Capturing and holding your ideal customer's attention has become more challenging than ever, requiring constant and varied content creation.
If you're simply creating marketing content without a structured plan for managing those assets, you may experience inefficiencies, increased costs, and missed opportunities to engage your audience effectively.
Often overlooked, digital asset management is the unsung hero of marketing teams and brand managers. In this post, we'll unpack the reasons you need marketing asset management (MAM) and guide you through five tried-and-true practices to enhance your brand's digital presence with ease.
A digital marketing asset is a digital file or tool used in marketing efforts to achieve business objectives. These assets include product images, engaging videos, informative podcasts, distinctive brand logos, eye-catching ad graphics, and more.
Revenue links directly to such assets — especially when used correctly and strategically by all departments within an organization. For instance, marketing campaigns rely on quality assets to amplify brand visibility, build trust, and generate sales. If other departments can’t find or don’t know which assets to use for other projects, it can lead to disjointed brand messaging, affecting the brand’s ability to grow its revenue online.
Digital marketing assets are dynamic and ever-evolving. They not only educate and inform but also drive audiences toward desired actions. Common types of digital marketing assets include:
Internal marketing assets are exclusive tools and processes intended for internal use by your team. They serve as the backbone, guiding daily operations and establishing the brand’s identity and standards internally.
Common examples of internal assets include:
Your website is a central hub of all information about your brand online. Above all, your website should showcase your products and services and make it easy for people to buy from you.
Examples of website-related assets include:
Cornerstone content consists of high-quality, foundational content pieces that are extensively researched and offer immense value to audiences. Such content pieces influence the perception of your brand in online communities and can include:
Multimedia assets include image, audio, and video assets. They are often the most effective means of communicating a brand's visual style across various platforms, especially social media. These elements are also highly appealing and can convey messages quickly, all while building brand awareness and engagement.
Here are some examples of such assets:
Some brands rely on email marketing to build their audience. You might send pre-determined sets of emails to guide subscribers or customers through a journey. Using a sales funnel process, you could use timely email communication to launch a new product.
In either case, here are examples of email marketing assets you might rely on:
A brand style guide outlines the visual and textual elements that define and represent the brand across various platforms. These documents typically feature the following assets:
Marketing asset management (MAM) is the strategic process of managing, organizing, storing, and retrieving digital marketing files. Management usually requires a marketing asset management system to keep track of all digital marketing files. This tool lets marketers quickly find, use, and share the right assets with the right people and teams and control electronic asset permissions and usage rights.
Asset management streamlines marketing workflow and ensures that all assets are up-to-date, consistent, and easy to access. By utilizing marketing asset management, businesses can maximize their resources and get the most out of their marketing efforts.
In fast-paced digital environments, marketing teams often feel pressured to respond quickly and more agile. MAM provides the technical infrastructure for them to do so, as well as these additional benefits:
Managing marketing assets can quickly become a nightmare if you don’t have the proper infrastructure and processes in place. Stay on top of all your assets and keep everyone in the loop with these five best practices.
Start by auditing your current digital marketing assets. Examine the file storage, access methods, and version control management you’re currently using for all files. You should also consider which assets are performing well and what internal measures are in place to monitor them.
The outcome of your audit should:
Effective asset management relies on transparent workflows and processes that everyone uses consistently. If you observe common patterns during your audit, establish procedures to help ensure consistency.
Some examples of things to consider include:
The key to a streamlined asset management process lies in organization. Keeping all your assets in a centralized repository or marketing asset library can streamline workflows. Your storage system should support a variety of asset and file types and offer accessibility from various locations and devices.
You can also actively organize your asset library by:
Although you can use a cloud-based drive to store marketing assets, teams may have difficulty finding what they need as your library grows. Specialized tools with purpose-built asset management features offer more features to streamline asset management intuitively. A marketing asset management tool should include the following features:
Like any other system, marketing asset management is more useful when users are well-trained. Comprehensive training ensures team members can easily navigate the system, understand version control, and stick to asset usage guidelines.
Leveraging a superior marketing asset management system can be the difference between ordinary and extraordinary collaboration within marketing teams.
At Happeo, we have a purpose-built suite of advanced features to enhance asset management. Our platform is easy and intuitive to navigate and ensures all your marketing assets remain organized, up-to-date, and easily accessible anytime, anywhere.
How people access these files is the key — our integrated search engine works across all your company's tools and can help people find anything they need, no matter where it’s stored.
Ready to elevate your marketing asset management? Request a demo or explore our resources and blog to learn more.