How Digital Asset Management Can Help Achieve Top Marketing Priorities

8/9/2019 How Digital Asset Management Can Help Achieve Top Marketing Priorities

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How Digital Asset Management Can Help Achieve Top Marketing Executives’ 5 Highest Priorities

Copyright © 2010 Widen Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

How Digital Asset Management Can Help Achieve Top

Marketing Executives’ 5 Highest Priorities

Introduction

Anderson Analytics recently perormed a study that measured, among other things, the importanceo various marketing trends to top marketing executives such as Chie Marketing Oicers (CMOs).The “Marketing Trends Report 2010” survey was completed between January 11, 2010 andFebruary 8, 2010 by respondents who are members o Marketing Executives Networking Group,hold a position o Vice President or higher and have a minimum base salary o $160,000. Thesurvey showed that the top priorities o the executives are:

It’s interesting to note that Digital Asset Management (DAM) can have an important impact on eacho these priorities speciied by the top marketing executives themselves. DAM addresses thesepriorities by providing a central repository or digital media iles and a set o tools to store, managethe approval o, ind and convert these iles to increase their value in the marketing process. DAMalso makes complete or selected subsets o the organization’s digital media resources easily

available to authorized users such as sales representatives, channel members, the media, etc.These capabilities can have a ar-ranging impact on the marketing organization and the enterpriseas a whole. For instance:

1 Peter Ostrow, “Marketing Asset Management: Managing Brand Compliance in Distributed Marketing Environments,” Aberdeen Group research report,March 2010.2 Grant Cowell, “Online V ideo Given “Highest Focus” in 2009’s Digital Marketing Campaigns, Says Survey,” REELSE, December 18, 2008.



3Copyright © 2010 Widen Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.


• AnAberdeenGroupresearchreportshowed that 79% o the Best-in-Class companies thatachieve the highest return on marketinginvestment deploy a library asset management

system or their marketing assets. • PermissionTV’sonlinesurveyof400senior

marketing and media execs ound that customerretention was one o the top reasons that videowas a primary ocus on their digital marketingcampaigns while DAM is critical to thecentralization, transormation and distribution odigital video assets.

• ThebestinclasscompaniescitedintheAberdeenGroupresearchreportaverage18% year-over-year improvement in brand consistency compared to only 2% improvement byother companies.

• ZDOusesDAMtodifferentiateitselffromotheradvertisingagenciesbyprovidingahighly organized library o everything pertaining to the jobs they are responsible or in working with

their clients. • FedExisdevelopingnewtoolsthatcanbeusedalongwithitsDAMtodeveloptimely

communications with its customers to increase customer satisaction.

With DAM demonstrating the ability to achieve all o the top goals o high-level marketingexecutives, it should come as no surprise that Frost & Sullivan’s research shows the DAM marketaccounting or over hal a billion dollars in 2009 and growing at a compound annual growth rate omorethan20%through2014.

Increasing return on marketing investment

Aberdeen Group research revealed that Best-in-Class organizations identiied in its research

achieve an average o 32% year-over-year improvement in return on marketing investment,comparedwithanaverage4%decreaseforlaggards.Thesebest-in-classorganizationsaretwiceas likely as all other companies to leverage marketing asset management (MAM) sotware versusgeneric DAM sotware to achieve superior perormance in return on marketing investments andoperational productivity. Marketing asset management solutions include worklow capabili ties,dynamic collateral development, and a model or varying degrees o user security necessary orcomplex marketing environments. It’s also worth noting that the best perorming Best-in-Classcompanies are mainly those with DAM deployments that are more than two years old, providingevidence that results increase with the maturity o the deployment.

