How to create a winning product content management strategy with DAM and PIM
| March 5, 2025
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Struggling to keep product images, videos, and data consistent across channels? You’re not alone.
Marketing, e-commerce, and creative teams often work in disconnected systems, manually transferring assets and product data between tools, if they even have a centralized system at all. Some teams rely on scattered files, spreadsheets, and email threads, making collaboration slow and inefficient.
A strong product content management strategy starts with centralizing digital assets like images, videos, and graphics alongside product data such as descriptions, specs, and pricing.
Whether you’re using digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM) platforms or just looking for a better way to manage content, consolidating tools brings teams together, eliminates manual work, and keeps everything running smoothly.
With a DAM and PIM system, teams get a single source of truth, ensuring consistency, speed, and enhanced collaboration.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to integrate DAM and PIM to simplify workflows, go to market faster, and deliver a frictionless customer experience.
Why is product content management important?
Picture this: your marketing team is scrambling to find the latest product images, your e-commerce manager is stuck waiting on updated specs, and your sales team just realized they’ve been using outdated pricing details. Situations like these happen without a solid product content management strategy in place.
The foundation of PCM strategy is having the right software to give teams a single source of truth for product content.
No more hunting through email chains or digging through random shared drives — just streamlined workflows, faster updates, and a whole lot less chaos.
Centralized operations
A product content management system keeps everything (and everyone) in sync. With a central hub, teams work from the same playbook, whether it’s updating product specs, approving new visuals, or rolling out marketing assets.
With a PCM system, you can finally say goodbye to endless back-and-forths and duplicated work.
Better customer experience through consistency
Shoppers expect accurate, engaging product content, no matter where they find it. If details are outdated or inconsistent, they’ll move on. A product content management system makes sure visuals, descriptions, and specs stay consistent across all channels, whether on your website, social media, or a retailer’s site.
By centralizing product data and assets, your team works faster, your brand stays cohesive, and customers get the high-quality digital experience they expect. Ultimately, this results in greater trust, stronger brand authority, and higher conversions.
Faster time-to-market
Speed matters. When your e-commerce product content management tools are disconnected, product launches drag, and approvals stall.
But you can move quickly with product content management software. With automated updates, streamlined workflows, and real-time collaboration, your team can quickly push new products and campaigns live.
What software is needed for product content management?
A strong product content management strategy needs the right tools, which means both a DAM and a PIM platform:
- DAM software handles all your product visuals
- PIM software keeps product data accurate and up-to-date
You have three key options. You can choose to implement DAM and PIM systems separately for teams, integrate DAM and PIM systems using a connector, or choose a best-in-class DAM+PIM platform with both functionalities included.
How to build an effective product content management strategy with DAM + PIM in five steps
A product content management strategy is only as strong as the tools behind it. With DAM and PIM working together, you can keep product content organized, consistent, and ready to go across every channel.
Here’s how to make it happen in five steps:
1. Implement a unified DAM + PIM platform
Before you do anything else, you need a solid foundation. Using a disjointed and scattered marketing stack results in too many manual workarounds. A product content management platform combining DAM and PIM functionality brings everything together, including your teams, assets, and product information.
- Unifies teams: Creative, marketing, e-commerce, sales, and retailers work from the same playbook
- Unifies product content and information: No more scattered spreadsheets and misplaced assets; everything is centralized, searchable, and accessible
Pro tip: Canto PIM is a best-in-class DAM+PIM platform that transforms product content management, skyrockets productivity, and accelerates product launches
2. Migrate and organize your product content and data
Now that you have your platform, it’s time to clean house. A messy product content library slows down workflows and leads to mistakes. When you choose a unified DAM+PIM platform like Canto PIM, you can get everything in order by:
- Setting up clear naming conventions for SKUs, color variations, and product descriptions
- Using metadata, categories, and tags to make content easy to find
- Using AI-powered auto-tagging and visual search to streamline content discovery
Pro tip: Canto PIM’s AI tools take the guesswork out of organization. With auto-tagging, facial recognition, and Canto AI Visual Search, your team can find exactly what they need — without digging through endless folders.
3. Standardize your workflows and processes
A great product content management platform works best with clear, structured workflows. Standardizing your processes ensures smooth collaboration and faster approvals.
