White Paper Managing Compliance with Digital Asset Management

Transcription

1 White Paper Managing Compliance with Digital Asset Management

2 1 Brand & Regulatory Compliance with Digital Asset Management Digital marketing has forever changed the way companies communicate with employees, resellers and partners, prospects, and customers. It s faster, more personal, and less expensive than ever before. That flexibility comes with a whole new set of corporate compliance headaches. Luckily, a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution can streamline the process and enforce brand and regulatory standards across multiple communications channels. Create Compelling Messages Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a technology that manages, organizes, archives, distributes, and tracks digital marketing assets. Marketing channels commonly included within the digital marketing framework usually include: Websites and landing pages Mobile Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, etc.) Microsites (branded sites for a reseller, local agent or sales person) Video Electronic literature and collateral Brochures Catalogs Presentations Flipbooks Digital proposals Flashcards White papers and other downloadable documents Sometimes, podcasts, web-based advertising (banners, pay-per-click), and search engine optimization (SEO) are also included in a DAM system, but this is true only for a small fraction (about 15%) of the companies who use a DAM solution. Many companies find that a complete distributed marketing solution, like the Distribion Distributed Marketing Platform (DMP) which includes a DAM solution plus other components that empower local and field marketing to personalize and customize digital assets within company-set rules that mandate brand and regulatory compliance, are more appropriate for their needs. Typically, DAM solutions are used in corporate and agency marketing departments where a limited number of users will have access to them, while products like the Distribion DMP are used in large organizations that offer self-service access to a large group of users in multiple departments, locations, or organizations. Why Does Digital Asset Management Matter? Industry analyst and pundit David Coursey calls this The Age of Google, and says that the Internet has transformed every market into a buyer s market, with empowered consumers who can (and do) compare prices and offers from vendors around the globe, and then publish and share their own product reviews and experiences (good or bad) with your company.

3 2 Technology, he points out, has turned the one-way marketing messages of years past into an interactive conversation that happens in a host of communications channels that didn t exist just a few years ago. Among younger consumers those under 40 even multi-million dollar B2B purchases are often crowd-sourced. Crowd-sourcing happens when someone asks their Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn networks for referrals and feedback about a product, Coursey says. The co-author of The Customer Never Sleeps: 21st Century Marketing that Works in the Age of Google says, The hard, cold truth is that the American buying public doesn t trust corporate marketing messages. For the most part, they simply do not believe what companies say about their own products and services. The exception is the local store manager, insurance agent, or franchise owner, who has a relationship with the consumer. The trust factor for businesses has involved into a mirror of the way we ve felt about the government for a long time. Everybody thinks Congress is filled with unresponsive politicians who should be voted out. At the same time, most of us like and respect our own local legislators. That s why we keep voting for incumbents: we know them, and trust them. It s exactly the same for consumers. The recession may have left them mistrustful of banks in general, but they like the branch manager at the local office who solves their problems for them when they come up. Companies who aren t shifting their marketing spending and effort to the local level are missing out on the single most powerful weapon in their marketing arsenal. The recession may have left people mistrustful of companies but they still trust the local branch manager or agent who solves their problems for them. Industry analyst David Coursey. When David Coursey talks about shifting marketing efforts to the local level, he means empowering individuals in the sales and marketing channel to select, customize, and personalize marketing assets for their own local market. In Texas, it might mean changing a background color from orange (the color of one football powerhouse that s unpopular with fans of another) to tan. In Hawaii, it might mean swapping photos of a snowy neighborhood for images of a sunny suburb. At the very least, it means giving the local marketer the ability to add his own signature, logo, web page link, and photo to most assets. For decades, personalization and customization have been four-letter words to both compliance and finance managers, and barely less offensive to marketing professionals. Where corporations once enforced compliance to brand and regulatory compliance standards through a ponderous and slow-moving approvals process for one-way communications, there s now a series of touch points where potential customers get information. Some of those touch points are under the company s control and subject to compliance monitoring and management and some are not, and are therefore subject only to monitoring and indirect response.

