Between social media mavens creating content, copywriters who know their way around a homepage headline, and media buyers who ensure the work gets seen, the success of your marketing efforts boils down to brand management. Brand management is the development and maintenance of a brand identity as it relates to customer interactions and marketing campaigns.
Lucky for you and your team, there’s a vast selection of software solutions dedicated to organizing and optimizing your brand management.
What is brand management software?
Brand management software is a category of brand management tools that allow marketing agencies,marketing teams, and brand managers to streamline their workflows. Depending on the size of your team and the scope of your goals, it might mean a platform to manage digital assets or a broader brand portal that fosters creative collaboration.
Adding this kind of software to your tech stack can increase project management efficiency across your team by improving communication and making brand assets easy to find and distribute.
Types of brand management software
- Brand asset management software
- Communication software
- Content management software
- Marketing automation software
Brand management platforms tend to fall into four main categories:
Brand asset management software
Digital asset management software, or DAM, helps organize brand assets for easier distribution. Most platforms offer search functionality and indexing to make things easy to find, as well as permissions controls, which can come in handy when you need to distribute assets between team members, clients, or the public. A digital asset manager is critical for brands needing to store a large amount of original content, like images and video files.
Communication software
Communication software includes anything that simplifies team alignment, like instant messaging, collaborative workflows, video conferencing, file sharing, or email hubs.
Content management software
Engagement rates are a cornerstone of social media marketing. Content management software allows you to analyze performance across various social platforms, ensure your content reaches your target audience, and keep track of conversations about your brand through social listening.
Marketing automation software
A marketing automation platform is designed to streamline large-scale repetitive tasks like lead generation, target audience analytics, and email marketing campaigns, allowing for more focus on creative projects.
Best brand management software
There are hundreds of software vendors to help businesses manage their marketing needs and simplify the brand management process, from all-in-one suites to more niche offerings for specific hurdles. Here’s a selection of the best brand management software:
Bynder
Bynder is a DAM software solution for brands looking to organize their asset library and simplify version tracking, or keeping track of edits to an asset. It also offers custom workflows for creative teams, a centralized repository for your brand guidelines, and AI-powered tools to streamline content creation at scale.
Bynder pricing:
- Contact for pricing
Canva
You’ve likely seen a Canva template on social media. This user-friendly brand asset management system simplifies the creation of compelling marketing materials with artist-designed templates and graphics. Keep to brand guidelines with your brand assets and color schemes, collaborate with team members on design and details, and then export for easy distribution. Pro versions offer more sophisticated photo editors, storage, and scheduling across social channels.
Canva pricing:
- Free version (with limited assets and tools) for individuals
- Canva Pro: $119.99/year
- Canva for Teams: $300/year
Frontify
Frontify is a brand asset management software dedicated to streamlined communication between marketing, brand, and developer teams. The platform combines DAM software functionality (asset libraries and brand guideline integrations) with the central hub of communication software, allowing stakeholders to keep track of tasks, deadlines, and complex projects.
Frontify pricing:
- Contact for pricing
- Price based on number of users
HubSpot
While HubSpot might be best known for lead generation and outreach management, it offers an all-inclusive suite of brand management features, from customer nurturing to content engagement analytics. Customer relationships are at the core of HubSpot’s approach to brand growth, and the platform makes it easy to integrate your findings for more on-target campaigns.
HubSpot pricing:
- Starter: Starts at $45/month
- Professional: Starts at $800/month
- Enterprise: Starts at $3,600/month
Slack
Instant messaging platform Slack eliminates inbox clutter and simplifies communication with team-specific channels and the option to connect with external users. The platform makes it easy to share files and track feedback with a thorough search function—and integrates with a host of compatible apps, like Google Docs, personal calendars, and project management platforms like ClickUp and Asana.
Slack pricing:
- Basic: Free
- Pro: $7.25/month per user
- Business+: $12.50/month per user
- Enterprise Grid: Contact for pricing
SlideHub
Building a compelling presentation deck can be daunting, especially when revenue is on the line. SlideHub is a PowerPoint asset platform that makes it easy to save slides for consistent, on-brand presentations and doubles as an asset management platform for easy retrieval and plug-ins.
SlideHub pricing:
- Free 14-day trial
- Starter: $200/month
- Growth: $450/month
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
Sprout Social
Sprout Social allows you to design and schedule social posts and analyzes your performance across various social media platforms. Customer insights and versatile account dashboards make Sprout Social a worthy content management platform, especially for brands looking to boost social engagement and awareness.
Sprout Social pricing:
- Free 30-day trial
- Standard: $249/month
- Professional: $399/month
- Advanced: $499/month
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
Uberall
For brands with multiple brick-and-mortar locations seeking location marketing management, Uberall provides tools for customer listening and geo-targeted functionality, on- and offline. With three pricing brackets framed around your drive to Get Found, Be Chosen, and Thrive, it’s a solid choice if you’re looking to increase brand awareness for your digital and in-person stores.
Uberall pricing:
- Contact for pricing
Brand management software FAQ
What’s an example of brand management?
An example of brand management is a style guide or guide showing the way a brand appears in the wild. This is where you’d expect to find fonts, colors, logos, imagery, key phrases, taglines, and mission statements. Keeping these elements up to date—and enforcing them—is an example of brand management.
What are the four components of brand management?
The four components of brand management are:
- Brand identity: Includes brand assets like logos, color palettes, and design guidelines
- Brand consistency: Created by enforcing brand guidelines internally and externally
- Brand strategy: The process of defining brand positioning in the competitive landscape
- Customer insights: Data that helps you monitor and improve the customer experience
Why do you need brand management software?
Brand management software provides a centralized database for creative teams, aids in streamlined project management, and improves communication.