Working in modern marketing teams can feel like sailing through choppy seas of brand assets and digital files. These include images, videos, presentation decks, brand guidelines, and more.
Managing, navigating, and organizing the ever-flowing tide of wide-ranging marketing materials can be a real challenge, especially when each asset type might have its own use cases, compliance rules, and formatting requirements.
Research finds that over 9 hours per week are lost to employees searching for information, with 35% of marketing decision-makers flagging duplicate content in multiple locations as a key pain point.
Poor digital assessment management (DAM) can also lead to other issues such as inconsistent brand messaging due to using outdated or incorrect assets and reduced team productivity.
In this blog post, we explain what marketing asset management is before diving into the key benefits of DAM solutions for marketing teams, real use cases, and what to look for in a marketing asset management system.
What is marketing asset management?
Marketing asset management (MAM) describes the process of storing, organizing, and sharing all of a company's brand assets and marketing materials, including things like:
- Brand assets (fonts, logo, icons, etc)
- Images (photography, designs, illustrations, etc)
- Videos
- Guidelines
- Brochures, catalogs, playbooks
- PDFs and other documents
- Reports
- Social media content
The most effective way to do it is by using a dedicated DAM system. This will let you keep all your marketing assets in one central place so you can easily track, edit, update, navigate, search, and share them.
A good DAM system will enable you to collaborate more effectively and strengthen the security of your company's marketing assets with custom access — but more on what to look for in a marketing asset management system further on.
The key benefits of marketing asset management
Let’s explore the key benefits of adding a DAM solution to your company’s tech stack:
Save time and drive productivity
Our State of Creative Digital Asset Management Report 2024 shares how a third of creative professionals spent one hour or more every week searching for files before they switched to Playbook. That’s a whole lot of time that could have been better invested in well, actually creating.
Adobe found that those who use a DAM system optimize their weekly time by 28% — time that would have otherwise been spent trying to locate assets. The same survey also demonstrated that 97% of companies utilizing DAM have increased their productivity by at least 10%.
Easy access and searchability of assets
A DAM system means you can remove the arduous and time-consuming task of manually searching for assets. Being able to catalog, categorize and use metadata to tag assets makes it easy for other internal teams like Sales and Design to search for them and find them.
A DAM solution also centralizes all of your company’s marketing assets into one place so nothing is lost in individual drives or, even worse, on individual desktops.
Efficient collaboration and brand consistency
Ninety percent of marketers in the results of a recent survey agree that centralized management of digital assets is instrumental in driving better collaboration and maintaining brand consistency across platforms. A DAM provides a central hub and a single source of truth for everybody to work from, which makes sure everyone is on the same page.
Version control
A majority (82%) of employees agree that navigating through multiple locations, systems, and platforms for the most current versions of documents has a negative impact on productivity. More than 83% admitted to having recreated an asset solely because they weren’t able to locate the original.
Version control is a pain point that an asset manager solves by making the most recent iterations of assets available and archiving older ones. You want to be sure that any assets your marketing team is using are always the latest versions and a DAM system makes this effortless through automation.
Streamlined distribution and sharing
Sharing assets with both internal and external stakeholders is quicker and easier with a DAM asset manager. You no longer need to rely on emails, file sharing, and other external transfer tools. A DAM also makes the process more secure because you can set custom access permissions to prevent unauthorized access.
How to Choose a Digital Asset Management System
Our State of Creative Digital Asset Management Report 2024 showed that visual browsing (83%), price (67%), and security (65%) are the top three priorities for creative professionals when choosing a DAM. Access and permissions (59%) and searchability (61%) are also top considerations, along with collaboration capabilities (56%).
We also found that 67% switched to Playbook from other solutions — including Google Drive (54%), Dropbox (20%), and OneDrive (7%) — because they needed more storage for large files.
This is what Playbook’s creative customers were looking for when they found us, but here are some things you should consider during your search for the right DAM fit:
Easy onboarding and intuitive interface
A smooth onboarding process supports faster adoption by teams and reduces downtime. Look for a system that will facilitate your marketing team in the most user-friendly way.
