Brand Assets and How to Get the Most Out of Them

Your company’s brand is the culmination of every experience a person has with your organization. It tells the world who your company is, and what you do. It is a differentiator that identifies your products or services as distinct from others in your market. And the world’s strongest brands stand out by building and maintaining brand consistency.

A range of elements — both tangible and intangible — contribute to a consistent brand experience, including tone, voice, and visual design. And each of these elements are thoughtfully and strategically developed over time, using your brand assets.

Every year, emergent customer experiences (e.g., TikTok and pandemic behavior changes) demand that you adopt new strategies and produce brand assets for unique channels. With that rise in production comes the challenge of storing, organizing, and distributing your brand assets in a way that supports the presentation of a consistent brand story. But this isn’t just a problem to be solved, it’s an opportunity to invest in.

That’s because, when you present your brand consistently you can increase revenue by 23%. And if you don’t, you can lose customers whenever they move to new experiences. To create the level of brand consistency that generates results, you need the right brand management tool to support your efforts.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can get the most out of your brand assets by defining just exactly what a “brand asset” is.

What are brand assets?

Together, they tell a story about your company’s products, services, and purpose to a range of audiences — including customers, employees, partners, analysts, the media, vendors, and contractors. Through coordinated efforts across distribution channels and touch points, you can use brand assets to make every experience a person has with your brand as consistent, relevant, and memorable as possible. 

And because people will pay more for brands that they view positively, well-managed brand assets have enormous value.

How to leverage brand assets

No doubt about it — brand assets are critical to the success of any brand. And your company can maximize the value of these assets to extend the reach and impact of your marketing efforts. Here are a few strategies for leveraging the value of your brand assets effectively:

Create easy access to approved assets

Brands rely on a strong creative workflow in order to create engaging and consistent brand assets. And in order to use those assets effectively, everyone needs to know where to find them. This includes internal team members, external partners, and other stakeholders.

A centralized, searchable repository that’s easily accessed ensures that assets can be quickly and securely retrieved across the globe. 

In our multi-channel world, every customer touchpoint matters so each and every brand asset must be aligned! Reliable access to the right assets will maximize their use, while protecting your overall brand integrity.

Take advantage of versioning

Version control allows you to manage and track each iteration of a brand asset from one location. This aggregated file history allows teams to trust that they are using the correct file. 

Further, version control gives creatives a point of reference to retrieve prior versions of an asset if it needs to be reused. Thus, using the right version of a brand asset bolsters brand consistency, saves time and money, and reinforces the value of your assets.

Maintain strong brand guidelines

Brand guidelines are rules or best practices that are designed to ensure consistent use of your brand assets. They include everything from HEX colors and logo sizes, to product terminology and directions for tone and voice.

Because these guidelines are intended to evolve along with your brand, they should be stored in a central location that’s easy to access and refer to regularly. And because adherence to brand guidelines ensures that your brand assets are being used correctly, you’re able to realize a greater return on your creative investment.

Coordinate distribution across channels

Leverage the same brand assets across media channels to avoid workflow redundancies. 

For example, you can produce one branded image and use it for a blog post, in your Twitter feed, and in video production. Then your content team, social team, and video team can present a cohesive message without wasting time producing the same image three times, in three different ways.  

This kind of content reuse allows your team to spend less time duplicating efforts, and more time telling your brand story.  

Arm yourself with content analytics

Understanding the performance of your brand assets will also help you maximize their value. Monitoring asset usage and download activity helps clarify which brand assets are most used, and which are underused. 

This data can drive strategic decisions around content creation, campaign direction, resource allocation, talent acquisition, and more.

Localize your messaging

Modifying your brand assets to resonate with a particular geographic market or demographic can help you create an experience that’s relevant to your audience … without duplicating work! 

Templates with customizable copy can help you get many additional — and valuable — miles from your brand assets, without requiring extra support from your creative team.

Your brand assets are the building blocks of effective brand experiences. It’s important that you invest in ways to help you leverage their full value and potential. When you store, manage, and publish them with the right brand management tool, you can raise brand awareness, improve brand perception, and enhance customer loyalty.

Get the most out of your brand assets with Acquia DAM

It’s no small task to keep all of your brand assets organized and searchable. And with a brand management tool, you can quickly start to take control of your narrative and get results. Brands like Hootsuite, Brooks Running, and the Houston Texans use Acquia DAM (Widen) to tell consistent brand stories. 

Are you ready to present a consistent brand experience to the world? Request, watch, or click through a demo of Acquia DAM today and learn how we can help you get the most out of your brand assets.

Note: This article was originally published on Widen.com.