So, you already know the value of a DAM – a solution that facilitates the streamlining, simplification, and speed of content processes.
And, since a DAM is an expansive, mission-critical system, it’s imperative that you maximize its value. To ensure that you will realize your required ROI – and get the best business value out of your DAM – there are certain best practices you must follow.
We’ve broken them down into the different steps of an enterprise’s journey with a DAM.
No matter what point your company is with this technology, it is only through best practices that you’ll make the most of it.
Check out our recommendations of DAM best practices and examples during decision-making, implementation and when you’re up and running with your system.
DAM best practices during decision-making
At this point, your enterprise’s decision-makers are gearing up for a big, important purchase. Here’s what you should do in this phase to ensure you get the solution that most benefits your company:
1. Conduct a comprehensive audit of all digital assets.
Content has been and continues to be king – that’s why you need to have full control over it.
Do you know exactly how many assets your organization has – and exactly where they are? And, do you know the best way to organize, locate and retrieve all these photos, other images, videos, and other files?
42% of enterprises today admit they don’t have the right technology in place to manage content across the entire company, which provides an abundance of content management challenges like silos, less consistency and poor workflow management.
All of which you want to avoid, of course.
If you’ve never had a DAM before to manage all of your digital assets, they will most likely be stored in multiple different places – from local drives to shared drives.
So, before you even begin looking for your next DAM platform, you should gather all assets and determine the most valuable, up-to-date versions of all these assets.
No shortcuts allowed, either.
A full audit of your assets is important because it’ll allow you to discover just how many assets you have, what kind of files they are, and where they are located so you can pull them into one location once you do settle on the DAM that is best for your enterprise.
Once you do have all this key information about your assets, you’ll know how to ask the right questions of DAM vendors to get crucial answers – so that you get the right DAM that will bring the most value to your company.
For example, if you will rely on your DAM to manage complex files like videos or Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality files, you need a DAM that provides as many functionalities around these types of files as possible.
You’ll only know to ask the right questions if you have these questions ready to go during your decision-making process.
2. Know what integrations are available. Only get a DAM that can integrate with your entire digital marketing ecosystem.
Before you make any decisions, discover what other solutions the DAM candidate platforms integrate with.
Does the DAM align with your existing MarTech solutions?
This is a highly important step to consider, as in order to be a high functioning marketing platform in 2022 – you need to connect.
Consider the following checklist.
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Your DAM should integrate seamlessly with your:
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Content management system (CMS) like Optimizely and Sitecore
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Your product information (PIM) solution (like inriver)
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Your content creation software (like Adobe creative cloud)
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Your email and marketing automation tools (like Salesforce)
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Your social media tools (like Hootsuite)
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Collaboration between all these tools will allow you to build automated workflows for content distribution that will save your marketers and other content creators time and fuel their productivity. Which is a win-win for all.
Don’t just take a vendor’s word for it, either. Have them conduct very specific demonstrations related to how their DAM integrates with the tools in your ecosystem.
Consider the words of Digizuite customer MCR Safety:
“There aren’t many DAM platforms that integrate well with [the Sitecore CMS]. They say that they do, but when you look under the hood at how they did it, it’s not done right from a development standpoint. We chose Digizuite because they do the Sitecore integration properly.”
3. Involve all stakeholders in the decision-making process.
In order to position your company for the best possible success with your DAM you need to know what is important for everyone involved.
Since a DAM has the potential to benefit so many teams beyond just the marketing department, it is imperative that you identify those within your organization who will be using the platform.
Once you determine who the heaviest users of the DAM solution will be, either it’s your marketing, sales or both, you must pick a solution that is the most user-friendly to them.
So that they’re able to do their best respectively, and when it’s time to collaborate and build bridges between the two departments.
For example, if your sales teams are the intended users of the platform, focus on DAM solutions that have user-friendly mobile interfaces so that sales teams can access assets from the field.
Best practices during the DAM implementation phase
At this point, you’ve purchased your DAM and are in the process of planning the system implementation.
But marketing automation implementation is hard. Only 51% of marketers think their implementation is kind of successful with 16% feeling like they’re just struggling with the whole process itself.
Below are the best practices to follow at this point of your DAM journey:
4. Establish the ins and outs of your taxonomy and metadata early on. And leverage experts to set up the best data model within your DAM.
Taxonomy is the way you organize your digital assets – and it powers your DAM system.
Metadata, on the other hand, is what describes the assets that are organized within your taxonomy (or data structure).
You can split it up into three key players:
> Descriptive metadata
> Technical metadata
> Administrative metadata
Establishing the right taxonomy to organize your digital assets, as well as picking the right metadata to describe each asset is what makes it easy and efficient for users to find exactly what they need within the DAM.
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Tagging your assets with metadata makes it easier for teams to search your content based on:
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Product info
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Theme
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Campaign
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SKU
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…to name a few.
