What are digital marketing assets?

Digital marketing assets are anything in digital form that’s used to promote your business and drive revenue. They include everything from images and videos to web domains and data sets. Digital assets have real financial value and play a crucial role in building your brand and engaging audiences.

The importance of digital assets for your business

Having a robust collection of digital marketing collateral is crucial for any business. These brand assets are the cornerstone of compelling campaigns and content creation, playing a pivotal role in elevating brand visibility and engagement. They are integral to a well-rounded marketing plan, offering a great way to connect with target audiences across multiple platforms, from social media channels to your web presence and e-commerce stores. Well-crafted digital assets hold immense value, especially for businesses looking to market effectively at scale.

Examples of digital marketing assets

Let’s dive into some examples of digital marketing assets. Each type of content piece plays a unique role in a comprehensive marketing plan. Different businesses may rely more heavily on some types of collateral than others — but these examples represent some of the most common you might consider for your brand.

1. Websites and other web properties

Websites are extremely versatile digital assets, capable of hosting various types of content to appeal to different market segments. Web content and other web properties your brand owns — like domain names — are crucial assets. Optimizing websites for search engines can amplify efforts and drive organic traffic, making SEO an essential consideration as you leverage web assets to drive revenue.

2. Product and brand images

Every campaign needs stunning visuals, and product photos and brand images are quintessential digital assets. Visual content plays a crucial role in social media posts, email campaigns, and advertising. Compelling product images and brand visuals serve as powerful tools to captivate potential customers and build a solid brand identity. The consistency and appeal of these visuals contribute significantly to brand awareness and increase the value of your brand.

3. Video content

Incorporating video content into your marketing strategy can be a game-changer. It’s a great way to convey brand stories, showcase product information, and connect with your audience in a more engaging manner. Video content humanizes your brand and fosters a deeper connection with the target audience, helping businesses stand out in a crowded marketplace space. Leveraging video content can also enhance your brand’s presence across social media channels.

4. Brand assets and design elements

Visual elements like logos, graphics, fonts, and colors are vital for a consistent brand identity across different channels. They improve brand recognition and visibility, strengthening overall identity. Integrating these elements consistently across platforms is a great way to boost brand presence. Businesses with a strong multi-channel presence can effectively promote their services and products, creating a consistent customer experience across every touchpoint.

5. Social media profiles

Social media accounts are vital marketing assets that fuel engagement and connect your brand to your audience. With the right execution, accounts on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, or even TikTok can greatly enhance a brand’s image. Consistent and engaging content is key to building an audience on these platforms. And the more followers you accumulate, the more value your social media presence provides.

6. eBooks, guides, blogs, and other resources

Leveraging eBooks, white papers, blog articles, and more is a great way to broaden audience reach and attract new customers. Informative and engaging content positions your business as an industry authority, enhancing brand credibility. This type of content plays a vital role in establishing thought leadership within the target audience and nurturing leads, ultimately contributing to business growth and revenue.

7. Product descriptions and marketing copy

Compelling product descriptions and marketing copy are an essential part of any campaign or product launch. These pieces of content communicate product benefits, features, and value propositions. Well-crafted descriptions have the power to drive conversions and attract new customers.

8. Ads

Captivating advertising content, from banners to social media ads, is an essential component of many businesses’ lead generation strategy. Ads play a critical role in promoting products, services, and brand messages across various channels. Ad content combines other digital marketing assets — like video footage, images, copy, and design elements — into an impactful piece of collateral that’s more valuable than the sum of its parts.

9. Marketing emails

Email marketing is a great way to drive conversions and nurture customer relationships. Email campaigns play a crucial role in maintaining brand visibility, fostering loyalty, and retaining customers. Leveraging emails as part of a segmented and targeted email marketing strategy can yield significant ROI and support long-term customer engagement.

10. Data

Audience data and performance metrics, while often overlooked, are perhaps one of the most valuable digital marketing assets brands have at their disposal. When harnessed correctly, data insights improve the performance of all other marketing assets.

By analyzing and leveraging data, businesses can target and personalize content more successfully, optimizing their strategies for maximum impact with different segments of customers. Performance data is also crucial for measuring marketing success, making informed decisions, and learning from past experience.

Increase the value of your digital marketing assets by managing them well

In digital marketing, creating great content is only half the battle. To maximize revenue, it’s essential to manage your assets effectively. That means putting systems in place for storing and organizing your digital content, sharing and distributing it, and keeping it up to date.

Storing and organizing digital marketing assets

Managing marketing assets is just as important as creating them. In today’s fast-paced world, having everything accessible and organized in one place can help you tap into unprecedented efficiency and go to market faster. But as the volume of content grows, keeping track of everything becomes a more daunting task.

This is where digital asset management platforms come into play. These software solutions can help organize and manage all of your content in one place. You can use metadata or folder structures to organize files by type, date, campaign, target audience, theme, depicted products or people, and more.

AI tools — like Canto’s AI Visual Search — can automate the process of organizing your content, making your library searchable and accessible even without metadata, tags, and keywords.

This makes your content collection easily searchable and accessible, saving time and enhancing overall marketing efforts. Utilizing these methods can boost productivity and lead to better outcomes.

Sharing and distributing digital content

Empowering team members and external partners by providing controlled access to approved content accelerates campaign and product rollouts and ensures brand consistency. Digital asset management platforms contain built-in tools — like Canto Portals — that make this easy.

Whether you’re providing sales teams with persuasive collateral, providing distribution partners with product images, or building a press kit for media contacts, content-sharing tools provide opportunities for efficient, scalable distribution. This approach saves time, grants on-demand access to internal and external stakeholders, and incorporates controls like digital rights management for added security and peace of mind.

Keeping your digital assets up to date

Marketing collateral can become outdated quickly. For example, a winter campaign image won’t be relevant anymore when summer rolls around. The key is to remove outdated content from circulation but keep it on hand to reference, repurpose, and reuse in the future.

Best practices for digital asset management include features such as expiration dates and approval statuses. A centralized library simplifies the process of archiving old collateral, ensuring that only current pieces are visible and accessible.

With flexible controls, you can remove outdated content from public view — but still keep it available for designers and other content creators to use as a head start when creating a new piece of content. It’s also a great way to keep your brand’s history and evolution at hand to keep in mind when creating new campaigns.