Edward Boatman • May 12th
In the modern world, a lot of business is done digitally. Even if you’re just starting as a small business, you probably have a website, a logo, a color palette, and other unique brand assets. Digital asset management (DAM) plays a key role in branding by giving internal and external teams easy access to your digital assets for content creation, marketing, and more.
While DAM software is effective, it comes at a cost. In most cases, you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee for DAM software, and there are a lot of factors that can affect pricing. If you’re a small business owner, it’s especially important to make sure DAM is a cost-effective solution for your business.
Calculating your digital asset management ROI helps you choose cost-effective DAM software that benefits your business. Keep reading to learn more about the cost of DAM software and how to calculate digital asset management ROI.
Digital asset management (DAM) allows you to store your digital assets in a centralized location. Your digital assets include everything you use to create content for your brand, including:
Whether you’re launching a marketing campaign or updating your website, your design and marketing teams need access to these assets. Normally, you’d have to send the right assets to individual teams to maintain consistency. With DAM software, you can give teams access to a centralized hub where they can search for and download your latest brand assets.
Return on investment (ROI) is a metric used to determine the profitability of an investment. Let’s say you spend $5,000 on a marketing campaign. To calculate your ROI, you’d have to subtract that $5,000 from your increase in sales and divide that number by the cost of your marketing campaign.
Figuring out your digital asset management ROI can be difficult because it’s not always easy to quantify the benefits of DAM software. A digital library with detailed brand guidelines can help you streamline content creation and marketing campaigns, but how much money is that actually saving you? Fortunately, there are a few metrics you can look at to determine your digital asset management ROI.
While it’s not always easy to figure out how much money you save with DAM software, there are a few ways to calculate your digital asset management ROI. Let’s take a closer look at how you can calculate your ROI from digital asset management.
The first part of calculating digital asset management ROI is identifying the costs associated with digital asset management. This starts with the monthly or annual subscription fee you pay to access DAM software, which can vary based on the features, number of users, and amount of storage you need. Curious what Lingo might cost you? Use our pricing calculator to learn how we fit in your budget.
DAM costs also include the time you spend uploading and organizing digital assets. Each asset has to be uploaded, and in some cases, tagged and organized into folders. Some DAM software can automate the tagging and organizing process with AI to help you save time and reduce costs. This is mind, don’t forget to subtract the time and effort it takes when people can’t find assets and need to dig around several systems, or ask others for a copy. You can subtract that effort as a DAM makes it easier and simpler to find what’s needed, when they need it.
You also have to invest time in training various internal and external teams to use your digital asset management system. As digital asset management becomes an increasingly important aspect of your branding efforts, that training should become part of the onboarding process.
Implementing a structured process for uploading and organizing digital assets can help you save time, and automation can also be beneficial. However, there will always be some amount of time invested in digital asset management.
Once you’ve figured out how much it costs to implement your digital asset management solution, it’s time to measure the benefits to see if they outweigh the cost. As we mentioned earlier, measuring the direct benefits of implementing DAM software can be difficult because it can impact so many areas.
Time savings are an important factor to consider when you’re measuring the benefits of implementing DAM software. You can compare two similar projects to see if digital asset management resulted in a significant reduction in the number of hours needed to complete a project, for example.
You should also look at cost savings when you’re considering the benefits of digital asset management. Even though DAM software costs money, it can result in significant savings when you consider the benefits of having a centralized library of your latest brand assets. With the right DAM solution, you don’t have to worry about confusing duplicate assets or losing or misplacing an essential digital asset.
Digital asset management can also result in more effective content creation and marketing campaigns, so you can measure the effectiveness of that content when you’re calculating digital asset management ROI. If your marketing campaign or social media content generates more engagement after implementing DAM software, that could be the reason.
Once you’ve quantified the costs and benefits of digital asset management, you can calculate your ROI. There’s a simple formula for calculating digital asset management ROI:
(Net Profit / Cost of Investment) * 100%
Your net profit is the amount of money you saved, including time savings, by implementing a DAM system. The cost of investment is the total cost of implementing your DAM system, which includes the cost of training teams and uploading and organizing digital assets.
The final number is your return on investment as a result of implementing a DAM system. If you’re seeing a positive digital asset management ROI, that means your company is benefiting from digital asset management.
Digital asset management can help you streamline content creation and maintain consistent branding across multiple channels, but choosing the right DAM system is important. Let’s take a look at some of the features you want to look for if you’re in the market for a DAM system.
Your DAM system should scale to meet the needs of your brand. If you’re a small brand, you don’t want to pay a fortune for storage and features you’re not using. As your brand grows, you want to be able to upgrade your DAM system to meet your changing needs. At the same time, large enterprises don’t want to be forced into limited features and storage. The best DAM systems can scale to meet your needs and budget as your brand evolves.
Different file types are used for different purposes, but that doesn’t mean you have to spend your valuable time manually converting files. Lingo automatically converts your files into several alternate file types, so you can always find what you’re looking for without having to convert anything manually or wait around.
Normally, you’d have to tag and organize each digital asset as you upload it. With AI-enhanced search, manual tagging is a thing of the past, but you can still find your logos and graphics using simple keywords. AI-enhanced search helps teams work faster, which further boosts your digital asset management ROI.
You don’t want your digital assets falling into the wrong hands, so it’s important to be able to monitor and control who’s downloading those assets. Download monitoring and control is an essential security feature for small businesses and large enterprises alike.
Password protection is another key feature if you want to secure your digital assets. You can keep your digital asset library public while protecting it with a password, allowing for convenient access without the risk of unauthorized downloads.
Digital asset management is an effective way to streamline marketing and content creation, but it’s your job to implement it efficiently. Check out some of these tips to make sure you’re maximizing your digital asset management ROI:
Digital asset management is one of the best ways to simplify everything from blog posts and website redesigns to social media content and marketing campaigns. You can use the simple formula in this guide to calculate your digital asset management ROI, and you can maximize your ROI with Lingo.
Lingo is a simple solution to your digital asset management needs. Lingo offers all the features you want in a DAM system, from AI-enhanced search to custom domains, and you can share your brand guidelines with your digital assets.
Start your free trial to experience Lingo or book a free demo to learn how we can help you maximize your digital asset management ROI.