Is Your Digital Asset Management Tool Right for Your Partners?

By Renny Fidlon | Vice President of Marketing

An outdated Digital Asset Management tool can derail even the most effective national-to-local marketing strategy. When it becomes a bottleneck for local marketing tasks or a deterrent keeping partner networks from participating in brand-preferred Co-Op Advertising campaigns, it’s time to look for an upgrade.

Having the right local marketing automation systems in place is crucial, especially since local marketing today is more complex than ever. There’s more pressure to increase speed to market, deliver high-frequency messaging, use data to achieve hyper-segmentation and create more personalized customer experiences. Brands rely on their partner networks to build local ads, yet 72% of brands surveyed said they use manual processes for ad customization and 76% of brands say they have staff dedicated to managing approvals on customized ads, according to a recent SproutLoud survey of brand marketers. And most brands say half their partners don’t participate in Co-Op Advertising because it’s too difficult. That’s a red flag.

To determine whether your local marketing tools and processes are too cumbersome, too antiquated or an outright deterrent to partner participation, start by evaluating your Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. Here are 10 important questions to ask when trying to discern whether your DAM is a vast disorganized warehouse or an easy-to-navigate systematic library of local marketing assets:

1. Do your local partners complain — to your brand marketing team or your field sales reps — that they can’t find the assets they need for current campaigns?
2. Does your Digital Asset Management tool have a search function? And how do partners know which terms to search for?
3. Does your DAM tool allow your brand marketing team to create tags and assign them to individual assets and groups of assets?
4. Does your DAM allow your brand to set permissions about which marketing campaign assets can be accessed and by whom, based on partner tier, geographical location, local ad campaign?
5. Can your brand team set expiration dates on marketing campaign assets and images based on copyrights, seasonal ad campaigns or limited-time promotions?
6. Are the “customizable” local marketing campaign assets in your DAM basically PDFs that your partners are expected to edit?
7. Is your DAM set up to work seamlessly with ad builder technology and dynamic local ad templates that allow for more sophisticated and nuanced ad customizations?
8. Does your DAM allow certain images to be tied to text — such as headlines, captions or product descriptions — to ensure accuracy in messaging?
9. Does your DAM ensure brand assets can only be used in brand-compliant ways?
10. Is your DAM supported by a team of local marketing experts available to assist your partners and your brand marketing team?

If your Digital Asset Management tool doesn’t measure up, one of the most significant factors to consider is the inherent limitation single-solution DAM vendors when compared to a more comprehensive Through Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) platform. Leading TCMA platforms offer:

• Advanced DAM functionality, with asset tagging and search features
• Ad builder technology, with data-driven customization embedded with brand-compliant options
• Custom ad flexing — which allows ads to be resized without being rebuilt
• An integrated network of expert Marketing Service Providers — to ensure flawless brand-compliant campaign execution
• Flexible Co-Op Advertising and MDF funding options, including instant co-pay, claims and reimbursement, and change management features
• Access to real-time local marketing analytics for data-driven decisions

It’s a stark difference when you compare leading TCMA solutions to a patchwork of single-point solutions with incompatible systems, cumbersome processes and time-consuming delays. With a comprehensive TCMA solution, everything from start to finish — from local ad creation, to campaign execution and fulfillment, to data analysis on ROI — happens within a controlled, measurable environment. When everything is accessible within the same system, this increases speed to market, efficiency, effectiveness and the ability for brands and their partner networks to quickly respond to changing market conditions in real time.

Learn more about comprehensive Through Channel Marketing Automation solutions.