repurpose them. Distributed DAM tools have the potential to dramatically expand the average lifecycle of your marketing assets because they permit you to repurpose them. Assets like product photography, or holiday templates, can be repurposed for many mediums and seasons. By choosing a DAM tool that offers features to support repurposing, such as the capability to associate images with a template, you help increase the value that you get from those assets.
Legal and Regulatory Requirements
Distributed brands in healthcare, finance, and other highly-regulated industries must abide by strict laws, and the legal team is responsible for enforcing compliance appropriately. If your organization is required to incorporate disclosures with marketing or meet requirements set by a regulatory body such as SEC, FINRA, HIPPA, your Digital Asset Management platform should let you restrict who can utilize your assets to ensure they always follow the compliance rules.
How often do local marketers need to personalize their own assets?
If your local marketers are constantly bothering your design team with requests to customize campaigns, chances are they might feel rushed to personalize an asset and do it on their own, even if it’s not up to brand standards. By understanding how your local marketers interact with assets, and their requirements, you are better able to provide them with the resources they require to be successful. If your locals are often requesting personalized assets, look for a Digital Asset Management solution that will enable them to collaborate and add assets to the system for approval.
Are you using other software or tools to help with multi-location marketing?
The tools and technologies organizations requirements for marketing has evolved significantly. A one-size-fits-all solution for end-to-end marketing resource management (MRM) is rarely ideal for brands today, who are increasingly seeking lighter weight, cloud-based tools.
If you will be integrating your new software with existing tools, your Distributed Digital Asset Management should offer an open API for integration with tools like your web content management system, project management, budgeting, and more.
Final Take
Selecting and implementing a DAM system is a big deal. It’s going to take a lot of planning and work but to switch to new DAM software like the businesses that have done it before you, you’ll gain so much in return.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chandrima Samanta
Content-Editor at MartechCube
Chandrima is a Content management executive with a flair for creating high quality content irrespective of genre. She believes in crafting stories irrespective of genre and bringing them to a creative form. Prior to working for MartechCube she was a Business Analyst with Capgemini.