The Importance of Digital Asset Management in Marketing

Digital asset management (DAM) is increasingly important to organizations of all sizes and can be particularly potent from a marketing perspective.

So why is it necessary to worry about your digital assets if you want to market your brand effectively? Here is a look at the main advantages DAM has to offer.

The basics

Digital assets come in many shapes and sizes, but broadly this term can be applied to a file which a business can use to its advantage. From infographics and internal documents to corporate videos and podcasts, digital assets are very varied.

The purpose of DAM is to ensure that these valuable artifacts are stored logically and securely, as well as being easy to access and distribute to those that need them.

This is where marketing asset management software comes into play, empowering you and your team with the ability to squeeze maximum value from every file at your disposal.

The benefits

We have already touched on a few of the perks that DAM provides for marketers, but one other which deserves a mention is that of avoiding content being lost due to disorganization.

The vast volumes of files that are produced by a typical marketing team can increase the likelihood of crucial files going missing. If these assets are managed within a cohesive system, then such an eventuality will become far rarer.

Hand in hand with this goes the efficient nature of modern digital asset management solutions. You can communicate and collaborate with colleagues while content is being made, and avoid a lot of the manual tasks which would previously have slowed down the whole process.

This also ensures that there is consistency across the board, rather than you stumbling into a situation in which multiple different versions of the same content coexist and thus create confusion and further delays.

Consistency is not just relevant to content versions, but also more broadly to the way that the output you produce is branded. Marketing materials need to stick to the same format to build your company’s reputation and connect with prospective customers, so shared access to the files that underpin this is key.

Lastly, you can rely on DAM in marketing to better assess the returns that you are making based on the ways in which assets are being used. Knowing how often files are accessed and harnessed, as well as where this is happening, will tell you what areas are proving most useful to team members, and where you might be overspending unnecessarily.

The uses

In the social media marketing age, digital asset management is the lynchpin of how many brands and businesses handle their promotional responsibilities.

It is not just a case of streamlining the workflows that lead to the creation of publishable marketing content, but also of allowing you to unify your presence across all platforms without this being a chore to orchestrate.

DAM also has relevance to more traditional forms of marketing, but it is in the digital sphere where it truly shines.

Another aspect to talk about is the improved security that comes with managing your digital assets proactively using specially designed software. In the case that all employees are using a storage solution, being able to determine which types of content are available to which team members will reduce potential vulnerabilities.

You may already have some form of DAM policy and platform in place. You may be eager to adopt a more involved approach to wrangling your digital assets. Whatever the case, there has never been a better time to do so if you want to improve your marketing impact.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.