Intuitive interfaces minimize the learning curve so that marketing teams can focus their energy on creativity and productivity rather than technical difficulties.
Look for platforms that offer:
- Hyper-visual interfaces that make it easy to navigate and manage assets
- Seamless syncing with existing tools like Google Drive and Dropbox to simplify migration
- Flexible presentation options to cater to different user needs
Playbook's Pinterest-inspired interface makes organizing, managing, and utilizing marketing assets as enjoyable as it is efficient. Our super simple onboarding process supports the initial migration of assets and lets users display assets in multiple views.
Secure collaboration and control
When centralizing and sharing your marketing assets, you'll need to know they are secure at the same time as being readily available for internal and external collaboration. Look out for a DAM that goes beyond basic functionalities into more comprehensive capabilities that ensure secure and controlled collaboration and distribution.
Some non-negotiables to add to your list, which all Playbook users get access to:
- Version control - Your DAM should track all versions of an asset, allowing users to revert to previous versions if needed without confusion.
- User access management - Your DAM should provide the ability to control who can access, edit, and share specific assets to bolster security and brand control. It should also allow you to define different user roles with varying levels of access and permissions based on their responsibilities. Look out for features such as user permissions and expiration links.
- Collaboration and sharing - Your DAM should facilitate easy sharing of assets with internal teams, external partners, and clients. It should enable real-time collaboration on assets, such as annotation commenting, feedback, mentions, and co-editing features.
Streamlined organization and discovery
Powerful search - Your DAM should allow for powerful searches using keywords, file types, metadata, and other criteria.
- Centralized storage and organization - Your DAM platform should act as a central space for all marketing assets, organized into easy-to-use folder structures, supported by tagging and metadata capabilities for cataloging and locating assets quickly.
- Powerful search - Your DAM should allow for powerful searches using keywords, file types, metadata, and other criteria.
Playbook offers a visual folder file structure, AI auto image tagging, tag management, and GPT search to support deeper marketing team requirements.
Try GPT search now
Scalability, support, and insights
- Analytics and reporting - Look out for a DAM that enables you to track who is using assets and how assets are being used through access and usage analytics.
- Scalability - The platform should be able to grow with your team's needs, offering flexible pricing plans and storage options.
- Support - Reliable customer support is key in ensuring a smooth onboarding experience, ongoing maintenance, and addressing any technical issues. Playbook offers live chat support and priority support on the Teams plan.
If your marketing team is in the middle of learning how to choose a digital asset management system, we hope these tips help steer you in the right direction.
Real-life use cases of teams who use DAM platforms
Common examples of how teams and individuals are using marketing asset management systems include:
- Creating websites from stored assets with easy templates
- Product launches
- Working with influencers
- Unifying large teams with a core resource (like Opendoor did using Playbook)
- Managing marketing campaigns
- Brand scaling projects
- Sending large video files to clients for feedback and sign-off
- Analyzing what marketing material is used most frequently
Case study: Invictus Media
After finding themselves unsatisfied with the lack of ease and efficiency Dropbox provided when searching for assets, Invictus Media transitioned over to Playbook.
Playbook allows the Invictus Media team to:
- See everything transparently
- Find and share assets quickly
- Collaborate directly and smoothly with clients
- Streamline hand-off processes
“In Dropbox, you have to dig through a mountain of folders, subfolders, and more subfolders, hoping that you find what you’re looking for. With Playbook, we love that the files are right in front of you, and you see everything transparently. All you need to do is scroll through, and everything pops up, even files tucked away in tiny subfolders.” - Jennifer Kathryn King, CEO of Invictus Media.
DAM is the future
Over half (60%) of businesses say they are already investing in DAM solutions — a statistic that we predict will only increase as more teams experience the many benefits of MAM.
The most important thing is to find a DAM solution that meets all your needs. Each marketing team is different, so spend some time thinking about your non-negotiables and nice-to-haves list (feel free to use this list as a good starting point!). Book a demo of Playbook today to learn why users like Zoe Patchin, Digital Marketing Manager at BlendJet rave about our features.