In most marketing departments, the process for creating, sharing and publishing content hasn’t really changed over the last decade. But customer expectations have. Today’s audiences expect a seamless digital experience (DX) combined with an engaging brand story. Without that, they’ll simply stop listening.
Whether it’s through social media, email, your website or mobile app, a streamlined personalized digital experience — combined with impactful content — is crucial to securing customer attention.
Many marketers already have the creativity aspect down. But too many are woefully behind when it comes to implementing the marketing technology that makes great DX possible. Creative assets and the digital platforms tasked with bringing them to life are, too often, very far apart.
The Current Situation
Chances are you already have plenty of creative content that could power good DX across your customer journey. But are you maximizing its value? That doesn’t just mean repurposing images, video, audio or copy once or twice; it means strategically distributing them throughout their lifecycle and stopping when they’re no longer relevant.
Relying on outdated systems like emails, messy folders and manually repurposed assets makes it difficult to do this effectively. In fact, it can seriously hinder your ability to deliver top-tier digital experiences. Instead, embrace automation — it’s here to help you!
Here’s What You Should Do
Here’s how marketing technology can transform how your brand creates, manages and distributes creative content to create great DX.
1. Create
Creativity versus budget versus time is the age-old balancing act for designers. Too often, design teams allocate unnecessary budget and time to simple, monotonous tasks, like resizing assets, at the expense of producing new, high-quality content. In fact, 72% of marketers working in video, design and creative roles reported spending too much time on menial tweaks and variations.
Creative automation technology and templatizing tools solve this problem. Rather than relying on designers, marketers can work from master templates, where certain elements (like colors and layout) are fixed, but others (like copy and images) are editable. Meanwhile, designers are free to focus on high-value, complex projects.
2. Manage
Efficiently managing a high volume of assets is crucial to delivering good DX. Unfortunately, traditional filing systems or “libraries” that exist across many platforms simply won’t cut it. Those don’t manage; they store. If you’ve ever spent 10 minutes searching for a banner image you used last year just to find it and realize LinkedIn has since changed the required dimensions (why is it so pixelated?!) — you’ll know what I mean.
The solution? Implementing a digital asset management system (DAM) — a central system of record with a robust, metadata-based taxonomy that integrates into your marketing tech stack. A DAM system allows you to find assets with a simple keyword search — transforming the process of managing your assets from unattainable to sustainable. Its functions include sharing updates, offering feedback, tracking progress, controlling, providing access and publishing files.
3. Distribute
Delivering memorable digital experiences relies on distributing assets across systems, channels and marketplaces. This requires multiple systems, which often don’t communicate and leave marketers acting as middlemen between their various technology solutions.
This will only become more time-consuming as your brand’s digital footprint grows. Instead, consider investing in a highly integrated marketing stack with a DAM system at its center. This will allow your brand to distribute assets seamlessly while reducing manual mistakes.
The bottom line? Digital experiences must be timely, consistent and personalized to have the desired impact — engaging customers and ultimately driving revenue for your business. You cannot achieve this without creativity and technology working in tandem. If you haven’t already, it’s time to ditch the dead weight in your marketing tech stack and start building a seamlessly integrated web of systems.
As the Director of Global Field and Customer Marketing at Bynder, Brian Kavanaugh’s mission is to help brands grow and thrive in the digital economy. Kavanaugh acts as the liaison between the marketing and sales teams, striving to find increasingly creative ways to connect with marketing and branding professionals, understand their needs and elevate their brands to be the heart of digital experiences of the future.
