With so many businesses vying for attention, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must have a strong brand. But building and managing a brand can be expensive and tricky, especially for small businesses with limited resources. That's where Brand Asset Management (BAM) can help. 

BAM is a solution that helps you manage your brand assets, like logos and marketing materials, to create a consistent and impactful brand identity. By implementing a BAM solution, your startup can compete with larger businesses and establish itself as a reliable brand in your industry. 

In this blog, we'll explore the benefits of BAM for SMEs and provide tips for implementing a successful BAM solution. Whether you're a startup looking to establish your brand identity or an established SME looking to level up your branding, this blog has you covered. So, let's get started!

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Understanding Brand Asset Management (BAM)

Brand Asset Management (BAM) sounds like another buzzword, but it's an essential concept for any company that wants to build a strong brand and maintain it in the long term.

BAM is the process of managing and protecting your company's brand assets, including its brand identity, messaging, and visual elements. It ensures consistency across all touchpoints of your brand and prevents brand dilution or damage.

BAM also helps in creative collaboration and marketing by providing a framework for all stakeholders to work within. It allows teams to complete projects seamlessly through flexible custom workflows and task management features. 

Whether you are looking to expand your creative scaling operations or get intelligent insights into your marketing campaigns, BAM is the right tool to use.

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The benefits of BAM for SMEs

Let's take a closer look at the benefits of BAM for SMEs and how it can help you achieve your business goals.

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1. Builds brand recognition

You can build brand recognition by defining your brand identity with brand guideline templates. These include your logo, typography, color patterns, and more. Brand consistency across all touchpoints can build trust and loyalty with customers, leading to increased brand loyalty.

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2. Protects brand assets

BAM helps protect your brand assets by ensuring all marketing materials are secure with time-constraint user-based access. This ensures seamless collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.

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3. Streamlines creative collaboration

Collaboration features and flexible workflows help your marketing and design teams communicate more effectively and get 100% visibility into projects. By gaining a bird’s eye view of tasks, deadlines, and project status, you can build more efficient and stronger marketing campaigns. 

4. Increases marketing effectiveness

AI-driven BAM platforms provide intelligent insights and analytics, giving your marketers data on what works and what doesn’t. These data-driven insights are used to create more impactful marketing campaigns that resonate with customers, increasing marketing effectiveness. 

5. Facilitates brand expansion

Creative automation and scaling let you expand your operations or enter new markets by producing creatives at a larger scale for different channels and target groups. This can in turn help you develop a roadmap for growth and expansion, ensuring that all marketing efforts can be scaled effectively.

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6. Maintains brand governance and compliance

With smart compliance checklist, your startup can ensure that the business processes and operations stay aligned with your brand standards and comply with industry regulations. Thanks to an intuitive asset library and brand guidelines, you can quickly identify any deviations from established style guides and take corrective action in no time. 

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7. Review creatives faster and accurately

Features such as annotations, version control, and proofing tools help your team leave precise feedback on images and videos, check for any inaccuracies, and even roll back to previous changes or versions. This can help you deliver high-quality creatives to market faster and with fewer errors. 

8. Gain more accountability

BAM can help your content and marketing teams have increased accountability by tracking the progress of each project and identifying who is responsible for each task. This can help reduce errors and improve overall efficiency by ensuring that everyone knows their role and is accountable for their actions. 

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9. Supports remote collaboration

With the rise of remote work, BAM can help SMEs maintain effective collaboration across teams and departments. By providing real-time visibility into projects and tasks, seamless sharing capabilities, and an intuitive DAM, your remote team can stay connected and collaborate more effectively, regardless of location. 

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10. Design creatives effortlessly

BAM can offer your marketers and brand managers an additional benefit that is often overlooked - the ability to design creatives without depending on designers. Many BAM solutions provide customizable templates with a range of design elements that can be used to create marketing materials, social media posts, and other graphics without the need for specialized design skills.

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Implementing BAM for your SME

Implementing BAM for your SME requires a bit of planning, investment, and education. Here is how you do it.

