Don’t Let Your Assets Manage You

November 8, 2020 Stan

When you are in the business of digital marketing, inbound marketing, and revenue marketing, it’s easy for your assets and intellectual property to get out of hand. You may start with only a handful of assets, but as your company and marketing grow, the content you manage will increase exponentially. For large corporations, the number of assets and documents may be staggering, making it nearly impossible to manage, enhance, and share across teams and groups. In these instances, it’s important to consider a content management system (CMS) and/or digital asset management (DAM) tool that aggregates your content while offering workflows that support internal processes and requirements.

Now, let’s back up for a moment. Some of you may be asking… what really is a CMS or DAM? Do I really need one? What benefits will they truly bring, and can I justify the costs? How do I choose one over another? The answers really depend on your business, processes, teams, and requirements. They also heavily depend on your ultimate goals and desire to integrate with existing marketing technologies. Let’s dive into some of the basics.

What is a CMS and a DAM?

At its core, a content management system is a repository that allows you to create, manage, and distribute digital content among your various online locations. Digital content varies, but most CMS platforms provide you with the ability to create and manage web pages, images, text, videos, etc. for use within your websites or blogs. A CMS tool typically has a front-end interface for marketers that have limited coding skill. This allows them to modify and update online assets and webpages. The tool also has a back-end repository that aggregates the assets and serves them online where appropriate.

A digital asset management system is similar, but also very different. They can often be classified as content management systems, but serve a different purpose. DAMs can be enterprise-wide, allowing an organization the ability to centralize all of their assets and documents, including images, videos, files, and other types of media. DAMs offer various categorization measures, version control, and workflows that are not always available with a CMS. You may see some DAMs referenced as media asset management (MAM) tools.

Depending on your ultimate goal, you may choose one over the other. In many cases, you may see benefit in having both systems. In this case, it’s beneficial to consider ways in which you can integrate your CMS with your DAM, ensuring consistency and organizational compliance.

What are the key benefits of utilizing a CMS or DAM?

The reason companies choose a CMS or DAM varies depending on the platform utilized, but it’s often to ensure a central repository for digital assets in which revisions, updates, and workflows can be properly managed across the organization.

With a CMS, you’ll gain a user-friendly front-end that allows your marketing team to manage online assets easily while also making changes to your website without the interference of IT or a webmaster. CMS tools make it easier for marketers to manage, create, and update webpages, optimize content for search, and centralize online assets. They are intended to save time and resources while also providing greater control over your brand, processes, and website design. CMS tools can manage your online store, forms and newsletters, blogs, events, website pages, and in some cases, social media. With more advanced CMS tools, you can utilize various applications and AI-empowered tools to provide personalized experiences across your site.

With a DAM, your organization gains a central repository for documents and assets, allowing for greater versioning control, consistency, and collaboration. DAMs can often offer capabilities with document management, digital asset management, knowledge management, enterprise search, records management, and more. This tends to save time and money while also ensuring organizational compliance, workflow and process adherence, and greater capability to collaborate and share. In many cases, DAMs also provide you the ability to categorize and utilize AI tagging to properly store and distribute content.

How do I choose?

The first step in your decisioning should be to define your actual needs and requirements. How are you planning to utilize the tool? Who will be using it? Why do you think a CMS or DAM may be appropriate? Are there organizational challenges that cannot be solved without a central asset repository? What are your overall goals from a marketing perspective and a corporate perspective?

It’s equally important to review your current marketing technology stack. In some cases, organizations find that they already own a CMS or DAM that they are not fully utilizing. Do opportunities exist to enhance the usage of current tools before investing in a new one? If not, it’s time to explore various offerings that will meet your needs.

As you start your journey, document your specific use cases and requirements. Consider the various capabilities you will need. Remember to keep in mind future and existing needs. Factor in your goals. Talk to key stakeholders and end users to ensure you are documenting their challenges and upcoming needs. Also, think about the resources and time a CMS or DAM will take to implement and manage. Make sure you’ve considered the person or team that will lead the effort. If necessary, consider an implementation partner up-front that can help guide you through the process and do the heavy lifting for you.

As you navigate the world of content management systems, Relationship One is here to help. Please reach out if you have any questions, or if you need assistance.

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