Your marketing team needs a content management solution. Here’s why.
| January 26, 2023
You know that feeling when you can’t find your car keys and spend 20 minutes tearing apart your house, only to find them in your pocket? It’s frustrating, right? Well, imagine losing track of digital assets like images and videos. Only not every asset is as easy to locate as your keys. It’s a major headache (trust us, we know from experience). That’s why your team needs a digital asset management (DAM) platform as part of its marketing tech stack.
If you’re a member of a marketing team (or you are the whole marketing team!), you know that your team’s digital assets are essential. But you might not realize that they need to be managed just like any other asset. Otherwise, they can quickly become disorganized and difficult to track across multiple platforms. That’s where the DAM content management system comes in. It’s a way to keep your digital assets organized and easy to find. Plus, it can save your team time and money in the long run. If you’re looking for a way to improve your team’s workflow, consider adding digital asset management to your marketing tech stack’s arsenal of tools.
Your content management strategy is incomplete without a DAM
A digital asset management (DAM) system is essential if you want your marketing tech stack to be state-of-the-art. Powerful DAM content management tools help you store, curate, protect, and share important materials in one place — product photos, videos, logos, documents, and more. Having everything organized in one central location makes finding and using those assets easier and faster. You can then focus on producing the best content instead of searching through countless folders trying to find what you need. And let’s face it: nobody’s got time for that!
Modern DAM solutions also give marketing teams control and visibility into their content management. Security options ensure that only approved users have access to the content, so your marketing materials are always in safe hands. Additionally, you can keep track of who is using an asset, when it’s being used, and where it’s being shared — perfect for marketing teams that need to stay compliant and optimize the way they work.
Why your team needs a DAM
Since marketing teams have become more decentralized over the years, the need for a comprehensive DAM solution has never been greater. An asset management platform helps you better manage content and increases operational efficiency by making it easier to work with assets and collaborate with colleagues across the globe. Not only does it help manage content in one central hub, but it also provides visibility and access rights to the content, so users are accessing the right material at the right time. That means marketing teams can spend less time searching for files and more time focusing on marketing campaigns that will really move the needle for your business.
The best part? You don’t even have to be in the same location to access files and make updates. Not only does a DAM allow you to access files from anywhere, but it also helps you quickly find what you need using keywords, tags, and other metadata. Even better, you can automate repetitive tasks like sorting images based on content or resizing them for specific use cases (such as social media posts or feature images) to save time and energy.
Running a successful project with content spread out across multiple channels can be a daunting task, but with a DAM, marketing teams can share assets quickly and securely to streamline content workflows. And you’ll be able to track changes made over time so you can keep content up-to-date and accurate. It’s the perfect solution for busy teams looking to make content management easier.
How a DAM can change your marketing team
The right content management strategy can significantly improve your marketing team’s workflow and change how work gets done. A digital asset management system streamlines the process of locating, sharing, and utilizing photos, videos, and other digital elements across teams, which makes life easier for everyone using those assets to create engaging marketing content.
From organizing assets with easy-to-navigate libraries to creating more efficient workflows that eliminate extra steps in asset tracking and approval, DAM tools have all the capabilities necessary to produce marketing campaigns quickly and effectively. Content management solutions make marketing teams more productive, efficient, and organized with features like version control, file sharing, activity logs, metadata tagging, and more. It’s also a great way to future-proof your marketing programs to ensure long-term flexibility!
10 ways DAM enhances your content management
- Improved organization: Digital asset management tools help marketing teams organize content in one centralized location. Consolidating assets is especially helpful for teams that utilize multiple storage platforms, creating a single source of truth for all marketing content.
- Streamlined search capabilities: With a DAM, marketing teams can search for assets quickly using keywords, tags, and other metadata. DAM platforms save time and make finding the content you need right when you need it much more manageable.
- Automated tasks: Marketing teams can save time and energy by automating some tedious content-related tasks, such as manually resizing images or clunky review processes via email.
