Nearly every decision you make within your business revolves around one metric: Return on Investment (ROI).
The ROI for your marketing strategies, processes, and operational changes, and everything your business does will help shape future decisions.
For example, let’s say you and your team decide to create a new product that is for a demographic completely different than your current target market.
You develop the product, test it in focus groups, start manufacturing it, and market it with a message you believe will resonate with the target audience. Then, it finally hits store shelves.
Three months later, you see that the sales are not nearly as high as the projections suggested. As a result, your ROI is not high enough to justify keeping the product out there and, within a year, the product is no longer being sold.
But ROI can be seen in many more phases — not just in terms of revenue from a specific product.
ROI is an especially important metric when it comes to your marketing and branding initiatives. There are so many different avenues you can use today to get the word out on your brand — including social media, blogs, guerrilla marketing tactics, email, brand merchandise, television commercials, billboards, magazine ads, and many, many more.
Because there are all these different mediums to promote your brand, it’s important that you choose the right ones for your brand — but that isn’t always easy.
As long as you keep tabs on the ROI from each individual campaign, you can help trim the fat and eliminate campaigns that aren’t doing as well as others.
For example, let’s say over the past year you tried to improve your email campaigns, but you just can’t increase your conversions. Meanwhile, your Instagram ad campaigns are bringing in sale after sale.
Based on those two ROI points, you may be inclined to scrap your email altogether and put more money and effort into your Instagram ads.
However, if you’re experiencing low ROI for all your campaigns, then you may need to take a long hard look at your assets and brand management — specifically, how well each individual digital asset is performing, as well as how you’re storing and accessing these assets.
There are marketers out there who love to take action based on their gut and intuition.
The problem is, this isn’t a great strategy — particularly when it comes to optimizing and increasing your ROI.
In order to have an effective marketing campaign — whether it’s a banner ad or a post on your brand’s Instagram — you need to be able to back up your initiatives with cold, hard data.
One of the often-overlooked ways of incorporating data into your marketing is by tracking the performance of your digital assets.
If you don’t have a method for tracking the performance of your digital assets — i.e., logo, typography, typeface, color palettes, ad copy, design layouts for ads, images of products, etc. — then you may be putting out marketing initiatives that aren’t that effective.
If you have an image of a product that you often use in your digital marketing strategies, it’s crucial that you understand how effective that image is out in the real world.
Sure, it may be a very high-quality image, and one you think would generate interactions and clicks, but you need that data to verify it. You can’t just simply go on your intuition.
Let’s say you have another image of the same product, but there is a different background. This image has a much higher performance than the first image, but you have no way of knowing this.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to see which assets are doing best, and then tailor your marketing strategies based on this information?
Luckily for you, the right DAM software can help you better understand the performance and lifetime ROI of your assets.
Benjamin Franklin is credited with being the visionary mind behind the quote “time is money.”
And when it comes to managing your assets, boy does that phrase ring true.
When a web designer needs the new logo format and color palettes for a landing page, they are working on, and if they can’t find those assets efficiently, then valuable time is wasted hunting them down.
Not only does this delay the landing page going up and helping you acquire conversions, but your web designer does not have to delay other work as they try to track down the assets.
Another example — and one that is perfectly illustrated in this Tyson Foods Video — is if you have a lot of different products you sell.
In the Tyson video, an employee is looking for a specific photo of their waffle breaded chicken strips. He calls around to many different departments asking other employees if they have the photo, but to no avail.
So, for companies whose product lines range far and wide, it’s critical that efficient and effective asset management techniques are used to help your employees find what they need when they need it.
And that’s where digital asset management comes in.
Finding the right digital asset management (DAM) software for your business can help you dramatically improve your ROI.
So, how does a DAM software work?
In the simplest of terms, a DAM acts like a giant, centralized database of every single asset and file you have ever created or purchased for your brand.
When you’re in need of an asset — let’s say a logo — a DAM solution will allow you to search for that specific logo, usually by typing a keyword, and find it within a matter of seconds. Ah, pure bliss.
No more emailing or calling around and being sent on a wild goose chase. Imagine a world where you’ll never hear, “Oh, I think so-and-so at creative has that image. Go check with them,” or, “Yeah, I’m not sure if I still have that banner ad. Let me check and see and get back to you.”
But, as we mentioned, the best DAM software won’t just store your assets. It was also assist in the distribution and tracking of those assets, giving you an inside look at the lifetime ROI for each of your digital assets.
With DAM, you’ll have a streamlined asset management process that will help you improve your ROI by getting your best-performing marketing and branding assets out in the real world more efficiently.
But what else can DAM software do to help improve your ROI?
Here are just a few of the many capabilities MediaBeacon possesses that will help your business be more effective and see a higher return on investments for your campaigns.
Manage and Collaborate
Businesses across the world struggle with streamlining collaboration across teams. Managers and business owners dream of finally finding a process where everyone is on the same page and wires aren’t getting crossed.
With MediaBeacon, that dream can become a reality. MediaBeacon allows both internal and external teams the ability to work together in a single system from any global location. For businesses whose operations expand around the country or even the world, MediaBeacon will help ensure that all of your employees and partners are in sync. This is critical, as miscommunication between teams can be very costly.
Creative workflows will allow designers to access assets and tasks straight from their creative software of choice. If you’re not working with the creative team much or don’t have any creative design experience, then it’s hard to truly understand how helpful that can be for them — especially when it comes to being effective at work.
Distribute and Track
Our software allows you to track assets so that you can fully understand their ROI and lifetime value. This allows you to optimize your strategies to ensure that you’re seeing the numbers you want and hitting your target revenue goals.
Store, Search, and Control
With MediaBeacon, you and your team will be able to store your assets in a centralized location. And, finding your assets is made simple and easy with advanced search options that allow you to grab your assets with ease.
For assets that are used frequently or that fit a certain criteria, a saved search feature allows you to retain easy access to them. For those who are interested in ensuring you avoid copyright infringement, take advantage of MediaBeacon’s digital management tools, which allow you to control who has access to assets, enforce expiration dates based on licensing, and require collaborators to acknowledge licensing agreements before downloading assets.
Download this DAM ROI white paper to get an accurate estimation on how you can improve your ROI
A-B Test Frequently
A-B testing is one of the best ways to help ensure you’re seeing the ROI you want — especially when it comes to deciding between one option or another. For example, A-B testing two styles of banner ads or two different package designs allow you to identify which ads and packaging were most effective and then change up your strategies from there. This way, you aren’t wasting money on ads that don’t work and packaging that turns customers away.
Don’t Be Afraid of a Big Sales Push
Sometimes the best way to increase your ROI is a simple one — just sell more. Okay, it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds. But, putting more effort and resources into your sales can definitely help you out in terms of ROI. As Mark Cuban once said, “Sales cures all.”
Identify Metrics That Relate to ROI
Not every metric is created equally. For example, if you track traffic to your website, which of these metrics will affect your ROI more: the number of users who go to your blog, or the number of users who visit a specific product page? It’s definitely the numbers that revolve around the product page traffic, as those users are closer to converting than ones just reading your blog. Prioritize the ROI-centric metrics to increase ROI. For the website example, you could focus on trying to get those blog users to your product pages with well-written CTAs.
