What is Marketing Collateral?
Marketing collateral is a set or a collection of printed or digital media such as brochures, point-of-sale posters, magazines, videos, e-books, webinars, infographics, etc. that are used to convey or promote a business’s brand message, products, or services. It’s important for businesses to have great marketing collateral so that their sales efforts become more efficient and effective.
What’s its Purpose?
By and large, marketing collateral is created as a support tool for increasing sales and bringing in revenue. However, most departments in any organization may also develop their own marketing collateral for non-revenue-related purposes. For example, if an organization has a sudden spike in low employee morale and subsequently, an increase in employee turnover. In this case, the Human Resources department might decide to develop marketing collateral to promote new initiatives that could improve the workplace culture. Another way it can be utilized is in the case of an organization that needs to undergo a complete rebranding. Here, brand new marketing collateral must be developed in order to communicate the new brand message and guidelines that the organization plans to follow.
How Do You Create Effective Marketing Collateral?
We’ve agreed that marketing collateral has a purpose and can be utilized in different ways and for different reasons. This is why you really need to think about end goals once it’s deployed to the target audience.
When it comes to great marketing collateral, you must have a plan, goals, and people with the right kind of skills to create professional materials or support tools that will help drive the point across. It’s not enough to create materials that ultimately won’t get used. After all, creating these is time-consuming, energy-consuming, and is often expensive. So here’s what you need to know.
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Your audience must come first
This is an absolute no-brainer. You absolutely have to keep the audience at the forefront when creating marketing collateral. Ask the important questions. Who is this material for? What are their likes, dislikes, concerns, motivators, preferences, issues, etc.? Get to know and understand them. Identify their problem, offer a solution or a suggestion as to what’s possible, and, wherever applicable, solve it for them. Remember that there is an end goal here and if your marketing collateral is in sync with what your audience needs, both sides can benefit.
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Your objective for creating and using this collateral must be clear
Now that you’ve spoken to your target audience/ client, you know your marketing collateral must be created with some goal in mind. Figure out and understand where it must be used in the Sales Funnel (Top, the Middle or the Bottom). For example, the marketing collateral you create for attracting potential clients to your products and services is completely different from the kind that is used to answer any operational questions they might ask the sales team.
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Stay on-brand all the time
You know you’ll be creating different types of marketing collateral for multiple purposes. Understand that none of it will have any effect if your brand isn’t front and center. Your brand may be famous for having certain colors or you may only use certain types of imagery to depict what you’re selling. This means that it’s crucial to have brand consistency across the board and establish brand guidelines before venturing into creating marketing collateral.
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Let the data and analytics guide you
So how do you know if all the marketing collateral you’ve created has been effective? The thing is, you can create tons of material but if you’re not checking its performance weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually, you’re not going to know what’s working and what isn’t. You need to optimize your content, not just according to feedback from your audience but also from the data you receive. Use a tool like Google Analytics or something similar to measure what collateral is working best for your brand.
Creating Marketing Collateral that will help you meet your goals
Having the right marketing collateral can be a great asset when it comes to communicating and promoting your brand. At Synapse, we work with you to create marketing collateral that will give you an edge over competitors, without any delays. Want to know more? Check out our work on our website or give us a call at 1800 121 5955 (India) or drop us a line at contact@synapse.co.
