What Are Digital Asset Platforms?
by Michelle Lawrence | Last Updated: Sep 2, 2023
by Michelle Lawrence | Last Updated: Sep 2, 2023
Products alone don’t sell themselves. As customer expectations have increased in the past several years, customers demand more of an engaging experience than just viewing product features in order to purchase from a specific brand.
An entire product experience strategy is required in order to drive sales for manufacturers.
Digital assets that help support and make the product experience engaging are essential for marketers to create in order to drive results for their business.
These digital assets need a centralized location to be stored for marketers to easily access. Marketers need a digital asset manager in order to help deliver the best digital experiences possible for their customers.
If you’re a marketer at a manufacturing company, you likely create several digital assets per day.
Digital assets are essentially any form of content or media that exists in a digital format. They encompass a wide range of files, such as images, videos, documents, audio files, presentations, and more.
What are examples of digital assets? Let's take a look at some of the more popular digital assets a manufacturer may have related to their products.
Product Images
Troubleshooting Videos
Audio Clip from CEO
Owner’s Manual PDF
Brand Icons and Logos
Gartner defines digital asset management as, “Digital asset management (DAM) software plans and manages the creation, approval, organization, and distribution of all types of content (text, graphics, images, videos, and audio) from a single system.”
Let’s break down the definition of digital asset management even more in the next section.
Digital asset platforms aren’t usually called platforms - think of them more like an individualized solution. If you’re after a platform that helps marketers manage everything related to their product data, digital assets, and digital experiences, then you want to invest in a Product Experience Management (PXM) platform.
A PXM solution enables marketers to create engaging product experiences across multiple channels in order to deliver a cohesive product experience for their customers. A PXM pulls everything together, like product information and digital assets, and makes it possible for marketers to create a front-end experience that customers can interact with in any part of the customer journey.
Centralized Location: Digital asset management tools provide a single location to store, organize, and manage all a brand’s digital assets, including images, videos, documents, and more. This ensures easy access and efficient collaboration among team members.
Improved Search: DAM tools offer search capabilities, allowing you and other members of your team to find specific assets quickly, eliminating the frustration of searching through numerous files.
Consistent Branding: With DAM tools, you can maintain brand consistency by housing approved logos, images, videos, and documents in one place and ensuring only team members with the correct permission can edit these assets.
If you want an easier solution to manage your brand’s digital assets, good news. There are several examples of digital asset management companies you can look into in order to make collaboration and managing your digital assets easier. But beware, not all of them possess the same functionalities or are equally priced.
List of Digital Asset Management Companies
Lumavate
Bynder
Brandfolder
Canto
Adobe AEM
Is Dropbox a DAM?
Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage and collaboration platform that allows users to store, and share files. It provides a convenient way to access files from anywhere, making it helpful for remote work and collaboration among teams.
But is it one of the top digital asset management systems? No.
Dropbox is not a great DAM solution because it was not purpose-built as a DAM, meaning it doesn’t have the capabilities to seamlessly integrate into a PIM or DXP solution.
Marketing a manufacturing brand involves creating a high volume of digital assets and content, which can get out of hand quickly if you don’t have a solution to manage these items. Dropbox might not handle large repositories of digital assets and content as efficiently as a DAM platform designed to tackle these challenges
Adobe’s DAM
Let’s talk about another solution that isn’t a great DAM tool - Adobe. While Adobe offers powerful creative tools, its DAM solutions might not provide the specialized features and customization that manufacturers need for efficient digital asset management. Adobe's DAM solutions can be costly, especially when considering licensing fees, customization expenses, and ongoing support.
Manufacturers would benefit more from a dedicated DAM platform designed to address the unique challenges and requirements of managing digital assets in a manufacturing context.
Lumavate is the best Digital Asset Management in the market because it’s much more than just a DAM solution.
Lumavate is a PXM platform that has Product Information Management ( PIM), DAM, and Digital Experience Platform (DXP) capabilities which makes it extremely easy for manufacturers to carry out their product experience strategies from start to finish.
Manufacturers can begin their journey with Lumavate by entering their product data in our PIM. Then, they can upload all of their brand’s digital assets that support the brand’s products and further enhance the customer experience. Within minutes, marketers can pull in all of the product info and digital assets they’ve previously uploaded to Lumavate’s platform to create digital product experiences like product catalogs, sales resources, trade show event experiences, and more all within minutes.
Get Started with Lumavate
Schedule a demo with one of our product experts and we’ll show you how easy it is to centralize your product data, store your digital assets, and create digital product experiences in one place.