Marketing departments and creative teams are quickly learning that they must be more technology-driven. To create a consistent, engaging, and evolving brand presence online – a specific infrastructure and organizational strategy must be implemented to facilitate the essential processes of interconnecting the right digital assets with the right people.
So, this is where a digital asset management (DAM) solution comes in. A DAM enables marketers to get more mileage out of images, videos, and other digital content by making it possible to create, organize, distribute, and access their files much more efficiently. This central repository can also be accessed by employees, clients, and contractors on an as-needed basis, even with custom access controls to allow certain users access only to the assets they need.
Instead of dealing with piles of folders and disjointed emails, being able to locate the right assets at the right time is invaluable to today’s busy marketing teams. Here are just a few of the reasons to consider investing in a DAM solution to manage your ever-increasing volume of digital assets.
Optimize Your Digital Assets
Every marketing department, or business in general, already has a wide variety of media assets such as videos, images, and more. Companies set aside a significant budget to create assets and ensure that their assets are on-brand. But despite those substantial investments, many organizations don’t have a structured repository to store all those assets, meaning some inevitably get lost in the shuffle – leaving marketers to recreate assets that already exist.
In other cases, it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind, and valuable assets are left unused. In other words, it’s incredibly inefficient. Other reasons expensive image files are left unused is because they are misplaced or misnamed. Now, consider a company that has hundreds or thousands of employees who may not even have any idea that such files exist, and the sheer potential for waste is astonishing.
Instead, with a DAM system, marketers can finally optimize digital assets and the resources used to create them. MerlinOne, for instance, is one such system that offers a configurable drag-and-drop interface that is truly user-friendly. Plus, it’s scalable, so it grows along with your company (and that ever-growing volume of digital assets you’re trying to manage).
Not to mention, it is fully HIPAA-compliant. As a result, marketers get the peace of mind that comes with knowing where and how to access their digital assets.
Easy Searching
Imagine having the ability to categorize your image collection in any manner you see fit. You might use methods such as:
- Relevant tags
- Hierarchy
- Keywords
- Dates
- Names
- Purpose
The good news with many DAM systems is they allow taxonomies to be structured based on your unique needs. For example, a newspaper might organize its taxonomy based on a niche such as:
- Editorials
- Politics
- Lifestyle
- Health
- World
- Local news
Your structure should always have the flexibility for modifications as your needs change – and your needs can and will evolve. For example, Libris is a DAM solution which offers user-friendly and flexible organization of all creative assets in a way that works for you. And, since Libris is cloud-based, access is flexible as well, so the overall user experience is intuitive and straightforward.
Enhance Your Current Applications
The right DAM solution will easily integrate with the other applications you regularly use, such as your CRM, ERP, and others. So, you get increased functionality with all of the technologies you already rely on every day. Imagine how much time you’ll save when you can seamlessly share digital assets among your installed systems.
Instead of uploading, moving, and downloading the most recent versions of your assets – on every system – you can just distribute one asset within your current company workflows. One DAM system that offers these useful types of integrations is MarcomCentral. This solution also comes with in-depth analytics and advanced search functions.
Brand Like a Pro
Every aspect of marketing is built around branding, and branding is highly visual. This is how your company represents itself to the world. And, in this regard, the first impression is everything, so you’ll want to put your best foot forward with top-quality digital assets.
It doesn’t matter if you’re using media for a tweet, Instagram post, or a blog – your branded visuals must be eye-catching and, perhaps more importantly, consistent. The last thing you need is to publish images that are grainy or in the wrong colors. In today’s hyper-connected global environment, people only pay attention to companies that grab their attention and consistently engage them.
Consumers also use brands to express who they are. Surely you know someone who prides themselves on using only Apple products, or someone who’s a dedicated Android fan. By using a DAM, you can ensure that designers, marketers, customers, users – everyone – has access to the right images, at the right time.
If you are updating your digital assets, you want to make sure your designer is modifying the right file, and a DAM can help you do that. In other words, a DAM can help you make your brand even better. Webdam, for example, is a Shutterstock company and a leader in DAM solutions that offers easy asset sharing and brand control.
Minimize Legal Exposure
Now that resources have been allocated and spent on creating consistent digital files, you also want to ensure that those files are used appropriately. For example, licenses expire, and there are usage rights to manage. A DAM can act as the gatekeeper for a sensitive file, allowing you to restrict and control access to certain files through customized user permissions.
You can even configure your DAM to push your assets offline when their licenses expire. Image Relay is one such solution which minimizes legal exposure through securing your files while offering the ability to manage every user on an individual level.
The right DAM solution offers excellent integrations, improved efficiencies, professional branding, and quick adoption. For these reasons and more, it’s easy to see why DAM is a marketer’s best friend.
