In today’s fast-paced work culture: Creative teams are feeling the pressure.
With the demand for more content increasing, they’re being asked to produce more work in less time – and it’s having a negative impact.
A recent report backs this up.
According to 77% of respondents, a major difficulty facing their creative team is the fast pace at which they are required to work.
Adding on, the amount of work itself is also a major difficulty, according to 72%.
And it’s not just the speed and volume that sparks a challenge, it’s also the distribution of all that content. The same report found that 55% of creative teams struggle with managing a growing number of marketing channels – that all require fresh content.
On average, creative teams have to deal with a lot of different stakeholders (about 60% of creative teams deal with 20 or more) – meaning that maintaining control over all the content being produced, who has access to it and where it’s being distributed is key.
Which often calls for tools and technology that help tackle these content management challenges.
Enter digital asset management (DAM) – which has grown in popularity over the last few years due to its scalability – being able to handle the copious amounts of content enterprise companies are pumping out these days.
As a “single source of truth”, DAM offers companies one place to manage, edit, update, share and distribute their digital assets on all platforms necessary, in the most streamlined and automated way possible.
In this article we explain the 7 reasons why your creative teams need DAM in their day-to-day content operations in order to meet customer expectations.
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Table of contents
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7 reasons why creative teams need DAM
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1. Cut down on costs
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2. Find what you need, fast
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3. Manage revisions with ease
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4. Gain insights into what’s effective
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5. Secure access available round the clock
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6. Arrange file formats for easy access
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7. Improve collaboration
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Conclusion
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7 reasons why your creative teams need DAM
From enabling a faster search for content to freeing up your budget – here’s seven ways in which DAM makes every creative team’s lives easier.
Cut down costs and free up your budget
When creative teams are unable to find the content they need when they need it, they may have to recreate it – resulting in wasted time and money.
However, using a DAM system ensures that all images, videos, documents, and audio files are consolidated in one place.
This not only eliminates the need for duplicating efforts but also makes it effortless to access required files immediately without assuming they are lost forever.
And what does this benefit?
Your entire content lifecycle.
The reason being that a significant part of the content lifecycle management process involves content preservation itself.
You don’t want to take a chance with losing your content or failing to recognize the useful content you already have on hand.
You already know that a DAM is perfect for making the most of the content you spend hours on creating – because it combines all of the marketing collateral and content together, in a single source of truth.
Find what you need fast and with ease
On average, 50% of office professionals spend more time looking for files than actually working.
Which stands in the way of your creative teams getting more done in less time without having to manually sift through multiple sources, folders and shared drives to find that one image or that one video.
Because DAM functions as a centralized library, it also offers a speedy and intuitive search function. This is due to effective metadata tagging, which makes it much more simple to find the content you need, when you need it.
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Here’s how Digizuite DAM offers your creative teams that quick and easy search for digital content:
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Search functionality and AI help you identify the brand assets you need for your e-commerce site or any other channel – based on governance rules or particular criteria you select.
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You can start your search with text or some simple criteria, then use filters to refine your results as you go.
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You can save your most commonly used search criteria and then use them when needed again and again.
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Manage revisions much more quickly
As new content keeps on being created and updated, how can you ensure that everyone on your creative team is on board with only using the latest version?
DAM’s will easily allow for better version control – which is an essential capability and feature needed to scale content production today.
Because here’s the deal:
Using version control for your digital content can prevent costly mistakes that harm your brand’s reputation.
This can include using outdated product names, old company branding, or offensive images or messaging.
Version control ensures that each team accesses only the most recent and approved content iterations, while allowing content creators and designers to access previous versions for reference.
By keeping track of your content versions, you can avoid costly mishaps and safeguard your brand’s image.
In short, version control is essential for ensuring that your digital content is up-to-date, on-brand, and suitable for your audience.
Gain insights into what content works
Creative teams should always be on the lookout for ways to improve their campaigns: How can they create more personalized content that hits the mark every time it goes live?
What content should they focus more on creating, and what content should they get rid of?
DAM’s that come along with content analytics help creative teams do exactly that.