Aberdeen Group reports that best-in-class companies are ollowing a number o identiiablestrategies to improve measurable marketing perormance. Most important, they are centralizingdigital asset approval and management, integrating digital repositories with marketing campaign

technology and eliminating redundant marketing activities. Centralizing the management andapproval o digital assets “helps make marketing content more readily available and actionable,

“79% o the Best-in-Class

companies that achieve the

highest return on marketing investment deploy a library

asset management system or their marketing assets. ”

3 Ian Michiels, “The Marketers Guide to Justifying Investments in Digital Asset Management,” Aberdeen Group research report.4 Interview with Bryon Zimmerman, Widen Web site, http://www.widen.com/the-widen-advantage/customer-interviews.php5 Michael Singer, Delivering Better Digital Asset Management, Internet Evolution, May 19, 2010. http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=774&doc_id=192191&f_src=internetevolution_sitedefault6 Mukul Krisha, “Realizing the Value Proposition of Hosted DAM Solutions – A Case Study,” Frost & Sullivan research report.7 Peter Ostrow, “Marketing Asset Management: Managing Brand Compliance in Distributed Marketing Environments,” Aberdeen Group research report.





which in turn aids in building and managing brand consistency across campaigns; in improving efciency;and in maximizing overall enterprise proftability.” Aberdeen Group also points out that integration o DAMrepositories with marketing campaign technology makes it easy to locate the right marketing content orindividual campaign executions without extensive manual eort, time-consuming searches or random

selection o assets.

Best-in-Class companies are 52% more likely than average companies and twice as likely as laggards torecognize the value o automated integration between stored content and the delivery mechanism. Best-in-Class companies are also 29% more likely than laggards to provide the entire marketing team with accessto digital assets that make it easy to careully repurpose content and images to leverage marketing’screativity and output. Furthermore, our in fve Best-in-Class companies turn a centralized marketingcollateral database into a sales-riendly resource compared to only about hal o other companies.

GISTICS research reiterates the value o DAM in improving marketing ROI. GISTICS benchmarks revealthat DAM can chop 5 to 15 days o a global rollout. GISTICS continues: “In markets characterized byshort product liecycles, aggressive competition, seasonal marketing windows, and promotionalpartnerships, cycle time improvements o just one or two days translate into $10 to $20 million in

incremental proft.” Furthermore, GISTICS gathered data rom more than 1,000 marketing operations onDAM systems operated as an outsourced portal, deployed as in in-house departmental system, or as anenterprise content management system. GISTICS determined that marketing ROI can be maximized byinvesting in hosted DAM systems because their total cost o ownership is only 50% o a deployedin-house departmental system and only 1/7 the cost o an enterprise system. “Hosted digital mediaservices make sense or many, many frms,” GISTICS concludes.

Mukul Krisha, a Frost & Sullivan analyst, has orecasted the growth o hosted DAM solutions to outpacethe growth o installed solutions with a compound annual growth rate o well over 30% and achieverevenues totaling more than $250 million by 2013 as opposed to a 20+% growth rate or installedsolutions. This may explain why several enterprise DAM providers have adopted hosted models eitherthrough acquisition or development.

Raising customer retention rates

Aberdeen Group research points out that Best-in-Class companies utilize DAM to improve customerretention rates by leveraging the capabilities o their most expensive marketing assets – human salesrepresentatives. Marketing automation is used to warm up lead opportunities until they are worthy o theconversation. Best-in-Class companies also help improve the eectiveness o the sales team by providingthem with the assets they need to close deals and up-sell and cross-sell into existing accounts.

Just about every medium and large sized organization has thousands, oten many thousands, o digitalmedia fles that play an important role in their marketing operations. It’s oten difcult or the peoplewhose job it is to retain customers to determine the existence o this content, not to mention accessingit and putting it to use. For example, when a sales person wants to send an application note that will help

a customer make better use o the company’s product, the marketing person taking the request must relyupon their personal knowledge o the available assets to fnd the right image. The marketing sta membermay have to send emails and make phone calls to try and locate the document. I a channel partnerhas sales responsibility or the account, the sales person might not even know that the applicationnote exists.

8 Michael Moon, Making the Business Case for Digital Asset Management, GISTICS Incorporated research report, 2007.9 Mukul Krisha, “Realizing the Value Proposition of Hosted DAM Solutions – A Case Study,” Frost & Sullivan research report.