4 3 Who Benefits from DAM? The company and its stakeholders all benefit from a centralized DAM platform, but the benefits of a DAM solution are slightly different for different links in the corporate communications chain. Identifying your stakeholders, and addressing the ways in which each of them is involved in the creation, approval, and use of marketing materials is the first step in creating a business case for adopting a DAM solution. Among the benefits most companies report in a dual DAM and distributed marketing solution are: Consistent branding and regulatory compliance across multiple channels Balanced control and flexibility for local customization or personalization Centralized storage, indexing, and archiving of digital assets Improved collaboration and communication Faster distribution to internal and external sales & marketing teams Improved workflow efficiency and reduction in time and cost of content production Reduced costs through leveraged and re-purposed content Customized and personalized communications solutions with enforced compliance How Does a DAM Solution Solve Compliance Problems? There are many challenges in assuring compliance, and they can be magnified as content is repurposed through many hands as they wend their way through the communications pipeline. Centralizing assets in an online portal where authorized users can access them anytime, from any web-connected device (pull distribution where users pull the assets they want to use) is clearly more efficient than traditional push distribution (where central marketing pushes assets out into the field and prays that some of them get used). Six Steps to Compliance 1. Audit Current Process - How many steps are there in your current compliance and approval process? Which of these will continue to be crucial once you have a well-organized DAM system in place? How can your DAM platform streamline the process? 2. Identify Compliance Control Points Compliance control points are the places where no flexibility is available. The opt-out notice on is one such example. A DAM system can ensure that those control points can t be modified, changed or removed. 3. Review Marketing Assets What assets will be shared through your DAM system? Double-check compliance BEFORE loading the asset into the system, so that noncompliant materials are identified and corrected before they are shared or stored in the system. 4. Rethink Push vs. Pull Push asset distribution requires that corporate marketing pro-actively send marketing assets into the field. Usage is uncertain, and it s hard to get accurate reports on which assets are used or how successful they were. A distributed marketing platform like the Distribion DMP creates a pull process where assets are available when and where they are needed and reporting and tracking is built into the marketing automation management (MAM) module of the system. 5. Recruit, Train, Empower Ongoing communication is required to use a DAM system to its full potential. At first, recruiting and training will be the focus of the communication effort. But as all of the groups within the organization discover the power of the system, a dialog about tools, new assets, and options will add value to the system. 6. Monitor & Adjust As the system is used, new ways to use it will be identified. Most companies also discover some procedures that can be further optimized. For instance, you may add or delete categories, improve the search function by creating standard naming conventions, or add basic assets (clip art, photographs available for local use, birthday and holiday greetings, etc.) that weren t part of the original plan.

5 4 It s also far more powerful in terms of compliance. Here are three things that can be controlled absolutely through a DAM platform that would be very difficult to control in any other way. 1. Changes, corrections, or updates are instant, and made with a single mouse click. Benefit: No old content waiting to be used accidently. 2. Access to content, and even which parts of the content can be modified or changed at the local level, is controlled centrally. Benefit: Disclaimers, footers, and other mandatory elements can t be stripped, changed, or forgotten. 3. Guaranteed resource visibility, with real-time views into every marketing asset used by any user, including any changes or modifications. Benefit: The more knowledge your compliance team has into resource usage, the less likely it is there will be a surprise later. If an error is made, you can spot (and correct) it quickly. Who Benefits from DAM? A focus on the bottom line and sales enablement has transformed marketing. We ve all spent nearly as much time with reports and spreadsheets as we have with the creative process over the last few years. The goal is clear: deliver clear, consistent, and compliant messages to the audiences who can buy products or services. If you re considering a DAM platform for your organization, and metrics and measurement are part of your criteria, chances are you ll have to look beyond DAM to a more complete system in order to be sure that it includes the metrics and measurement tools you want. Like the marketing agent portal, or marketing asset storefronts that preceded them, a stand-alone DAM solution seldom includes measurement tools. Those are part of the more comprehensive distributed marketing platforms that include DAM as one of several components. With a centralized distributed marketing platform, it s easy to gather, roll-up, and monitor marketing activities across the communications channel. On-demand pull reporting where the administrator pulls the information they want, when they want it is a critical part of a complete platform. The metrics and reporting built into the Distribion DMP system provide two types of information. First from a compliance standpoint, it s easy to demonstrate that the messages that went out were in compliance with company and regulatory standards. Second, and equally important, a DAM makes it easy to compare results from different messages, different channels, and different target groups. Who Benefits from DAM? When you re considering the ROI on a DAM platform, look beyond the cost of the software and system itself to the cost of doing things the old way. Assuring compliance across all of the various platforms necessary for successful digital marketing isn t a simple or easy task and it s layered on top of an already challenging marketing process. Staff size is shrinking, not growing, and there s never enough time for reviews and approvals. Technology helped to create the problem, so it s fitting that technology can help to solve it. Here are a few of areas where a DAM platform can save money or capture new revenue. Speed Web updates, changes & reviews. Reduce duplication of effort. Enforce compliance. Centralize asset archives.

6 5 Add a complete distributed marketing solution to a basic DAM solution, and the list of cost and revenue benefits expands to include: Recapture lost opportunities. Automate reporting and metrics. Empower local and field marketing. Drive revenue with more consistent messaging. Increased efficiency is almost universal when companies adopt a DAM solution but that isn t the driving force behind most purchases. Nearly 60% of the companies that adopt DAM do it as part of a comprehensive marketing automation solution undertaken as the company adapts to the realities of today s marketplace. Companies buy products like the Distribion Distributed Marketing Platform because they empower local agents and marketers. Customers or prospects trust their local contact with the company more than they trust the corporation itself. Empowered local marketers who can personalize, customize, and target corporate messages sell more. It s that simple. About Distribion Distribion ( is a leading provider of SaaS tools that deliver streamlined, centralized marketing communications and campaign management for distributed marketing organizations, franchise operations, and field marketing. The Distribion Distributed Marketing Platform insures brand and regulatory compliance with rules-based permissions that allow local agents to customize company sales messages for on-demand sales efforts. More than 150 global companies, with over 100,000 users, are using the Distribion Distributed Marketing Platform to produce, deploy, and track sales enablement programs. For more information about Distribion products and services, visit the website or get a close look at the system s ease of use on our YouTube Channel.