Marketing is taken to the next level with new mediums coming up. From posters and flyers to digital content, there are plenty of ways to market any brand.
Let us understand this better through Marketing Collateral.
What is Marketing Collateral?
Marketing Collateral is any printed or digital material used to communicate or promote a company’s brand message, products, or services. Marketing Collateral can take many forms, including catalogs, point-of-sale posters, videos, e-books, newsletters, graphics, etc. These sales tools are designed to make the sales process easier and more effective.
The company’s brand is typically presented through its collateral to enhance its brand through a consistent message and other media. The most common question in various businesses’ minds is – how to make marketing collateral effective? It must use a balance of information, promotional content, and entertainment. This is the perfect way to make it more effective.
Benefits of Marketing Collateral
The following are the primary advantages of using marketing collateral:
- It lends credibility to your company.
- Marketing collateral explicitly states why your product or service is superior.
- It provides an effective way for your marketing and sales team to explain the function of your product or service.
How is it affecting Digital Marketing?
Many companies are using marketing collateral to achieve non-revenue-related goals. Consider a company that is suffering from low employee morale. They could promote new initiatives aimed at improving office culture through marketing collateral.
Alternatively, a company undergoing corporate rebranding could use marketing collateral to encourage the adoption of its new brand identity and policies. Marketing collateral can reach any audience and achieve any goal. You just need to know how to use it.
What kind of marketing collateral should you use?
Different types of collateral serve different purposes and are primarily determined by where your prospects are in the marketing funnel. Some prospective customers may be ready to commit to your product, whereas others may be considering their options. You must target each group with different collateral based on where they are in the buyer’s journey.
Types of Digital Marketing collateral
About us
The About Us section provides a brief insight into your enterprise and its goal. It is a marketing tool to persuade potential customers and plays a big part in search engine marketing.
Blogs
A blog post is a common type of marketing collateral or content marketing used by businesses. It enables your company to share content on your website regularly. They vary in topic, length, and purpose, but they are a powerful tool for marketing your business in the global world.
Brand Colors
Brand colors are a palette of five to ten colors used to represent a company. A company’s brand colors’ consistent and strategic application can increase brand awareness and recognizability. What’s more interesting is that most top brands use only one or two colors! Blue is the most common color choice for brands.
Brand Stories
Your brand story is more than a narrative of your company. It can take the form of a video, a digital publication, or your website bio section and creates an emotional connection between your brand and your customers, such as human experiences and how it has added value to their lives.
Business Card
The idea of a classic Business Card never gets old. It has been around for years and is still widely used. A business card not only features the company’s brand and logo but also provides contact details like email, phone number, and address. The non-digital form of marketing still proves effective at any networking event.
eBook
eBooks are a great way to inform and educate your readers. An eBook demonstrates a company’s competence in an industry or field through an educational approach. An eBook uses a casual and appealing voice and design to present a complicated topic in a way that the reader can easily understand.
Email Signature
An email signature is a frame of text that appears at the bottom of an email message. It provides contact information to recipients, such as your name, job title, phone number, and email address. An email signature is also known as the email footer. It provides company information to recipients.
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos are appealing visuals used in various industries and businesses and on multiple platforms. You can use explainer videos for various purposes, such as raising brand awareness or providing education. Its unique way of presenting content makes it such a powerful tool.
Infographics
Infographics are graphical representations of a particular topic or critical point. They present information in a visual format rather than a written format. Infographics can vary in size, style, and intent. However, they all have the same purpose, i.e., to communicate information in a fun and creative way.
Landing page
Landing pages are standalone pages that are associated with specific marketing campaigns. This is the page that your audience arrives at after clicking on an ad. They typically include a form that requests contact information from your prospects. Depending on the campaign’s purpose, they serve as a cover for the pages they link.
Listicles
A listicle is a type of writing that uses a list as its thematic structure but contains enough copy to be published as an article. They are eye-catching articles in list format. Some famous examples of listicles are “Top 10 movies of 2021” or “10 habits for a fit life.”
Logo
It is an emblem, symbol, or graphic mark. Logo helps companies in public identification and recognition. It can be abstract or figurative in design or include the text of the name it represents. Logo helps your company to separate from its competitors.
Mission Statement
A mission statement is an activity statement that declares an organization’s purpose and how it serves its customers. A mission statement is a concise summary of your company’s mission. It helps the employees in setting clear goals and staying focused.
Newsletters
Companies use newsletters to stay in touch with current clients. They inform the customers about new features or product updates. They are generally sent as emails. Nearly 70% of businesses rely on them to stay in touch with their customers.
Online Ads
In this era of the internet, where everything is at the click of your finger, advertising your enterprise online can be very useful. Online advertising is flexible and is everywhere, from computers to mobile devices. They help the consumers to go from an advertisement to a seller quickly. It boosts sales and brand awareness.
Pillar Pages
A Pillar Page is a comprehensive piece on a single web page about a specific topic. Pillar pages dive deep into related topic clusters and are linked to other blog posts and content pieces. Some standard titles of pillar pages include “Best of __” and “Guide/How to __.”
Pitch Deck
A pitch deck is a brief presentation. You can create it in PowerPoint or Keynote. It helps provide your audience with a high-level overview of your business plan. Pitch presentations are self-explanatory instead of demo day presentations that involve a lot of explaining by the presenter.
Podcasts
A podcast is a selection or series of digital audio files. You can either listen or download it. The podcast is the newest form of entertainment in the market. It is an effective marketing tool that helps brands reach the targeted audience. Podcasts create value for buyers as they are informative.
Portfolio
This can include a variety of digital marketing channels such as websites, ads, social media posts or campaigns, videos, email marketing, and others. Professionals, students, and companies – all of them use portfolios. They display experience, accomplishments, goals, and skills. Nowadays, digital portfolios have become quite popular.
Product Catalog
A catalog lists all the products that your enterprise deals in. They are book-length brochures. They detail product information in a similar way to booklets. However, they are much longer because they sometimes include feature stories about the products. There are many marketing collateral templates on the internet that you can check out to get a better idea.
Reports
Reports or digital reports present data important to both organizations and individuals. A digital report’s information is usually concise and contains a lot of statistics. Digital reports were traditionally created as PDF documents, making them dry and static.
Social Profile
Social profiles describe an individual’s social characteristics that identify them on social media sites like LinkedIn. It has a vast outreach and ensures high engagement. It also provides a community where like-minded people can communicate.
Testimonials
Testimonials are positive ratings from clients who describe their experience and results after using the product or service of the company. It allows prospects to read what previous customers have said about its services or products, which lends credibility to the company. These reviews play an important role in bringing more customers and upholding the brand’s image.
White Paper
White Papers are lengthy, in-depth articles on a technical topic. They are commonly used in politics, technology, and business to discuss issues, challenges, and solutions to overcome problems. They are about the same length as eBooks, but they are written in a more technical than entertaining tone.
Summary
You need a plan, goals, and skilled people to create compelling and professional-looking marketing collateral. Marketing collateral represents your company’s business. It is an active tool that works even when you are not. This article has discussed marketing collateral meaning and its various types.
You may also look at why video marketing is essential for your business.
