Many companies do not have an organized way to manage their large pool of content marketing assets, which sometimes makes valuable content disappear into a ‘content void.’
For example, you may have sales enablement assets that a new salesperson never finds out about but could have helped them advance or close a sales opportunity.
Salespeople sometimes ‘reinvent the wheel’ by making a new presentation or document when one already exists.
In addition, with the right system in place, marketers can better plan for new content, update existing content more quickly, and distribute it to various channels.
MAM vs. DAM
From our SEO perspective, a marketing asset management (MAM) system is a central repository for all content marketing assets with a URL. The MAM system makes these assets easy for users within an organization to find and for content marketers to manage.
This differs from a digital asset management system (DAM), which also functions as a storage repository for media like images and videos. Records in a MAM can have URLs that reference stored media assets.
Marketing Asset Types
By ‘marketing asset,’ we mean any content that took time and/or money to create—all of the following asset types qualify. You may think of others.
- Blog post
- Website page
- Microsite
- Case study
- Checklist
- Online Tool
- Video
- Audio
- Presentation template
- Map
- LinkedIn Pulse Article
- Link-in-bio
Investopedia defines an asset as “a resource with economic value that an individual, a company, or a country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide a future benefit.”
A marketing asset is conceptually similar to a physical business asset. You spent money to create or acquire it, expecting it to produce or contribute toward a financial return.
Here are five ways to manage your valuable content marketing assets.
A spreadsheet
Using a spreadsheet as an asset management tool is always the path of least resistance. Creating and sharing a spreadsheet with as many users as needed incurs no incremental cost.
However, for many of the same reasons that spreadsheets have limitations for functions like CRM and accounting, a spreadsheet is not the ideal management tool.
There is no global search or relational database capability, and user edits are not audited. Records (rows) can be accidentally deleted.
A collaboration and task management app (like ClickUp)
In an app like ClickUp, you can manage your marketing assets by creating a folder called ‘Content’ or ‘Marketing Assets,’ a list for each type of asset, and assets as tasks within each list.
ClickUp allows custom fields and statuses to be added on a list level.
For small teams, ClickUp is reasonably priced.
Custom objects and page layouts in a CRM system
Internally, we built a marketing asset management system inside our CRM using custom tables and fields.
With the power of a database, this form of MAM can relate clients to content and content to links, personas, and keywords.
Global search makes finding assets simple for a user.
Here is part of the schema we created.
The disadvantage of using a CRM system is that some team members who need access to marketing asset information may not be licensed CRM users, and user licensing for a highly configurable CRM platform is relatively expensive.
A SaaS brand management app you subscribe to
Paid apps for managing assets are available. These tend to be enterprise-oriented DAMs and brand management systems like Smartsheet’s Brandfolder.
This type of app goes far beyond essential marketing asset management.
Brandfolder’s features include Adobe Creative Cloud integration for seamless asset editing, AI-driven tagging and analytics for enhanced asset discoverability, customizable branding options, and user management to streamline workflows across teams.
A MAM app you build with AI tools
Anyone can build an app using a prompt-driven full-stack AI development tool like StackBlitz’s Bolt.new, Netlify for app hosting, and Supabase as the back-end database.
We started developing a marketing asset management system using this stack based on what we designed in CRM.
The advantage of this approach is that subscription costs include as many users as you want.
At the time of publication, the Pro versions for these three apps totaled $62 per month.
Whether you use a ‘free’ spreadsheet or buy or build a marketing asset management system, this tool will save staff members much time and can increase revenue.
