What Are Cloud DAMs?

Cloud DAM software (digital asset management software) is a platform designed to help businesses manage and access their digital assets through a single, centralized database.

Unlike on-premise DAMs, which were more common before the advent of cloud storage, cloud DAMs use the physical hardware owned by a cloud storage provider, and are usually accessible through a recurring subscription fee.

This means that you won’t have to worry about common maintenance requirements that can come with owning the storage hardware itself, such as backing up data, maintaining your own servers, keeping on top of updates, and other responsibilities.

Aside from encouraging efficient digital asset management by providing one centralized system for storing and organizing your assets, DAMs also offer a number of functions that are directly beneficial to maintaining brand consistency, including:

• A central asset repository that acts as a single “source of truth” for your brand identity.
• Systems for tracking changes to assets over time and making sure these align with your brand guidelines and identity.
• Streamlined processes like asset approval and distribution, reducing the risk of human error.
• Asset usage tracking, allows you to identify root causes if you notice inconsistencies in your brand messaging.

When these features and more are channeled through an efficient DAM workflow, you’ll find it much easier to ensure a reliable baseline for your brand identity and a stronger foundation for all marketing campaigns.

3 Ways Cloud DAMs Can Support Brand Consistency

In the right hands, a DAM platform can go far beyond a simple storage solution, and provide invaluable structure and workflow management that will guarantee airtight brand consistency across all your marketing.

Here are some of the ways you can leverage your DAM system to support your branding and ensure a consistent experience for your target customer.

Centralized Brand Assets

One of the biggest benefits of cloud DAMs for brand consistency is the way in which it centralizes your branded assets. This ensures that everyone at your business who interacts with branded materials is “singing from the same song sheet”, whether they’re working in marketing, sales, customer service, or any other customer-facing channel.

The way that DAMs act as a centralized source for your assets provides two main benefits for your brand consistency:

• Avoiding Asset Duplication: Using a DAM ensures that your team won’t be using unapproved variations of the same assets. This is especially important if you’re supporting your core products or services with auxiliary revenue streams like white label reseller hosting, where there’s an increased risk of having locally-saved versions of core assets that may be inconsistent with brand guidelines.

• Streamlining Version Control: When you have a DAM in place, it’s easier for brand managers to ensure teams are always using the most recent versions of branded assets, and alert the relevant people of updates. This means that workers can act quickly to retroactively update any errors that might have slipped through the net, and generally reduce the risk of inconsistent branding materials.

Simplified Use of Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines are one of the most basic foundations of brand consistency. However, they’re only going to be as effective as their accessibility and the ease at which your teams can integrate them into their work.

Like your other assets, cloud DAMs give you a platform to store your brand guidelines and ensure teams are working from the same point of reference. Aside from this, many DAMs have functions that allow you to display brand guidelines alongside the relevant assets. This will help guide your team’s interactions with them and make it easier to ensure your guidelines are adhered to.

DAMs are also a great platform for distributing content templates for presentations, social media posts, and other assets. This allows users to create content without altering crucial branded elements, and provides an extra level of assurance that brand guidelines are being adhered to.

Enhanced Brand Security

Keeping your brand consistent isn’t just about making sure that everyone has access to the assets they need to perform their tasks. It’s also crucial to apply necessary access limitations and avoid assets being misused or edited in a way that could harm brand consistency.

With a DAM in place, you’ll be able to leverage permission settings to define specific roles for different user accounts and enhance brand consistency across all assets.

Some of the ways that DAMs can be used to achieve this include:

• Access restrictions based on role responsibilities, for example graphic designers have permission to edit files, whereas sales representatives only being able to view or download them.

• Setting up and enforcing approval workflows that will ensure all new assets go through the right checks and reviews before they’re green-lit for publishing.

• Setting expiry dates on access for freelancers and other external users to match the scope of a given project.

• Using version control features to back up previous iterations of core assets which you can later revert to if necessary.

By leveraging these features of cloud DAMs, you’ll be able to maintain an extra safety net that prevents improper use of assets that contribute to your brand identity. This means there’ll be less manual oversight needed to ensure your campaigns are delivered as intended.

3 Digital Asset Management Best Practices

Cloud DAMs offer huge potential for any brand looking to streamline the way their assets are organized and maintain consistent brand identity across every touchpoint. However, like any other tool, it’s crucial to combine your DAM with usage practices that leverage its full potential and avoid common mistakes.

If you’re looking to onboard a DAM for the first time, or you simply want to ensure you’re making the most of your tool, here’s three important best practices to use in your approach to digital asset management.

1. Establish Clear Branding Standardisations

Even if your DAM is only being used by a small team right now, it’s still important to apply standardizations that will make navigating your asset library as easy as possible, even as your business grows and new people join the organization.

Setting consistent naming conventions for different file types, and training your team on these, will make it easy to understand what kind of assets you’re storing at a glance and search for particular files when they’re needed. DAM metadata, such as the file type, size, usage details, and date of creation/expiration can also simplify the process of navigating large asset libraries to find what you’re looking for.

When you establish these standardizations early, and make sure they’re adhered to on an ongoing basis, you’ll be able to circumvent common stumbling blocks and optimize DAM use for greater efficiency.

2. Have a DAM Governance Policy

Your DAM governance policy will outline the established rules and practices for anyone using your DAM, defining variables like asset use guidelines, user permissions for different team members, and the process for uploading new materials to the library.

Set some time aside to map out and codify this policy, considering questions like:

• What kind of assets are compatible with our DAM?
• Who needs access to which files?
• How should our files be named and organized?
• Which devices are going to have access to the DAM?

3. Appoint a Digital Asset Manager

Putting someone in charge of managing your DAM will keep the whole database streamlined and operating within the usage rules you’ve established.

Your digital asset manager will fulfil responsibilities such as tracking, organizing, and securing all of your digital assets, keeping the entire system up-to-date and functioning as it should. They’ll also act as your other workers’ first point of contact for anything related to the DAM, for example adjusting access permissions for use in a given project or helping users find a group of assets they need.

Some key traits to look for when you’re appointing a digital asset manager from within your organization include:

• Organizational skills and a proven ability to create and manage structured taxonomies.
• Technical proficiency with DAMs or similar large-scale file management systems.
• Analytical and reporting skills that will assist in interpreting patterns of asset usage.
• Interpersonal and collaboration skills that will help teams and individuals get the most out of their DAM use.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re just getting started on defining your brand or you’re looking to fine-tune long-established marketing channels, we hope this guide has given you a better understanding of how DAMs can refine your brand consistency and ensure smoother collaboration throughout your team.

To discover how a high-quality DAM can make your brand more consistent, try our Digital Asset Management software for free today.