A Guide to Digital Brand Compliance for Content Marketers

The evolution of marketing has burst the professional world with a lot of new challenges and opportunities. The traditional media outlets say television, newspapers or magazines faced fewer constraints related to content management. Although the conventional patterns focused on archiving the content, repurposing and reusing the content was not of that much priority. The growing complexities arise in the need of creating and managing digital media assets.

The competitive business market makes it necessary for businesses across industries to comply with the increasing legal issues. Brands now have a responsibility to adhere to the guidelines and comply with the basic content marketing laws. There is no denying that creating and managing digital media assets for enhanced marketing and customer experience is a growing challenge. The rapid evolution of content management is posing a new set of challenges in front of marketers every day. Let us understand the challenges and find out what digital content management or brand compliance is all about.

Digital Content Challenges

Digital media is pervasive and continually growing. Brands have to be specific about ways to manage rights, license or adhere to asset compliance across all marketing assets. Be it internal or external channels, brands have the responsibility to ensure the guidelines are met.

Managing digital compliance can be challenging for advertising and marketing teams. Each image, video, music, product placement, voiceover, or location has to comply with the brand guidelines.

Digital media management is served to the end customers directly via a different suite of options or engagement platforms. Different platforms may increase capabilities for connecting with the audiences but poses challenges to maintaining consistency. When brand guidelines are not met, it can mitigate legal risks which may even carry the capacity to cause financial damage to a brand.

The advent of automation and artificial intelligence has rapidly increased professionals’ productivity and allows for the easy generation of digital assets. Content marketers and brands are further burdened with the responsibilities of maintaining the quality, rights and compliance of the materials.

While reusing and repurposing content, marketers have to ensure that it complied with copyright regulations or adheres to the necessary licensing agreements. Digital content formats have evolved rapidly and it makes sense to ensure the consistent availability of usable assets.

In contrast, digital media asset management allows teams to manage and look for copyright violations in real-time. Brands can track and raise their concerns on digital platforms only which will even help in quickly resolving the issue.

One can leverage new solutions to monitor and manage digital content easily.

Digital Brand Compliance

CMI’s Market Guide: The Rise of Digital Brand Compliance in sponsorship with FADEL, focused on the rapidly growing segment and compliance aspects of digital media management.

CMI also defines compliance as solutions that may help in dealing with the complexities of digital media assets and help in maintaining the standards across different media channels. It is the duty of the brands to harness the data generated by different systems.

According to the report, there are three core segments of Digital Compliance which are as follows:

• Digital Asset Management: It is aimed at storing and organising the content in an efficient manner for future reference. For instance, cloud-based solutions can be reused later for real-time engagement by marketers.
• Digital Rights Management: It is necessary to ensure that the digital media assets are protected from being copied, or distributed by unauthorised parties. Marketers should be specific about who can access the information or data that may be sensitive for an organization. The need for real-time maintenance has increased which has increased the demand for more cloud-based solutions.
• Content Quality Management – The last and most important aspect of digital brand compliance refers to content quality management systems. It may focus on advanced functionalities which may allow brands to monitor the media assets such as video, infographics, audio, pictures and applications. This segment aims at ensuring that the brand is not violating or using any royalty without legal permission.

Digital Brand Compliance Checklist

Digital brand compliance carries significant importance and allows businesses to drive more conversions. When you are promoting your content using search engine optimisation, you should be careful about the approach and functionalities used in the media assets. The key to a successful digital brand compliance strategy is to integrate all three segments. Linking the right assets and leveraging the right quality management system will not only save you time, but increase efficiency.

It can be helpful for long-term use which may be highly beneficial for a business. A digital brand compliance checklist should focus on how and where the content is being used. Here are some of the key aspects that must be focused on while monitoring the brand compliance checklist.

• Look for scalable and cloud-based services which have an intuitive user interface.
• Check for abilities related to storing, organising and enriching capabilities of the digital assets.
• Internal and external asset monitoring management.
• Monitor usage of content and assets across the content life cycle.
• Check real-time notification of violations and certification.
• Look for real-time expiration dates of the certifications.
• Track the usage of digital marketing content on the web and social media platforms.
• Monitor logo usage, spokesperson, products and media content for licensing issues
• Check the creative agencies, and affiliated influencers or collaborators to monitor the digital media content usage made by them.

While mandating the checklist, here are some of the strategies that you must adopt to improve your efforts.

• Focus on creating and enforcing brand standards. Share brand guidelines with every individual in the team to provide clear instructions as to what can be done and what should be avoided.
• Leverage technology to review and approve brand assets. It is likely that designers or marketers may miss out on an important guideline. The tool may help identify the missing aspect that should be included.
• Make a compliant and secure content repository to keep all digital assets in one centralised location and ensure that the latest materials are being approved before usage.

Your digital brand compliance strategy should not be limited to creating a repository. Keep tracking and evaluating the latest guidelines to see what amendments are required.