Today, strong teamwork between marketing and sales is critical for success.
The reason is simple: It harmonizes strategies, enhances the customer experience, and boosts your bottom line.
These teams have different goals, but they both aim to drive more revenue.
However – in today’s enterprise companies there’s often a significant gap between them.
A recent survey found that only 23.1% of sales professionals think sales and marketing are well-aligned.
Plus, a huge 90% of sales and marketing pros say there are problems with mutual strategy, processes, content, and culture.
To solve this issue, companies can align goals, communicate better, and use tools and technology to gather all company assets in one place, namely: Digital Asset Management (DAM) software.
In this article, we explain the common gap between marketing and sales, how DAM systems play a pivotal role in each department, and how DAM can help connect them.
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Table of contents:
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Understanding the gap between marketing and sales
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The role of DAM in marketing and sales
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5 ways DAM bridges the gap between marketing and sales
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6 best practices for implementing DAM
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Conclusion
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Understanding the gap between marketing and sales
For a lot of enterprise companies today, a persistent challenge stands out: The gap between marketing and sales departments.
While these two teams pursue distinct objectives, they share a common goal—revenue generation.
Sales teams focus on closing deals and making money, while marketing strives to build brand awareness and generate leads.
This contrast can create a disconnect between the two, which you want to avoid, as research has shown that 60% of global respondents believed this misalignment could potentially harm a company’s financial success.
To bridge this gap effectively, companies can leverage tools that all team members (across the entire enterprise) can use in order to stay on the same page in terms of company content, branding etc.
This is where DAM comes in, serving as the central hub for storing, organizing, and distributing digital assets like images, videos, documents – you name it. In other words, ensuring consistency, collaboration, and streamlined workflows throughout the entire organization.
The role of DAM in both marketing and sales
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DAM takes center stage in uniting marketing and sales by catering to their unique requirements effectively.
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For marketing teams, DAM serves as a centralized hub for all assets, ensuring consistent branding through approved materials, fostering efficient collaboration, and maintaining version control. Metadata and tagging simplify asset retrieval, while usage analytics provide insights for informed decisions. Secure sharing facilitates external partnerships.
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In the sales realm, DAM equips sales teams with easy access to current sales resources, enabling customization for tailored customer interactions and enforcing content approval processes. Offline access, training materials, and content tracking enhance sales performance.
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How DAM bridges the gap between marketing and sales
Here are five distinct and specific ways in which DAM bridges the gap between marketing and sales:
Streamlined collaboration
DAM plays a pivotal role in fostering collaboration by providing a centralized platform (a “single source of truth”) for marketing and sales teams to co-manage digital assets.
For example, marketing can create a product catalog in DAM, containing essential materials such as high-resolution product images, detailed specifications, and 3D product visuals.
Sales teams can access this catalog to personalize materials for various clients, ensuring that product data remains consistent.
This collaboration ensures seamless communication and alignment between the two departments, enhancing the overall operational efficiency.
Uniform branding
DAM is instrumental in maintaining consistent branding.
Whenever marketing initiates a brand update, like a revised logo, DAM sends automated notifications to both marketing and sales teams.
As an example, teams can easily incorporate the updated logo into product documentation, packaging, and promotional materials, all automatically updated via the DAM.
This consistency not only builds trust with customers — but also ensures a professional and reliable brand image as you navigate your industry.
Efficient content creation
DAM significantly accelerates content creation by providing instant access to essential marketing materials.
Consider a scenario where marketing develops a comprehensive product video that highlights various manufacturing processes and product features.
This video is stored within DAM and can be immediately accessed by the sales team.
They can easily incorporate this video into their presentations and communications, reducing duplication of effort – plus, accelerating the sales cycle (ie., not having to create something from scratch because you don’t know the video already exists).
Data-driven insights
DAM offers valuable insights into asset performance through the feature of content analytics.
For instance, marketing can use DAM analytics to track which product images and technical documents generate the most leads and engagement.
Simultaneously, sales teams can consistently monitor the effectiveness of different product demonstrations and presentations.
This data-driven approach helps fine-tune marketing and sales strategies to enhance customer engagement, as you’re only focusing on what works and hits home with your customers.
Improved customer experience
DAM ensures that customers experience the same high-quality interactions consistently.
For example, when a customer visits the company website and explores product descriptions, technical documentation, and 3D product visuals, DAM guarantees that these assets are always up-to-date, reflecting the latest versions.
This uniformity not only strengthens customer trust and loyalty — but also minimizes any disconnect between marketing promises and the actual processes.
AKA, not confusing your customers wherever they check out your brand and products.
6 best practices for implementing a DAM system
A great alignment between marketing and sales through DAM is only as great as the DAM you choose.
Here are 6 tips for a successful DAM implementation:
1. Asset audit for alignment
Begin by conducting a comprehensive asset audit. It provides insights into the content quantity, type, and location, helping you declutter and eliminate redundant data.
This audit is not just about cleaning up; it’s a crucial step in aligning marketing and sales on what assets are vital: It helps shape DAM requirements for effective governance and metadata structuring.
2. Vendor selection for mutual goals
There’s no one-size-fits-all DAM solution, but the chosen vendor should meet the criteria that ensure a smooth collaboration between marketing and sales. Including asset types, data structure, onboarding processes, and technological compatibility.
3. Metadata and taxonomy for clarity
Collaborate with representatives from product, sales, IT, and marketing departments to establish clear metadata and taxonomy structures. Prioritize quality over quantity to maintain clarity.
When both marketing and sales teams agree on metadata and taxonomy, it ensures that assets are easy to find, regardless of whether they’re used for marketing campaigns or sales presentations.
4. Automated workflows and integration for efficiency
To enhance marketing and sales efficiency, your DAM system should seamlessly integrate with the tools both teams use daily, like Adobe Creative Cloud, PIM, and CMS. Implementing automated workflows reduces manual tasks, streamlining processes, and enhancing productivity.
5. User roles and permissions for security and compliance
Empower users to define roles and permissions within the DAM. It’s particularly important for global organizations and large manufacturers to maintain brand consistency, content security, and legal compliance.
By specifying who can access what, it eliminates discrepancies and ensures that the right content reaches the right audience (no matter who’s hands are on it, either marketing or sales).
6. Comprehensive training support for unified adoption
A successful DAM implementation demands extensive training support. Users from both marketing and sales need one-on-one educational sessions to configure and use the DAM effectively.
Conclusion
In conclusion, bridging the gap between marketing and sales is essential for a thriving business.
DAM serves as the bridge between these two departments, offering five key ways to enhance collaboration:
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Streamlined collaboration: DAM provides a centralized platform for marketing and sales teams to co-manage digital assets.
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Uniform branding: DAM maintains consistent branding by swiftly updating materials, fostering trust with customers and maintaining a professional image.
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Efficient content creation: DAM accelerates content creation by granting immediate access to essential materials, reducing duplication of effort, and expediting the sales cycle.
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Data-driven insights: DAM offers valuable insights into asset performance, guiding marketing and sales strategies for enhanced customer engagement.
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Improved customer experience: DAM ensures customers consistently experience high-quality interactions by keeping assets up-to-date, strengthening trust, and minimizing disconnects.
Want to learn more about how Digizuite DAM helps build a strong connection between your marketing and sales divisions?
Book a demo with us here.
