As a brand in this day and age, you are (whether you realize it or not) in the experience business. Transactions are no longer a simple exchange of dollars for goods or services; consumers demand more. They expect you to win their affections and loyalty by delivering consistent, memorable experiences at each and every interaction. And, because of this, the digital assets and content you use to tell your story, educate your audiences, and represent your brand, are more important than ever. To help them deliver on this experience economy, more and more brands turn to digital asset management (DAM) systems. Here’s how the right DAM system can help!

Your brand is a way for customers to identify your business. It is how they recognize and differentiate you from the competition. But, just as a sports team is more than the uniform they wear, a strong brand is more than a logo or tagline. To its most loyal fans, it’s a community. It’s an emotional connection, a badge of honor, and a driving force in why people buy what they buy. According to a recent Nielsen survey, nearly 60 percent of global respondents prefer to buy new products from brands familiar to them, and 21 percent say they purchased a new product because it was from a brand they like.

Whether your brand is traveling down the hall to a colleague's office or across the globe, you need to safeguard it for the journey ahead. With freelancers, marketing agencies, internal teams, and many others using your brand in communications and content, it's easy for inconsistencies and misuse to arise. A brand identity kit can help by providing disparate groups and individuals with the tools and information they need to uphold your brand consistently. While every brand identity kit looks different, here are a few essentials to pack in yours:

Sandra De Biasi is the project manager of digital assets and graphics at Varian, a Fortune 500 company and provider of radiation oncology treatment software and hardware.

At Varian, she manages their digital asset management system, which has played an integral role in managing the company’s brand assets during their recent corporate rebrand. Here’s her exciting story about how monitoring content analytics in their DAM system helped secure their valuable brand assets.

As a marketer, you know firsthand how important it is for your potential and existing customers to feel good about your brand. If your images are fuzzy, your emails riddled with typos, and your messages contradictory, you are not exactly painting a picture of trust, authority, and excellence. But, with so much to juggle, how can you ensure that every single piece of content you touch is on-brand?

Regardless of funding, revenues, or company size, one of the strongest differentiators an organization can have is its brand. But brand strength doesn't happen on its own. It's a competitive advantage that needs to be earned. It takes organizational self-reflection, focus, and discipline to create a brand that customers prefer over competitors. So it must be tended to and carefully managed. It must have rules placed around it to be easily upheld and presented appropriately. And it needs to be considerate to a quickly changing world with numerous cultural nuances.