Streamline content workflows
Get content production in order first using your DAM platform:
- Set up DAM workflows for approvals and create style guides to reduce bottlenecks
- Use role-based permissions to control who can access product content
- Publish images automatically in the correct sizes across sites, stores, and platforms with a DAM’s CDN capabilities, like Canto’s Media Delivery Cloud
- Set up watermarks, terms and conditions, and add copyright information for your sensitive assets with DAM platform’s digital rights management (DRM) tools
Synchronize product information across channels
Use your PIM platform to set up where product information needs to go:
- Map product data to key sales and marketing channels
- Automate updates across platforms for real-time brand consistency
- Use PIM software’s channel mapping to match retailer-specific requirements — manually adjust once instead of endless spreadsheet mapping
Pro tip: Canto PIM brings teams together in a smoother workflow, making it easier to work faster and get more done.
4. Integrate tools across your tech stack for one workflow
Your PCM system should play nicely with the rest of your tech stack, including CMS, e-commerce platforms, and other marketing tools. Integrating your PCM platform within your content ecosystem improves your product content workflows and increases team productivity.
When you choose a DAM platform as part of your PCM strategy, you can integrate your content library inside your favorite content tools. Now, you can find product content, edit, and distribute without leaving your apps.
Pro tip: Canto PIM brings DAM and PIM together in one platform — no connectors, no extra setup. And Canto has 40+ integrations to other popular tools available.
5. Activate and refine your PCM strategy
With your DAM+PIM platform in place, it’s time to put your e-commerce product content management plan into action:
- Launch product content across e-commerce sites, marketplaces, and marketing channels with your DAM platform’s CDN capabilities, portals, and integrations
- Protect and track copyrighted or licensed content with DAM software’s digital rights management tools
- Automate updates to keep listings fresh and relevant using DAM software’s approval statuses and expiration dates and PIM software’s channel mapping
- Equip teams with DAM platform’s brand templates to build on-brand collateral with lockable brand elements
Pro tip: Canto PIM’s Product Catalogs and unlimited Portals make it easy to distribute product content at scale.
Build the best product content management strategy with Canto PIM
Managing product content across teams and channels doesn’t have to be chaotic. Canto PIM centralizes and unites marketing, product, creative, sales, and e-commerce teams and all your product content and information in one place.
Canto PIM is the easiest all-in-one DAM and PIM platform to learn and use on the market. With Canto PIM, you can organize your product content and information quickly, enable teams to collaborate and find what they need, and GTM faster than ever. Simply put, Canto PIM transforms your product content management strategy entirely.
Canto PIM comes with all the product content management features you need:
- All-in-one DAM + PIM software: Store and manage product images, brand assets, SKUs, descriptions, and more in one central platform
- Canto AI Visual Search: Intelligent AI for scanning and retrieving relevant media across any-sized library using plain English queries
- Canto’s Media Delivery Cloud and Channel Mapping: Ensure the right assets and product details are delivered to the right channels every time
- Flexible metadata and custom attributes: Easily organize and structure product content and information for quick access
- Smart Tags: Analyze visual details in media and automatically generate tags
- Facial and text recognition: Scan media and PDFs for people and text and automatically generate metadata
- Workflows, Style Guides, Comments & Annotations: Streamline collaboration, approve content faster, and stay on brand across teams and channels
- Approval statuses, expiration dates, version controls, DRM tools: Control and manage your product content from one place
- Portals and Product Catalogs: Distribute assets and product collections to teams, retailers, and partners
- 40+ integrations: Connect with CMS, productivity, collaboration, marketing automation, creative tools, social media, work management software, and more
Ready to transform your product experience? Download our eBook – From Chaos to Clarity: Transforming Your Product Experience with DAM and PIM.
Product content management frequently asked questions
What is product content management?
Product content management (PCM) is the process of organizing, storing, and distributing all product-related content, including images, videos, descriptions, and specs, across sales and marketing channels. A product content management platform helps teams keep product content and information consistent, up-to-date, and easy to manage.
What is product content management software?
Product content management software helps teams organize, store, and distribute product content — like images, videos, descriptions, and specs — across multiple channels. PCM software ensures accuracy, consistency, and easy collaboration by centralizing everything in one platform.
What is the difference between PCM vs PIM?
Product content management (PCM) is the broader strategy of organizing and distributing product content across channels. Product information management (PIM) is a type of PCM software that specifically manages product data — like SKUs, descriptions, and pricing. A complete PCM solution often includes both PIM platform (for data) and DAM platform (for digital assets like images and videos) to ensure consistency across all platforms.
What are some best practices for product content management?
- Centralize your content: Use a product content management platform like Canto PIM to store all product data and assets in one place
- Automate updates: Sync product content across platforms with PCM software to avoid outdated or inconsistent information
- Streamline workflows: Use a product content management system to set clear processes for content approvals, updates, and distribution
- Use an all-in-one DAM + PIM platform: Manage both product data and digital assets from one place for a streamlined PCM strategy