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#1. Take stock of your brand assets

Start by creating an inventory of all your brand assets, such as logos, images, videos, and messaging. Determine where these assets are currently stored and how they are being used. This information will help you to identify any gaps in your brand management strategy and create a plan for improving it.

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#2. Invest in a BAM system

A Brand Asset Management (BAM) system is an essential tool for managing your brand assets effectively. Choose a BAM system that suits your business needs, and ensure that it offers features such as version control, access controls, and advanced search capabilities. 

An AI-driven BAM system will help you to organize and manage your brand assets more efficiently, saving time and resources in the long run.

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#3. Create brand guidelines

Develop a set of brand guidelines that outline the correct use of your brand assets, including logos, colors, fonts, and messaging. These guidelines should be accessible to everyone in your organization and should be regularly updated as needed. Brand guidelines ensure that your brand is represented consistently across all marketing materials and channels.

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#4. Train your team

Educate your team on the importance of brand consistency and how to use your brand assets effectively. Provide training on how to access and use the BAM system, leverage all the data-driven insights and proofing tools, and ensure that everyone is aware of the brand guidelines. 

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#5. Define roles and responsibilities

Clearly define roles and responsibilities for managing your brand assets, including who is responsible for creating and maintaining brand guidelines, managing the DAM system, and ensuring brand consistency across all channels. 

This will help to ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them and can work together effectively to achieve your brand management goals.

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#6. Use customizable templates

Many BAM systems offer customizable templates for common marketing materials, such as social media posts, email newsletters, and promotional flyers. These templates can save time and resources while ensuring that your brand is represented consistently across all channels.

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#7. Enforce brand consistency

Enforce brand consistency by reviewing all marketing materials before they are published or distributed. Use the DAM system to ensure that everyone is using the correct logos, colors, and messaging. 

Consider implementing approval workflows and using proofing tools to ensure that all marketing materials are reviewed and approved before publication.

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#8. Measure your success

Set measurable goals for your brand management strategy, such as increasing brand awareness, optimizing content, or improving brand consistency across all channels. 

Use analytics tools to measure your progress and identify areas for improvement. Continuously refine your strategy based on your results to ensure that you are achieving your goals.

Success stories: SMEs that have mastered BAM

BAM has become an essential tool for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to manage their brand assets efficiently. Today, let's take a look at some SMEs that have mastered BAM using Artwork Flow and are killing it in their respective industries. 

Simply Lunch

Simply Lunch, a sandwich supplier company, had been struggling to manage their brand assets with complicated creative workflow and processes, leading to confusion and delays. But with Artwork Flow, they were able to centralize and streamline their digital assets and get accurate feedback, which led to quick approvals and reduced revisions.

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Havmor

Havmor, an ice cream brand, used Artwork Flow's BAM tool to manage its brand assets for its new product launches. The tool helped them streamline their approval process and provided easy access to any asset version from the centralized asset library. The result? Reduced approval time to 3 days from a week and 70% faster speed to market.

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Forrest Essentials

Forrest Essentials, a luxury beauty brand, faced challenges in managing its brand assets for its marketing and advertising campaigns with difficulty tracking accountability & slow approvals leading to product delays. Artwork Flow helped the brand centralize and automate its brand asset management, reducing approval time by 60% and increasing collaboration between teams. 

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Build your brand with the right BAM tool

Brand asset management is not just a buzzword but a strategic move for emerging businesses. In today's fast-paced and ever-changing marketplace, effective brand management can make or break your brand. From building brand equity to creating a unique brand identity, it's crucial to manage brand assets effectively.

Artwork Flow can help you manage your brand assets with ease and efficiency. With Artwork Flow, you can streamline your brand asset management, optimize your workflow, and ensure consistency in your brand messaging. It's like having a personal assistant for your brand, taking care of the nitty-gritty details so you can focus on the big picture.

So, if you want to take your SME's branding to the next level, give Artwork Flow a try and see how it can transform your brand assets from cluttered to curated. 

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