In today’s competitive, information-dependent market, they say he who has the most and greatest content wins … but it’s not enough to have a stockpile of content, nor is it enough to have a stockpile of “great” content. What you really need is a good deal of great content that’s stored, managed and tracked effectively. That’s where document management and marketing asset management come into play.
Take the chaos out of your marketing.
Any successful marketing firm or department knows that the key to connecting with prospects is engaging them with rich, robust and relevant content: content ranging from print, online, broadcast and catalog to photography, branding materials and corporate videos. However, most marketing software applications are unable to deliver a consistent standard. And when your content is in chaos -- lurking in hidden folders, scattered across multiple networks and buried in employees’ inboxes -- your marketing is in chaos. In other words, great work gets lost in the shuffle.
Document management software for marketing stores, manages and tracks your electronic documents among many other benefits.
Marketing asset management boosts the effectiveness of advertising content for information that’s tailored to a specific target audience. Not only are you able to find any piece of collateral in seconds, but you are also able to group the collateral by projects or category types.
When you merge these two powerful management systems, you open the door to incredible (and lucrative) opportunities for your marketing program. Here are nine big-ticket benefits of document and marketing asset management:
1. Organization
When content is scattered throughout your organization, contributors end up (usually unknowingly) creating similar or duplicate pieces. To maintain structured control, created content needs to be organized properly. When you implement a marketing asset management system, storing and retrieving document files becomes seamless and efficient.
2. Consistency
When your content is housed in one database or central repository, similar to an electronic filing cabinet, whole campaign project documents are stored together. You have the ability to work within templates, which strengthens asset consistency while maintaining product and brand guidelines.
3. Accountability
To preserve asset consistency, using automated review workflow ensures that only approved documents make it through your publishing process. When you hold all parties more accountable to the creative process, project standards remain consistent -- you won’t be the marketing group that published an unapproved version and contributed to a PR nightmare.
4. Delegation
There are times when only certain employees need to upload, organize and manage specific assets. When you categorize everything with marketing asset management, you’re quickly able to understand where content should be filed. You dictate who has access to specific documents through a centralized repository based on employee-specific roles and responsibilities.
5. Workflow
You work tirelessly to develop a marketing program. Don’t let your efforts go to waste due to inconsistent processes. With a proper workflow system in place, reviewing, editing, collaboration and filing become turnkey and systematic, preventing the duplication, misfiling or complete loss of critical information assets.
6. Control
When numerous versions of documents live in separate files, errors occur due to incorrect uploading. Strong marketing asset management practices allow you to maintain version control and greatly increase efficiency when handling a diverse and growing quantity of promotional materials. Document version control facilitates the tracking of content that’s reused, and enables the team to see how the collateral has progressed from the first version to the final version all from the same location.
Make the hardship and confusion of finding important assets a thing of the past with digital document management. No matter the size of your company, too many people touching and renaming the same file leads to a lack of marketing control and the inability to search for different versions of your records.
7. Profitability
A successful asset management system brings in new technology without increasing your budget. When working with different media content across varying channels, asset management is a powerful tool to maximize profits. Keeping track of how your marketing assets are used and distributed allows for a greater understanding of where your funds are being allocated. Your organization is now able to see the flow of money from the content development stage all the way through campaign completion.
8. Synchronization
Marketing firms handle a wide variety of obligations. Responsibilities differ greatly between writers, artists and sales staff. It’s important to manage which files come from which departments. Spend your valuable time on the campaign, instead of hunting down assets throughout your organization.
Equipped with a web-based marketing asset management system, your marketing team works collaboratively and in sync, rather than stressing over version control and searching for “floating” assets in individual computers, folders or cloud-based document libraries. How many of you have had freelancers or employees leave? It’s safe to assume that content was left on their computers or in their cloud file storage folders.
9. Productivity
Marketing document management gives your creative team revision control to view and make changes to every asset. Your employees are happy, productive and, most importantly, inspired in knowing their marketing content is being reviewed correctly.
Key takeaways for digital asset management:
- Capture and store documents permanently and securely
- Support document retention spanning over years
- Remove redundancies and eliminate obsolete assets
- Reinforce company, brand and product guidelines
- Increase return on marketing investment (ROMI)
For more marketing asset management tips, click on the button below to download our informative, free whitepaper, “Document Management Best Practices for Organizational Success.”
