Digital assets are central to many day-to-day activities in every organization, regardless of industry. Marketing and creative teams use content every day on many different channels. Sales teams communicate the value of the organization’s mission and products to prospects through compelling collateral. Human resources teams have large amounts of employee profiles and other documentation to manage and keep secure. Website developers also use assets to populate a compelling site for the organization.
The many ways an organization uses digital assets means that how well they’re managed directly affects the performance of all these teams and individuals in their roles. Maybe you're a marketer, creative, salesperson, or web developer who has already realized this. Perhaps you've felt the burden of trying to manage assets effectively while also doing your full-time job. In any case, once you have an idea of how much an effective digital asset management (DAM) program can help yourself and others, the next step is to convince the leaders of your team or organization that building a program internally is worth the financial and time commitment required.
5 Ways To Convince Others of the ROI of DAM
1. Define and Quantify Lost Time and Money
Decades of marketing research suggest that the best way to get people to see value in what you’re selling is to convince them it solves a problem they have. The bigger the problem, the greater the value of the product or service. With that in mind, the leaders of your organization, as well as your co-workers who use digital assets, need to see that managing your digital assets better would solve a critical issue.
We’ve found the best way to do this is to quantify the time that lost digital assets and slow search times cost your organization in dollars. You may see the phrase “content is king” elsewhere on our blog, but ultimately, in the mind of your organization, cash is more important. Here's a quick formula to help you find the potential value of a DAM program:
- Average time required to find a specific asset (1.5 hours) x Number of asset requests each month (30) x Average hourly rate of employees at the business ($36/hour) = Monthly Cost of Doing Nothing ($1,620)
- Monthly Cost of Doing Nothing ($1,620) x 12 = Annual Cost of Doing Nothing ($19,440)
This formula doesn’t take into account team size, the costs of reproducing misplaced assets and purchasing stock images, and lost business due to lower quality content being used, but it's a starting point for these conversations.
2. Communicate How Bottlenecks Affect Customers
The consequences of not addressing poor asset organization don’t just affect your internal teams. They also affect your customers, clients, and potential customers. Brand identity and consistency are central to building and maintaining customer and client relationships. Both of these suffer when relevant, on-brand, and high-quality assets aren’t readily available to the teams who need them.
On the sales side of the business, a lack of relevant materials to send to prospective customers can lengthen the sales cycle and lead to lost opportunities. For operations departments, especially in businesses like public relations and marketing agencies, losing track of assets can affect the final deliverables that are sent to clients, leading to higher churn and lower retention rates.
3. Identify Risks
Besides customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, there are other risks associated with poor asset management. Almost every business leverages content created by others, whether they be freelancers, marketing or creative agencies, stock photo companies, or licensing agencies. These digital assets can’t be treated the same way as those created internally and owned fully by the brand. They typically have custom copyright, usage, and licensing permissions attached to them that expire after a given time.
Because of this, a poorly built or non-existent DAM program poses a legitimate legal risk to your organization since asset permissions are nearly impossible to track by end-users, and assets aren't restricted when their permissions expire. Threats are also posed to the brand from internal assets that are off-brand and/or out of date. If no one controls who can see or use what, an inconsistent brand identity can confuse consumers and result in lower sales.
4. Determine the Industry Standard (if it exists)
The final component of the “Cost of Doing Nothing” has to do with your competition. If you have a failing or nonexistent DAM program, you may be falling behind your competitors when it comes to leveraging content to grow your market share. You may also be missing out on a competitive advantage.
Do some research about your industry and how others are managing their digital content. Resources like DAM consultants, case studies, and DAM educators like Henry Stewart are great places to look for this information. Once you have an idea of the standards in your industry, present them to your organization. If industry standards already exist, you’ll need to catch up or continue to lose business and relevance to your competitors. If they don't, seize the opportunity for a first-mover advantage and capture a larger share of the market.
5. Map Out the Journey from Lost to Launch
Once your organization has a clear picture of the threats and risks posed by not implementing changes in the way digital assets are managed, lay out a roadmap for your stakeholders. Building a program from scratch can sound daunting, especially if people are already overwhelmed with the job they were hired for. A roadmap can help by describing clearly what each group and individual’s roles and responsibilities would be, what the program would cost, and the small wins that would get your organization where it needs to be.
If you need help, contact Stacks! We have a proven process to get brands from point A to point Z without putting additional pressure on their internal teams to do the heavy lifting. Our team of DAM consultants can help you develop a clear and detailed proposal that capitalizes on the value proposition you’ve laid out using the points above.
