Is Your Marketing Team Ready to Implement DAM?

Is your marketing team considering adding digital asset management to the marketing technology stack? DAM is often considered one of the most important elements of a stack, but some companies are reluctant to use this solution. They may believe that it’s not needed, or they could believe that they already have enough tools in their MarTech stack. Some might not truly see the benefits it can offer. Below, you will learn more about what DAM platforms can do for your business and what you need to do to get ready to implement them.

What Will DAM Do for You?

Before you are ready to implement a digital asset management tool, you will naturally want to have a better idea of what it can do for your marketing team. The managers and team members will certainly want to know. Understanding the benefits of DAM is one of the first and most important steps before implementation.

Does the Team Need to Save Time and Become More Efficient?

The answer to this question is always yes. Adding a DAM solution to your marketing technology stack will help in a great number of ways, including some that you might not expect. By choosing a DAM system and uploading all of the digital assets your company has available, they will be in one location. All of your team members who need access to the assets can log into the system and find what they need in far less time than it would take them to hunt the pieces down if they aren’t in a central system.

Not only would it take more time, but there’s always the risk that the file could be lost. Perhaps that the person who has it can’t send back an email or put it into Dropbox or a similar service because they are out of town. The use of a DAM solution ensures that everything is in the right place and all those who need to have access to the content will have it.

Since it is in the cloud, this means that the content can be accessed outside of normal business hours, as well. If you have team members working remotely in different parts of the country, or freelancers who have different hours, this is a massive benefit. They don’t have to wait until someone in the office can get them the content needed for the project.

Not only will it be possible for people to have access to the assets instantly, but the versions will also update. The users can be sure they are always working with the right and most recent asset. This reduces the risk of putting an old logo or a tagline with a font you no longer use into marketing materials.

Naturally, these benefits will allow for greater productivity and efficiency, which are essential for the success of your marketing team.

Do You Want Your Team to Have the Ability to Easily Reuse Assets?

One of the reasons that DAM platforms are so popular is because they make it easy for the users to have access to all of the current assets being used. However, they also make it much easier for older assets to be used, as well. Your marketing team can still make good use out of some of the digital assets that you may not have used in a while.

For example, you could use these assets, such as images, to put into emails, newsletters, or other pieces of marketing material. It’s possible to reuse videos, infographics, and all of the other content that you might be keeping. Not only will the DAM system make it easier, but repurposing assets can also help your marketing team to save money.

Do You Need a Way to Determine Who Gets Access to Different Assets?

Some marketing teams are entirely in-house. Other teams also make use of freelancers or agencies that help with the various marketing needs. Perhaps you work with someone outside of the company that handles the video editing for certain projects, for example. Regardless, you need to be sure that everyone who needs access has it. However, chances are you don’t want everyone on the team, not to mention freelancers or other agencies, to have access to everything. You might have proprietary materials or information on upcoming projects that you don’t want to be made available.

Fortunately, when you use a quality DAM tool, you will have the ability to handle the permissions for the content. This means you get to determine who will have access to the various content and material that you have on your system.

Does the Team Need to Share Marketing Materials with Sales?

If you have a sales team, they may need to have access to the marketing materials, as well. However, they will generally need to have access to the most updated and latest versions that they can use in their sales pitches, for presentations, etc. By using a DAM platform, they will have access to the system and the most recent materials. Again, because this is in the cloud, they can access it from anywhere with an Internet connection. They don’t have to wait for it to come to them in an email.

Do You Need to Improve the Marketing Campaigns?

Do you want your marketing campaigns to be better than what they are right now? Different assets will be better suited to different marketing campaigns. With DAM software and analytics, you can easily get a better sense of which assets are begin used the most and which ones are getting enough traction. The data that you glean will help you better determine which assets to continue using, and how to move your marketing forward using similar types of assets in the future.

Marketing doesn’t just end after a campaign is over. Your team takes the feedback and analysis, improves the content to meet the perceived needs of the customers, and does it again and again. Having a DAM solution helps make the process easier.

These are just some of the ways that DAM can help your business. If all of these seem like good features to have, then it’s probably a good time to implement DAM in your business. However, you need to ensure that your marketing team is prepared for the addition of this tool.

What Do You Need to Do to Get Ready for DAM?