DAM solves this problem by providing a central repository that stores, catalogs, manages anddistributes marketing-related digital content. Metadata such as the type o content, creator, date,keywords, etc. are associated with each digital asset which makes them easy to ind with a simplesearch. Users inside your company or partner companies can easily navigate through the ull

range o available content. The result is that those who are tasked with maintaining customerrelationships will have the optimal tools they need to do their job and will gain additional timethat was previously required searching or the right digital assets.

Improving brand loyalty and brand consistency

Brand consistency plays a direct role in building and maintaining brand loyalty—a consumer’scommitment to repurchase or otherwise continue using the brand demonstrated by repeatedbuying o a product or service or other positive behaviors o advocacy. “Consistency truly is thename o the game in brand identity,” says Brad VanAuken, Chie Brand Strategist at the BlakeProject. “The more consistent the brand is across all customer touch points and over time, themore the brand will have made a irm impression on people and will be easily recognized by

people.” Furthermore, brand consistency helps reinorce brand loyalty because it helps make abrand more salient. Derrick Daye, a Managing Partner or The Blake Project, reasons “BrandSalience is the degree to which your brand is thought about or noticed when a customer is in abuying situation. Strong brands have high Brand Salience and weak brands have little or none.”

OneofthekeyfindingsintheAberdeenGroupresearchcitedearlieristhat44%ofthecompaniesstudied said that geographic coverage makes brand consistency diicult to manage and 31% saidthat brand volume – the number o business units, acquisitions, etc. – makes brand consistencydiicult to enorce. While the prolieration o digital content provides enormous opportunities ormarketers, in some ways it also makes it more diicult to maintain brand consistency. The userso digital content such as internal and external creative sta, sales representatives, channelpartners, etc. oten need an image very quickly. Facing time pressure, they may be aced with thetask o choosing rom dozens o possible alternatives with no way o knowing which particular

images properly portray the brand.

DAM helps improve brand consistency by making it possible or the enterprise to maintain ullcontrol over the representation o the brand. Users are provided with ast and easy access toimages that provide the correct brand image and are restricted rom accessing content thatprovides an outdated or incorrect brand image. So it should come as no surprise that Best-in-Class companies, which also are the companies that are most likely to use DAM, are ar better ataddressingtheseissues,achievingan18%improvementinbrandconsistencycomparedtoa4%improvement or middle perormers and a 1% decrease in brand consistency or laggards.

Brad VanAuken, Chie Brand Strategist at the Blake Project, summarizes the value o DAM inprotecting the brand identity: “The brand promise should be translated into a supporting brandidentity, including logo, tagline and elevator speech among other key components. This should be

integrated into a system that includes brand architecture and naming conventions. These shouldthen take the orm o guidelines that are available to all employees and business partners throughan online platorm. Digital asset management systems provide or even greater consistencyand control.”

10 Brad VanAuken, The Branding Strateg y Insider, Blog by the Blake Project, August 1, 2008.





Positioning and differentiating products

GISTICS states that the rise o the Internet has led to the rise o digital marketing communicationssupply chains in which electronic systems now manage requests or proposals, media-insertion

orders, invoices, and the production, distribution, review and inal authorization o marketingmaterials. Their research inds that: “Many marketing operations outsource collateral creation,localization, print production, and ulillment. Progressive operations now outsource entirebusiness unctions such as creative services, publishing, and Web site management.This outsourcing o business unctions results in what analysts call marcom supply chainintegration and the application o strategic sourcing disciplines to marketing procurements.”

These shits have the potential to substantially improve the eiciency o marketing operations,shorten timing cycles, reduce time-to-market and help improve positioning and dierentiation oproducts. GISTICS points out that: “A centralized collection o reusable media components, ordigital assets, can both lower the cost and speed the execution o many global brand-marketingstrategies…Always-on, multilingual access to approved materials or sales, marketing, advertising,investor relations, public relations and training provides the missing capability to speed productlaunches, reeing time or the completion o more strategic work by headquarters sta and ieldmarketing personnel, and ensuring higher levels o brand consistency.” GISTICS recommends amanaged on demand DAM service rom a solution provider with a proven expertise in digital assetmanagement, security certiication o the highest level, trusted management or multipartycopyrights and the ability to service the requirements o marketing executives worldwide.

