In the digital sphere, it can often seem like the world is awash with too much content, yet quality content is still king and shines through the mass of poorly produced work. McDonald’s isn’t about to create a campaign around a random picture of a burger taken by one of their executives; a quality burger photoshoot can actually take weeks. Similarly, if a client asks you for a campaign outline, you’re not going to send them the back of an envelope where you drew a rough sketch of it while on the phone.
The value that marketing assets have can often be grossly underestimated by marketing teams. This is both in terms of how effective they can be at attracting and converting leads, as well as the direct financial cost it takes to create them, or it would take to replace them.
Marketing asset management, therefore, has become essential for marketing teams everywhere. If you’re looking for the best way to manage and make the most of your marketing assets, here are some tips.
Use a Single, Secure Location for All Assets
The need for effective and safe marketing asset management has seen many firms spring up offering secure, cloud-based repositories for your company’s materials. Solutions such as those from Bynder and Canto allow you to store your assets safely, while also allowing high-speed access to them from anywhere in the world.
Distribution is Key
Having all of your marketing assets centralized is useless unless the teams who need them know that they exist and are able to access them with speed.
Think of a team setting up at a trade show or industry conference. You want team members to have the ability to tailor a follow-up message to the exact needs of each potential lead, whether that’s using graphs, video, images or other means to make the connection.
This requires high awareness and ease of access to the full range of your media library, which in itself requires constant updating, as well as familiarization with its contents by appropriate staff. A project management tool like Planview AdaptiveWork can integrate effectively with your digital asset management to keep your teams informed of everything they need to know.
Rework and Refresh Your Assets
Keeping your assets fresh and updated is also essential, with leads often being hyper-aware of legitimacy in fast-paced, constantly changing world. A generation ago, a white paper or article on management could be respected across decades. But now, if a lead (or Google’s algorithms) see that the material is more than a year or two old, they rank it negatively in terms of how relevant they feel it is for them today.
In this regard, constantly updating, reworking and refreshing your marketing asset library is vital.
Unified Messaging
One of the most important benefits of having highly effective marketing asset management is that it allows you to maintain consistent messaging across all of your channels. When you’re investing heavily in brand awareness and association, the last thing you want is opportunities being lost because someone is forced to use off-brand material.
In fact, research has shown that 90% of marketers feel that one of their main weaknesses is redundant content creation. Ensure that all of your teams are singing from the same hymn sheet by training them in and encouraging usage of your media asset library.