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For example, let’s say your creative team just took photos for a new product campaign. Once they’ve tagged these photos with the right metadata, fast search within DAM will enable the marketing department to find these assets on the fly -without having to go through unnecessary reroutes and questions of who has what and on which drive.
Just two considerations:
As you take all your assets into account, you must decide on the most relevant keywords for searches. Also, you must be selective and strategic about the metadata you choose for dropdown menus during searches.
Integrate, integrate, integrate.
So, we’ve talked about the importance of integrations. Now that you have a DAM that does integrate with all your mission critical MarTech solutions, don’t waste any time connecting them.
Your go-to first step of implementation is to integrate your DAM with other solutions. Then, you can set up workflows right away for content creation, approvals, distribution – complete content automation.
Full integration will ensure that your marketing ecosystem will function as one, fluid tool. The end result?
You save content creators time, guaranteeing accuracy of distributed content, and freeing marketers up to create and distribute more fantastic content to audiences everywhere.
Let’s take an example: Integrating your DAM with Office 365 will allow you to provide all your teams and departments direct access with the right (and approved) assets straight from KeyShot – without having to send out and open countless files in chaotic email chains that just take up tons of space.
The whole point of leveraging a DAM is to save time and realize greater efficiency through the entire content lifecycle.
For example, as soon as you integrate your DAM with your CMS, you can build workflows that automate previously manual processes surrounding content distribution to your website.
It doesn’t stop there, either.
Bottom line: Integrate with other solutions right away so you can set up automated workflows early on and start saving time and realizing greater efficiency as early as possible.
5. Define specific objectives for your DAM.
Sure, you want to achieve efficiency and save time with your DAM. But, put some specific timelines and numbers around these goals during the implementation phase.
This way, you can measure the success it has facilitated for your team at a later date (of your choosing).
For example, if your company’s goal for your DAM is to free up marketing resources so that they can create higher volumes of content, at this point you should determine exactly:
1. The ideal time it will take them to distribute content once it is created, by using the DAM; and,
2. How many pieces of content you expect to be generated in a given timeframe.
Establishing measurable KPIs and following up on them, will provide an opportunity for you to determine whether you are realizing your desired ROI from your DAM.
Best practices when you are up and running with your DAM
Implementation is over!
Here is how to make sure everyone is making the most of the solution:
6. As soon as the DAM is ready to go, train and incentivize everyone to use the system.
It’s easy for people to become set in their ways, and it is often a challenge to get people on board with new processes.
However, the only way to make sure that the DAM is doing its full job is to make sure that all intended users are incorporating it in their daily content processes in the best way possible.
Like being able to stop paying the price for unused content.
Train everyone accordingly as soon as you possibly can, too. For example, the administrator should know exactly how to set up permissions and access rights.
Also, a sales representative will use the system to a different extent and in a different manner than would a marketer. So:
A. Invest the time to make sure that every person in their defined role is completely comfortable using the system.
B. Get them to start making it a part of their processes immediately, and accordingly.
C. Understand that this may require certain incentives or consequences if they ignore instructions.
Leverage the content analytics features.
Any DAM you choose will offer sophisticated analytics features that will allow you to measure the performance of not only assets you distribute, but also the effectiveness of the DAM itself:
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Knowing your most frequently downloaded files will help you make strategic decisions about your content creation, management, and distribution strategy.
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Using analytics to determine whether you are achieving the aforementioned goals for your DAM enables you to determine whether the solution is working for your enterprise. These analytics will show you whether the DAM is contributing to your enterprise’s ability to meet expected SLAs and if it is playing a role in users achieving their KPIs.
Let’s take an example.
Digizuite DAM includes a Power BI Dashboard that gives you a clear and broad overview of exactly which assets are being downloaded, where they’re being downloaded and when they’re being downloaded.
And this goes for all areas across all geographies that you’re running your campaigns – so you’ll quickly be able to see if that one photo is more popular in one region compared to the next.
And what’s the major benefit of this function?
Those insights not only shine a light on which assets perform the best (providing indication for what to focus on in future strategies and/or campaigns), but they also help you improve your metadata.
In turn, it makes it easier to search for the right assets – making fast search in your DAM even faster.
7. Keep revisiting that taxonomy structure.
Your data model is a living, breathing thing. As you continue to add assets – and different types of assets – into your DAM, things are bound to change.
Metadata that was once relevant may no longer be as your content strategy evolves.
For instance, it is good practice to regularly monitor the metadata fields you originally chose to ensure they are applicable to all of the assets in your system. If they aren’t, tweak as necessary so that users can best search, find, and work with assets as efficiently as possible.
Conclusion
Pursuing best practices at every step of your journey with your DAM will benefit your entire enterprise.
Just like any expansive, mission-critical solution, a DAM is not a system that you can just set up and be done with.
Think of it as a living, breathing, growing evolving entity – just like your enterprise is.
As long as you approach it this way, you will always realize transformative benefits through using your DAM as a part of your day-to-day content management processes.
Want to learn more about Digizuite DAM and our own best practice? Contact us today.