Research rom the Aberdeen Group reerenced earlier reinorces this theme. The Best-in-Classcompanies cited by Aberdeen Group that tend to be mature DAM users experienced an average1% year over year reduction in marketing time-to-market compared with an average 3% decreaseor laggards. As an example o how DAM can reduce time-to-market and improve productpositioning and dierentiation, Aberdeen Group cites the ability to easily locate the rightmarketing content or individual campaign executions without extensive manual eort, time-

consuming searches or random selection o assets. Aberdeen Group concludes that asorganizations attempt to operate as eectively as possible under volatile market conditions andoten with ewer resources, technology and process best practices around DAM should continueto separate the Best-in-Class rom other organizations.

BryonZimmerman,CEOofZDO,anadvertisinganddesignfirm,saidthatWiden’son-demanddigitalassetmanagementsolutionmakesitpossibletodifferentiateZDOfromotheragenciesbyproviding more value to clients. “We oer our clients a highly organized library o all their images,their logos, their stock photography … everything pertaining to the jobs that we work on or them,”Zimmermansaid.“Thisissomethingthattheyhaven’thadbefore.Wearedefinitelygoingtorealizea reduction in project time and an increase in proit margin. It’s a high level service that weoer our clients but we are also going to use it internally. It will help us make more money asan agency.”

11 Brad VanAuken, The Branding Strateg y Insider, Blog by the Blake Project, August 1, 2008.12 Michael Moon, Business Case for On-Demand Delivery of Digital Brand Management in Global Marketing Operations, GISTICS Incorporated researchreport, 2008.





Increasing customer satisfaction

The Aberdeen Group ound that Best-in-Class companies that made the best use o DAM alsodo a much better job o improving customer satisaction than others. 82% o Best-in-Class

companiesimprovedcustomersatisfactionyear-over-yearcomparedto45%ofmiddle-tier companies and 27% o laggards. Furthermore, Aberdeen Group adds: “Lest any doubt be castregarding the connection between best practices in marketing and the actual business resultsthat represent the goal o deploying marketing asset management solutions …. Corporate revenuerepresents not only the largest percentage o Best-in-Class companies improving perormance ona year-over-year basis, but also the largest delta between the perormance o top perormers andlaggards, more than three-times dierential.”

KeyFruit points out that DAM can help increase customersatisaction by improving the quality o creative content.“Consumers not only have tremendous choice in theproducts and services they purchase, they have alsogained unprecedented control over how and when theywill accept messages. This dynamic places a greaterburden on companies to continually produce memorableand engaging campaigns that will be pushed, published,and aired via a variety o devices. Arming the creativeteam with a digital asset management system oersgreater eiciency, access to a host o materials, andinormation about the content such as when and how itwas used, rights and permissions, and its associationwith other stored and catalogued assets…. Thus, allow-ing or more time spent dedicated to the core unction odeveloping highly creative, quality, brand conscious andmemorable marketing deliverables.”

Conclusion

Top marketing executives are acing a number o diicult challenges in their eort to achieve ormaintain a leadership position or their enterprises. The rapid growth in digital marketing contenthas generated new opportunities or touching customers and prospects but also has led tobottlenecks and ineiciencies in managing the huge volume o digital assets and maintaining aconsistent brand image. DAM can overcome these problems by automating many marketingprocesses while delivering the right content directly to everyone involved in customer and prospectcommunications. By being able to search through the ull range o assets, users are oten ableto ind more suitable digital media iles and repurpose them or multiple projects. DAM can helpaddress the top concerns o marketing executives by increasing return on marketing investment,raising customer retention rates, improving brand loyalty, positioning and dierentiating products

and increasing customer satisaction. Top marketing executives should invest in DAM to meet theirgoals or 2010 and beyond.

13 KeyFruit Inc., Meet DAM, White Paper.

“Arming the creativeteam with a digital asset

management system oers greater efciency. Tus,allowing or more time

spent dedicated to the core unction o developing

highly creative, quality,brand conscious and memorable marketing

deliverables”

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How Digital Asset Management Can Help Achieve Top Marketing Priorities