Scaling and improving your content operations can be challenging, but leveraging content analytics is a great way to take your content processes in the right direction. By knowing what’s working and what’s not, you can make the right decisions to improve your content’s performance.
Most modern DAMs offer insights and metrics to help you understand which assets are being downloaded, streamed, and shared the most across departments, regions, and even continents.
This means you can see how people are searching for assets, the frequency of single and grouped asset downloads, and even where assets are being downloaded. All from for example, Digizuite DAM’s integration Power BI dashboard.
By having access to this information, you can easily track the performance of each asset and make adjustments to your content strategy to achieve better results.
Ultimately, content analytics provide a high-level overview of your content’s performance, helping you scale and improve your creative operations.
Secure access available around the clock
Creative teams need to know that whatever content they create is both secure and protected in the best way possible.
Why?
Establishing control over who has access to what is crucial in order to ensure that only the right content reaches the right channel, and the right people (and in the right region, either locally, regionally or globally).
This is super important for the retail industry in particular, that deals with stakeholders and customers all over the world. Maintaining a consistent global message is a top priority.
It’s simple:
Depending on the specified permission credentials, Digizuite DAM helps creative teams in limiting and enabling access for various people and stakeholders.
This not only speeds up time to market but also adds an added layer of protection by making sure that no one who shouldn’t have access to a piece of content can, and you avoid violating copyright, a crucial part of digital rights management.
Lastly:
DAM’s permissions feature also helps you avoid fines due to false claims and off-label marketing. This is more of a threat to the life sciences sector than any other.
Customize content efficiently for the right channel
With DAM, creative teams can tailor their content for the best fit across different platforms.
Because when it comes to creating content, one size does not fit all.
That’s why it’s important to customize your assets to fit the specific platform you’ll be sharing them on. With DAM, creative departments can choose from a variety of presets, or create their own, depending on their target audience, user group or the distribution channel they’ll be using.
This means you have the flexibility to create a limitless number of variations when it comes to proportions, resolutions and asset formats. Whether it’s for social media, your website or any other channel, creative teams can fine-tune their content to make sure it’s optimized for the best viewing experience.
Once teams are happy with their customized assets, they’re ready to be shared with the target audience on all relevant channels.
Improve efficiency & collaboration through integrations
A common problem that many creative teams face is the frustration of having to navigate through multiple tabs just to publish one piece of creative content. It can be a huge drain on time and resources.
Thankfully with DAM, creative teams can easily publish all their digital assets, including photos, videos, and other types of content, to multiple channels using just one platform.
This means no more wasted time clicking through dozens of tabs just to get the job done.
The solution lies in DAM integrations.
For example, if you use Adobe Creative Cloud to create your content, Digizuite makes it easy to publish your photos to your sales and distribution channels. All you need to do is connect your Adobe account with Digizuite, and you can start editing your photos right away without leaving Adobe Photoshop.
Once you’re done editing, any changes you make to your assets in Adobe Photoshop will be automatically updated in the DAM.
From there, you can easily distribute your photos to all the channels you want, including your website, Facebook, e-commerce site, and partner channels, all without leaving the platform.
Digizuite DAM is also designed to integrate seamlessly with other MarTech tools, such as Optimizely and Sitecore. This means that you can use all your favorite tools in one place, making your workflow and collaboration much more streamlined and efficient.
Conclusion
Whether it’s a new post for social or a newsletter template – creative teams are constantly being faced with the task of delivering personalized consistent content across the omnichannel.
More often than not, creative teams deal with filled-to-the-brim & chaotic digital folders, shared drives and content spread out all over the place – putting a damper on productivity and resources as valuable time is spent on recreating lost content. Luckily, tools like Digizuite can help creative teams improve their general content productivity.
In this short, DAM helps creative teams:
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Cut down on costs
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Find what they need, fast
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Manage revisions
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Gain insights into what’s effective
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Secure access available round the clock
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Customize assets for the right channel
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Improve collaboration
Interested in learning more about how your creative department can highly benefit from tools like DAM?
Book a demo, and get instant access to try it for yourself here.
