Why Marketers Need to Step Up with Enterprise Content Management

Today’s businesses are producing content at unfathomable speeds. And because “content is king,” that quantity is only expected to rise. Consequently, paper documents are nearly extinct and digital content continues to become more mainstream. In fact, 89% of all companies have already adopted a digital-first business strategy or plan to do so. As technology becomes more advanced and business processes become more digitized, the digital asset creation process becomes more efficient. This ultimately results in a wealth of enterprise content that needs to be effectively and seamlessly managed.

What Is Enterprise Content Management and Why Does It Matter?

According to Atlassian, enterprise content management (ECM) is the collaborative process of digitally managing and applying corporate data and information to support processes and business goals. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that information is easily accessible and as useful as possible at any point throughout the content lifecycle, making for greater operational efficiency.

The pursuit to produce more quality content never ends, but how exactly does this affect content marketing at the enterprise level? According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketers who operate in larger, more complex organizations know that working at an organization with thousands of employees across multiple brands, product lines, office locations, and functional silos has its unique set of challenges. With so much digital content spread out across an enterprise, the need for a centralized content management hub becomes clear. 

And while no singular solution for comprehensive enterprise content management exists, there are certainly tools available that can help marketers tackle some aspects of ECM. For instance, having a centralized location, such as a DAM, for all external and internal content assets solves for many pain points enterprises face, including consistent branding, versioning, legal/compliance, and personalization. A centralized location for all enterprise content also ensures marketers have control over what’s being distributed into the market. And while a digital asset management solution is a great starting point to help accelerate enterprise content management, marketing teams need to step up and adopt a more hands-on approach when it comes to managing content. Let’s explore how marketers can facilitate strategies that will help support content management.

Let the Records Management Show: Documentation Is Key

First and foremost, marketing teams should develop a strategy for facilitating document and records management. In an enterprise where many ongoing business processes rely on the availability of various documents, document management is key. Unlike the filing cabinets of yesterday that housed paper documents and business records, today’s digital assets and enterprise data require an online platform where they can remain secure yet easily accessible by team members sitting in various functional silos.

Content marketing should be thought of as both an art and a science, as marketers must balance their creative ideas with various regulatory compliance demands. These regulations include state, federal, international, or industry demands that must be met in order for the business to operate. For example, Smashburger was accused of trademark infringement and dilution of its trademarks as well as unfair competition by In-N-Out when they came out with the “Smashburger Triple Double,” rivaling In-N-Out’s trademarked Double-Double. To avoid litigation such as this, franchises must be cognizant of brand compliance by ensuring any and all offers that may be promoted by local stores are approved by corporate franchise headquarters. 

That said, an organization’s content must be held to a certain standard, ensuring that regulatory compliance demands are met all while making sure brand equity isn’t jeopardized. Document management and records management simply help ensure that the business is held accountable for these regulatory compliance demands during the content creation process. 

Enable a Comprehensive Workflow Through Automation

In a previous blog, we discussed that the future of digital asset management will be heavily informed by automation and how this will improve brand management. A company’s brand is what sets it apart from its rivals, informing the experiences being provided to customers and differentiating them from that of the competition. Because of this, brand management activities will become more reliant on automation features provided by the DAM software of the future.

The content marketing teams of today can take cues from this and work to automate various aspects of business processes now. This includes establishing specific permissions and workflows in present-day DAMs, ensuring that branding remains intact and corporate enterprise messaging is protected. By automating as many facets of enterprise content as possible, marketers can help increase productivity across the organization and eliminate potential branding hiccups.

Customize Content Strategically

Another key driver of successful enterprise content management is the seamless customization and personalization of content and marketing assets for different target audiences. While an enterprise might have a substantial amount of content, there are different ways this information should be delivered depending on the intended audience. For this reason, marketers should ensure that their content management plan allows team members to customize a particular asset that doesn’t come at the expense of consistent branding. A DAM can help support this function by creating user permissions within the platform, controlling who has access to certain materials and limiting how much an asset can be customized in order to maintain a sense of version control and protect brand equity.

Achieve Operational Efficiency Through Organizational Processes

Finally, marketers can help facilitate enterprise content management simply by taking the lead on this crucial management process. Although this might seem rudimentary, an enterprise that lets their marketing team establish a content management plan often reaps the benefits of having all of their data, rich media, and marketing assets organized holistically within the digital workplace. Because marketers are inherently closest to the content, they are best suited to create intuitive organizational processes that govern a given piece of content’s production and management.This results in greater overall operational efficiency, as everyone in the enterprise is set up for success when it comes to communicating the company’s message via content and marketing collateral.

Learn more about our DAM solution today and how it can be a valuable tool for marketers looking to take initiative around enterprise content management.