Consider this: 92% of marketing leaders reported increases in campaign and content requests in 2024—even as 2025 marketing trends suggest that campaigns should be more about value over volume.

AI further fuels the production engine, as teams can produce content faster and personalize assets. If there was a lot to manage and track before AI, many marketing teams are feeling it now—and without proper organization, these assets risk becoming a liability. Marketing asset management (MAM) ensures that your team’s content maintains brand consistency and that content is accessible for reuse, making the best use of everyone’s time and effort. Today, MAM is a critical part of a team’s marketing efforts and processes, and can directly impact campaign effectiveness.

What is marketing asset management?

Marketing asset management is the systematic process of organizing, storing, tracking, distributing, and optimizing marketing content throughout its entire lifecycle. It encompasses everything from initial asset creation and approval workflows to performance tracking and eventual archival.

Simply put, MAM provides a centralized solution, such as an asset management platform, where marketing teams can efficiently manage creative resources and digital files. This includes visual assets like logos, images, and infographics; written content such as blog posts, case studies and customer testimonials, and social media copy; digital marketing assets like ads; audio elements like podcasts and voice-overs; video elements like demos, event reels, and recorded webinars; and strategic documents including brand guidelines and campaign briefs.

That said, MAM goes beyond simple file storage. Your asset management solution today may involve sophisticated workflows and automations that track asset versions, monitor usage rights and permissions, measure content performance, and facilitate collaboration between internal teams and external partners.

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Benefits of marketing asset management

The benefits of implementing a marketing asset management plan as part of your marketing strategy are hard to argue with. They include:

Faster campaign deployment: With a well-organized asset library, marketing teams can avoid requesting and recreating content from scratch. MAM significantly helps reduce duplication of effort and promotes the reuse of existing assets across marketing campaigns and regions. It’s not only about time savings and efficiency; it’s difficult to accurately measure content effectiveness if it’s only used once, in one or two channels.
Consistent brand identity: MAM ensures all marketing materials adhere to brand guidelines for visual coherence and voice and tone across channels. By providing easy access to approved logos, color palettes, fonts, and messaging frameworks, teams are enabled to move quickly but without creating inconsistencies that can dilute market presence and confuse customers.
Cost-efficient and streamlined production: Effective asset management helps with content creation planning and costs by maximizing the value of existing materials. Teams can repurpose and adapt content across multiple campaigns and channels, improving return on creative investment. For instance, a single product photoshoot can generate assets for web, print, social media, and email campaigns.
Real-time collaboration: Modern MAM solutions streamline workflows, allowing designers, copywriters, marketing managers, external agencies, and stakeholders to share, comment on, and approve assets. This visibility into status eliminates version control confusion and slow email-based workflows.
Tracking and reporting: Advanced MAM platforms provide detailed analytics on asset performance, usage patterns, and engagement metrics. This data empowers teams to make informed decisions about content strategy, identifying high-performing assets and retiring underperforming materials.

Difference between marketing asset management and digital asset management

While often used interchangeably, marketing asset management and digital asset management (DAM) serve distinct purposes within an organization.

Digital asset management encompasses all digital content across an entire organization. This includes HR documents, financial reports, product specifications, legal materials, and corporate communications. DAM systems focus on enterprise-wide governance, security, and compliance requirements with access controls.

Marketing asset management is a subset of DAM, specifically designed for marketing workflows and brand management. MAM systems prioritize features like campaign management, content categorization, branding compliance, multi-channel publishing capabilities, and marketing performance.

5 best practices for marketing asset management

There are some things to think through as you implement marketing asset management to help ensure success:

1. Establish naming conventions

Develop a consistent file naming convention that includes campaign identifiers, asset type, version number, and date. For example, you might follow the structure “[campaign name] [asset type] [date/version #],” which could look like: “Mobile Release Promo Video 2025-07-28.” The main thing is that final or most recent versions should always be clearly identifiable.

2. Don’t overlook metadata

MAM software should support rich metadata to help make assets discoverable and provide context. Include information such as creation date, campaign association, target audience, usage rights, and performance metrics. Well-structured metadata transforms your asset library into a searchable, intelligent resource.

3. Establish approval workflows

As part of your marketing team’s project management, establish clear processes for asset review and approval that align with your company’s governance requirements. Define roles and responsibilities, set approval timelines, and maintain audit trails for compliance purposes.