Understanding the benefits that DAM can offer is just the first step, of course. You will also need to make sure the team is ready to implement and make the best use of the system chosen. This will start by getting a better understanding of your marketing team’s needs.

Consider Your DAM Needs and Choose a Quality Product

There are many things to consider when you are looking for a DAM solution, but you first need to consider what your marketing team needs. While the basic concept of digital asset management technology tends to be similar, there are differences in many areas including the interface, the usability, and the special features that go beyond merely containing all of the digital assets. Think about what you need the system to do, and then compare that list of needs with available platforms.

Talk with the Team About the New DAM Tool

You may find that while you are searching for a DAM tool, the best people to ask about the types of features it should have will be those who would be working with digital assets each day. They can provide more insight into what types of features would work best. Getting a good sense of what’s needed will help to ensure that you will be making the right choice with the new DAM platform.

If you have a current DAM or you are using other tools cobbled together to do the work of the DAM, there will inevitably be some on the team who don’t want to change. They will believe that since they have been doing things a certain way that it works. The team needs to be told and shown just how much better it can be when implementing a true digital asset management tool.

The team may have questions about the system they will be using. You should take the time to answer those questions, so the team can get a better sense of what the system can offer. It’s good to get the team excited about the new platform, so they are ready to embrace it once it is implemented.

Provide DAM Training to Your Employees

Proper education on how to use the tool to search for assets, add assets, etc. needs to be part of adopting DAM. Even if you have employees on the team that have worked with DAM systems in the past, you should provide training on the new system.

Ideally, you will have a system that is easy to learn and that has an intuitive interface. However, even if it seems simple to use, everyone will need to be trained on the best practices to use all of the features. You can’t just throw your marketing team into the deep end of the DAM pool and hope they figure it out.

Employees who are happy about the updated tech you will be using could help with the training and answering questions that other employees have. This can be time-consuming, though, so make sure that the employees offering their help are recognized for the extra work they do.

Take Inventory of Your Assets and Work in Phases to Add the DAM Assets

One of the major mistakes that many companies make when introducing DAM is moving too quickly. While you want to get everyone working in the system right away, you have to remember that there is a lot of work to do when it comes to adding all of your old assets. They will all need to be uploaded so they can be cataloged and metadata can be added to them.

As you and your team are getting ready to implement the system, take inventory of the assets that need to be migrated. You will also want to start thinking about the taxonomy that will be used for finding the assets. Essentially, you need to know what you will want to name them and what other data you need to be included in them to make them easier to find. The tags and metadata, in addition to the name, are what make the assets easy to find and use in the system. Check to see how the DAM system you choose utilizes this data.

However, chances are good that the team has a large number of these assets that need to be added to the system to make it fully usable. This can take a long time and it can sometimes feel overwhelming to those who are tasked with doing it. There is also the risk that other areas of the marketing department could slow down if everyone is focused on getting the assets in place.

Therefore, a good rule of thumb is to work in phases. You don’t have to get everything into the DAM tool all at once. Instead, you will want to add the assets that are used most often to the tool first. Ideally, you will do this even before the majority of the team switches over to the system. This way, the team will have assets that are ready to go for them as soon as they get started.

Work in as many phases as needed. Once you have the most important and most-used assets in place, you can work your way through the list. Add them in their order of importance and usage, and be sure they are properly logged, so they will be easy to find. Keep in mind that you probably don’t want to delete any assets, even the older ones. Reusing older assets can be a great way to reduce costs since they could still be repurposed and used for other marketing content.

Working through adding the assets in phases will make the process seem feasible even when you have thousands and thousands of assets that may need to be added. If you try to do it all at once, you run the risk of frustrating the marketing team.

Check on the Team's DAM Progress

After you have brought the tool into use in your company, you still need to check up on it to see how well it’s being used. Check to see how the team is progressing with the training and the differences that the system is making. Your team is ready for a digital asset management platform, but they still might need a little encouragement from you. It’s easy to slip back into the old ways of doing things, even when there is a new and better tool available.

DAM will be one of the most beneficial pieces to add to the MarTech puzzle. Now that you know the benefits and what your team needs to do to get ready, it’s time that you found a DAM platform that will work for your needs. Digital asset management can help to transform the way your marketing team works.