Customer expectations are rising, and marketers are working to meet those expectations with personalized content across an increasing number of touchpoints – from social media to website to mobile app, drive-thru and virtual reality experience. It is this need to maintain a compliant and on-brand experience that is driving more and more marketers to adopt or upgrade digital asset management systems.
But before you jump into the buying process, you should follow the same steps involved in any software adoption, including a thorough self-assessment of your organization’s business needs, staff capabilities, management support and financial resources.
The list of questions below should help you and your team get started:
Explore DAM solutions from vendors like Acquia, Widen, Cloudinary, MediaValet and more in full MarTech Intelligence Report on digital asset management platforms.
If you’re using martech that offers lightweight DAM features — like content management software, a digital experience platform, or a web content management system — you might not need additional features, according to the sophistication and geographic reach of your marketing operations.
Companies with complex branding standards and legal approval processes – those operating in a highly regulated industry like insurance, for example – will want to ensure that the DAM can activate and provide documentation of the necessary approvals.
Prioritize available digital asset management features based on your most pressing business needs.
C-suite adherence and proper staffing are critical to the effectiveness of any digital asset management platform. Increasingly, martech platforms such as digital asset management are managed by the CMO – not the CTO or CIO. Either way, without the right skilled human resources in place, the platform can end up becoming an expensive reservoir of untapped data with untapped potential to increase revenue and improve customer experience with your brand.
Different platform providers offer different levels of customer service (from self-service to full-service) and strategic consulting services. It is important to have an idea of where you fall on the spectrum before interviewing potential partners. Training is essential. If your organization chooses not to hire in-house staff, consider whether you need to use an add-on or third-party consulting services to use the platform effectively.
Many companies work with different partners for email, e-commerce, social media, paid search and display advertising. Investigate which systems the digital asset management vendor integrates with – whether natively or through the API – and find out if they offer seamless reporting and/or enforcement capabilities with external vendors . If a connection can only be made through an API, make sure you have the internal or external resources to develop the necessary integration.
You want to know the specific gaps in your current reports that will be filled with additional functionality, and more importantly, you want to be sure that this additional information will lead to better decisions and ultimately more revenue for your business.
Prices for enterprise digital asset management platforms can range from a few hundred dollars a year to almost half a million a year. Consider your feature needs carefully, as modular pricing models mean that vendors vary in their inclusion of certain features as standard or as an add-on.
You should define your business goals for the digital asset management platform in advance so that you can gauge success afterwards. Without them, it will be difficult to justify spending on the platform or subsequent marketing campaigns to senior executives.
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Digital Asset Management Platforms: An Overview
What is that? Anyone who struggles to find a file on their computer or shared drive understands the difficulty of finding content. And when you consider the sheer amount of files you have to sort through when so many releases are created to resonate with specific audiences, these tasks can seem overwhelming. Digital asset management platforms simplify these tasks by bringing all of your marketing content together.
Why are they important? Marketers are creating engaging content for more channels than ever before, which means the software used to manage these assets is gaining in importance. In addition, communications between companies and their customers are increasingly digital. Today, marketing content is created in a wide variety of formats and distributed wherever consumers are digitally connected.
Why now? More than half of 1,000 consumers recently surveyed said they were more likely to make a purchase if branded content was personalized, according to the Adobe Consumer Content Survey. Digital asset management platforms help marketers implement these personalization tactics. They also provide valuable insights into content interaction and the effectiveness of their assets.
Why we care. When those who create and consume content are not close to each other, it helps to have a central repository for assets. Finding the right content for your audience is simplified when every release is organized in one place. For these reasons and more, your marketing operations could benefit from adopting a digital asset management system.
Read next: What is digital asset management?
About the Author
Pamela Parker is Research Director at Third Door Media’s Content Studio, where she produces MarTech Intelligence reports and other in-depth content for digital marketers in conjunction with Search Engine Land and MarTech. Prior to taking on this role at TDM, she held the positions of Content Manager, Editor-in-Chief, and Feature Editor. Parker is a respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since its inception. She is a former editor of ClickZ and has also worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing. Parker earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