4. Enable cross-channel optimization

Organize content in a user-friendly way so that assets are easily found and can be used across marketing channels. Store master files alongside channel-specific assets and formats to support efficient multi-platform campaigns.

5. Regular review and maintenance

Just as you might periodically clean out a closet at home, digital spaces need attention too. Schedule routine audits to remove outdated content, update metadata, and optimize how you organize content. Archive or delete assets that no longer serve strategic purposes or include outdated branding.

What is marketing asset management software?

Marketing asset management software helps you implement MAM best practices at scale. A marketing asset management system combines cloud-based storage with sophisticated organizational tools, workflow automation, and collaboration features specifically designed for marketing teams. These systems also enable sales teams—and may integrate with a customer relationship management (CRM) system to help salespeople easily search for up-to-date marketing materials.

MAM software typically allows for:

Intelligent organization: AI-powered tools may offer advanced search capabilities, automated tagging, and content recommendations to help teams find relevant assets quickly.
Version control: Automatic versioning systems that maintain asset history and ensure that teams always access the most current approved materials.
Workflow automation: Configurable approval processes, automated notifications, and deadline tracking that streamline content production cycles.
Collaboration features: Teams can access, comment on, and approve assets in real-time.
Integration capabilities: APIs and pre-built connectors that link MAM systems with existing marketing technology stacks.
Analytics and reporting: Performance tracking tools that measure asset effectiveness and provide insights for optimization.

Best marketing asset management tools

The MAM software landscape has significantly evolved, and solutions on the market today range from enterprise-grade platforms to more flexible, customizable systems:

Enterprise DAM solutions: Platforms like Adobe Experience Manager and Acquia DAM (Widen) offer comprehensive features for large organizations with complex governance requirements. Marketing assets may sit within the wider DAM.

AI-powered database platforms: Solutions like Airtable provide flexible, AI-powered structures that can be configured specifically for marketing asset management and custom workflow requirements. Airtable also offers pre-built templates, like this Brand Asset Management template, that make it easy to get started with asset management.

Creative-focused platforms: Solutions such as Brandfolder and Bynder specialize in brand asset management with strong creative workflow integration. Depending on how your organization is structured, think about the best way to organize and store both creative and marketing assets.

Some marketing automation platforms (or content management systems) like HubSpot, Marketo, or Salesforce Marketing Cloud, also offer some level of content management capabilities. The best choice depends on your organization's size, technical requirements, budget, and specific workflow needs.

How to implement a marketing asset management system

Consider this your checklist to get started:

Stage 1: Assessment and planning. Begin by auditing your current asset management practices, identifying pain points, and defining success metrics. Document your team's specific workflow requirements, marketing resources, and integration needs.
Stage 2: Select your solution. Evaluate platforms based on functionality, scalability, integration capabilities, and total cost of ownership. Consider conducting pilot programs with shortlisted solutions.
Stage 3: Structural design. Think about how you will organize information (an organizational taxonomy), define naming conventions, and a framework for the metadata you need to collect before migration. Create clear guidelines that align with how your organization is structured.
Stage 4: Migration and setup. Plan a phased migration that minimizes disruption to ongoing campaigns. Start with high-priority assets and gradually expand coverage.
Stage 5: Train your marketing team. Create training programs that help team members understand system functionality, best practices, and workflow optimization.
Stage 6: Optimize and improve. MAM implementation is an ongoing process. Monitor system usage, asset performance, and opportunities for enhancement.

Make marketing asset management easy with Airtable

Marketing teams can transform content management from a logistical challenge into a strategic advantage by following MAM principles and implementing the right systems. Airtable's flexible platform is designed to meet the unique needs of marketing teams managing diverse content libraries. With Airtable, you can create a customized marketing asset management system that adapts to your specific workflows and enables effective collaboration.

With Airtable, you design your own taxonomy and metadata structure, and custom workflows, to reflect how your team actually works—or how you want to work. Real-time collaboration features allow teams to access, comment on, and approve assets—syncing changes across all workspaces and views. Native integrations and APIs connect Airtable with your existing marketing tech stack, including design tools and publishing platforms. So, if you’re feeling ready to transform how your team manages marketing assets, explore Airtable's marketing solutions or start building with a free account today.