Marketing collateral refers to informative marketing materials that showcase your company’s products or services. As marketing departments notice budget changes, it’s essential to keep marketing collateral as a priority for your organization. It continues to be a key part of your marketing strategy. So, how can you make sure the marketing collateral your team develops boosts sales efforts and more? Here are five tips to help strengthen your brand and effectively aid your sales initiatives.
Include in Your Integrated Marketing Strategy
The success of your marketing materials depends on how clearly you communicate what your organization offers. Marketing materials are a creative way to share your business story so that people understand who you are and what you do. While the materials themselves matter, the messaging is equally important. Prospects connect with content that addresses their challenges and pain points. To truly understand your audience’s challenges, it’s helpful to know where they stand in the buyer’s journey. Different stages can affect the materials and messaging you share with them. This allows you to promote your offerings while keeping the focus on your prospects and what they can relate to most. Planning your messaging and materials before starting your campaign will help you stay on track. The key points you want to emphasize will be communicated across all your materials.
Use a Corporate Style Guide
Marketing collateral is a direct reflection of your business. Across all pieces, there should be consistent visual design aspects that reflect your organization’s branding elements. Any copy that is included should accurately reflect your voice. Keeping branding consistent is essential to success. Prospects can easily recognize and associate those pieces with your brand. What can ensure that you are staying consistent and on-brand within the marketing collateral? A style guide can allow you to stay on track with different visual elements. This guide outlines the logo, color scheme, graphics, fonts and taglines that are available to use. Using the style guide can allow you to focus on the important aspects of your brand identity and include necessary design elements to collateral pieces.
Balance the Graphics
Graphical elements in your collateral can effectively guide a reader through the content while keeping the attention and engagement of your audience. Visuals are important. Content with visuals get 94% more views than those without images, but there is a certain balance of visuals that need to be adhered to. When selecting images, consider their purpose. Selecting images that closely relate to your business, brand image and/or visually illustrate important data points can make your collateral stand out. While it is tempting to fill every inch of your collateral with images or information, this may result in over-saturation. Use a combination of white space and imagery to frame your message and call attention to it. A design that is too busy will distract from important things like your logo, call-to-action or offering information. Include the necessary graphics and find a good balance.
Ensure High-Quality Content
Prospects want to consume content that is high-quality, relevant and easy to read. Every aspect of the collateral piece needs these traits. For example, an eBook’s visuals need to be clear, formatted and designed correctly while the copy should be backed by research, well thought out and edited and reviewed extensively. Taking the necessary steps to ensure all collateral pieces are like this will be beneficial in the long run and allow the building of a solid, foundational relationship with prospects. Prospects like seeing organizations that are consistent, on-brand and deliver high-quality content.
Collateral doesn’t have to be boring so don’t be afraid to try something different. Use your imagination to come up with original and unique pieces that make you stand out from the crowd. Try incorporating different materials and shapes. The only limitation is your imagination, and, of course, your budget. Overall, ensure the quality is up to your standards.
Focus on Digital Assets
As the world shifts to digital, collateral and digital marketing aspects become more and more important. Items like website addresses and social media pages included on digital assets can direct your audience to interact with your organization on additional platforms while including more resources for them to connect with you. A lot of your marketing collateral can be gated but depending on the depth and purpose of the piece can determine if it should be gated or ungated.
How long has it been since you examined your collateral? Chances are it could use a good once-over and refresh to bring it up to speed with your current messaging, branding guidelines and goals. By following these tips, you can ensure your collateral positions your business in a positive light while building your brand and converting leads into buyers.