- Brand consistency: With a DAM platform, marketing teams can centralize their brand guidelines. Having the brand guidelines easily accessible by all teams ensures that all content is consistent with the company’s core values and brand identity and marketing campaigns have a unified look and feel.
- Increased collaboration: Digital asset management tools make it easier for marketing teams to collaborate on initiatives, improving productivity and boosting overall marketing efforts.
- Increased efficiency: DAM content management software enables marketing teams to streamline their processes, allowing for the launch of campaigns quickly and more efficiently.
- Fewer errors: By providing marketing teams with better organization, search capabilities, and visibility into their content, campaigns become more accurate and effective.
- Better scalability: Digital asset management tools can be easily scaled up or down depending on the needs of the marketing teams, allowing teams to adjust their workflows and campaigns as needed.
- Software integrations: DAM content management solutions can easily integrate with many different types of software you likely already have in your tech stack. Most DAMs integrate with marketing automation platforms (like MailChimp), creative tools (like Canva), and content marketing systems (like WordPress), to name a few. These tools help marketing teams create the perfect marketing tech stack to maximize their efforts.
- ROI tracking: A robust DAM platform enables the team to easily track campaigns’ return on investment (ROI). DAM analytics help marketing teams optimize their strategies, measure performance, and make data-driven decisions.
Before you buy a DAM
Building a marketing tech stack with a digital asset management system at the core is like setting up the foundation of your home. If you don’t build a strong base, you’ll likely have to go back and repair the weak spots later. But don’t worry, getting started with DAM isn’t scary – you’ll soon discover how it can help your marketing team increase creative efficiency and productivity to deliver delightful customer experiences. And, once you’ve got your DAM set up, plenty of marketing solutions you are already using integrate seamlessly to take your marketing effectiveness to new heights! Let’s run through what you’ll need to do to get started and how you can get the most out of the DAM you select.
1. Secure buy-in
If you want your DAM implementation to be successful, you’ll need to ensure you’ve got the support and buy-in from the entire team – after all, they are the ones that’ll use the new system. Focus on the individual benefits as much as possible and address any concerns the team might have immediately to put them at ease. Be sure to consult your stakeholders throughout the deployment process. By bringing their insight and ideas into play, you can empower them and create a culture in which everyone owns the project and its outcome.
2. Audit your marketing tech stack and digital assets
A comprehensive audit of existing digital tools and assets can help you maximize the impact of DAM software. While every organization has different needs and uses for its assets, looking into which tools are already in place gives excellent insight into where there’s room for improvement. That said, the shift from working with disparate file types and platforms – many of which don’t lend themselves well to collaboration – is only part of the picture. Implementing a more suitable asset management platform also helps improve processes and workflow in other areas, such as content creation and distribution. Besides, conducting an audit is beneficial on multiple fronts and could ultimately pay off big dividends if done correctly.
3. Establish DAM use guidelines
A DAM content management system should run like a well-oiled machine, ensuring communications run smoothly between teams and allowing for easy access to content. The platforms that excel in user accessibility and intuitive navigation are the ones that will make the content creation process simpler and more effective. Setting up clear guidelines is essential to creating a reliable DAM system so your team can quickly understand how everything should work. This will help your team locate, share, and repurpose your best content efficiently without enduring long delays at every step. Ultimately, delving into key specifics of using the platform at the start leads to well-crafted, practical asset management practices that get results every time.
Get started with Canto DAM
If your marketing tech stack is missing a digital asset management platform, your content production process could suffer. Don’t let lost assets slow you down! Incorporating a DAM platform into your content management strategy ensures that your team will always have the assets it needs right when it needs them, along with the collaboration and workflow tools to produce outstanding content.
Canto’s DAM platform can help marketing teams like yours consolidate their digital assets and keep their creative workflows moving efficiently. With Canto, you can organize images, videos, brand elements, and much more with our powerful AI-driven tagging and metadata tools. Our innovative Portals feature lets you set up curated, customized content libraries for specific projects and use cases so team members can find the assets they need quickly and easily. Even better, Canto integrates seamlessly with leading project management and storage platforms to break down barriers to content creation and keep your workflows humming.