First made available in 2012, Google Drive is a file sharing and synchronization service that has become tremendously popular, with everything from major enterprises to mom-and-pop shop.
It’s easy to see why: Google Drive is feature-rich, fairly easy to learn and use, and free (up to a point). Today, there are close to 1 billion users of the free service and more than 1 million business and individuals who have signed up for one of Google’s paid G-Suite subscription plans.
But for all its strengths and strong market share, Google Drive isn’t a no-brainer for all digital marketers. There are plenty of other big hitters in this space—in fact, Slant lists 20 options just for starters!
To help sort through all these choices, it’s best to start by assessing your priorities in implementing a cloud storage solution. Are you looking for a space where you can collaborate with other people in the creation and editing of documents? Or are you instead looking for a digital asset management environment where the team uploads and a larger audience consumes or downloads those files?
When Collaboration Is Job #1
As the experts at Walker Sands discovered in recent research (see chart below) many marketing and sales teams need better collaboration tools to become more closely aligned.
For sure, Google Drive is a great answer if collaboration (with file-synching, etc.) is your number one priority. But if your organization is deeply invested in Microsoft Office for document creation, you should also consider Microsoft’s OneDrive Personal or OneDrive for Business, as the deep integration with Office applications can translate into significant productivity gains.
If you’re a design or marketing agency that’s committed to Macintosh, then be sure to give Apple iCloud a good look before committing to Google Drive (just check that there aren’t any Android-lovers in your midst!).
And if you think all of these utility-like environments should be free forever, then take a look at LibreOffice, where you’ll find a rich feature set, a good bit of additional DIY complexity, and proud support for Linux devices.
When Digital Asset Management Is Top Priority
Today’s $250 billion US advertising market continues to fragment across more media types than ever (source: PwC). As a result, many organizations are looking for a way to store and manage images that need to be deployed across one or many of these different formats.
If that type of organization is more your purpose for cloud storage, then the first alternatives to consider would be Dropbox. Keep in mind that you’ll get less free space in Dropbox than you will with Google Drive, but to compensate you’ll end up with a more user-friendly administrator experience when it comes to setting up and managing folder and file access.
Box is another popular alternative for teams and workgroups with light digital asset management requirements. Folders are easy to set up, share and expire, which has given Box (and DropBox, for that matter) an emphasis in transferring of files outside the organization to external recipients and partners.
If you are planning to implement Box or Dropbox on an Enterprise basis, make sure to poll your user community for personal accounts on these services. You may need to develop a migration strategy/policy and communicate it well in advance of implementation to avoid confusion for users who find themselves swept up from their personal use into a managed environment.
If your requirements for digital asset management are more complex, you may want to move beyond DropBox and Box, to consider lightweight enterprise DAMs, such as IntelligenceBank, BrandFolder, or CampaignDrive. These tools allow for the development of more advanced library architectures, encompassing the unique needs of multi-location and multi-brand businesses. The best also include dynamic templating to help your organization achieve greater brand consistency and agility.
One thing to keep in mind, if you elect to implement a true DAM: adoption rates tend to vary between (20-60% on a monthly basis, as the chart below shows, and rise as the time frame analyzed extends to 3 months and 12 months. If you’re being charged by the user (or seat), make sure that you plan your training efforts accordingly, to get maximum value for the dollars you expend.
A Word On Privacy
According to privacy experts, one significant factor to consider with Google Drive is that the Terms and Conditions give Google the right to use the data you upload to or create with the tool for its own (mostly advertising) purposes.
If you’ve ever wondered just how it is that Google can present advertising to you that seems so closely tied to a budget spreadsheet you just uploaded to Drive, you might just be seeing those usage rights (and Google’s tremendously productive development teams) in action. Keep this issue in mind, if you are planning to make a major commitment to cloud-based collaboration, digital asset management, and brand management.
Conclusion
For organizations looking to move to cloud-based file storage, Google Drive may appear to be the path of least resistance—and it certainly merits serious consideration. But be sure to assess your organization’s unique priorities in implementing cloud storage, and investigate at least 2-3 alternatives before making a commitment. Remember that the tool you implement for free today is likely to be the tool you continue using for quite some time to come.
About the Author: Kevin is the founder of Pica9, and an award-winning creative director and enterprise software architect. You can follow him on LinkedIn or on Medium.