Learn What Marketing Collateral Is and The Best Ways to Leverage It for Your Business Now

Why is This Important? 

What is marketing collateral and why is it important for your business? Marketing collateral means any marketing material, digital or print, that’s used to promote and represent the brand. This includes brochures, posters, videos, infographics, blogs, and more. It is important to have a deep understanding of your company’s marketing collateral so that it can be leveraged correctly. Materials such as brochures, landing pages, blogs, etc. are content that’s best used in the awareness stage of the sales cycle whereas case studies and reports are great for the consideration stage.  While most companies use marketing collateral as sales support, it isn’t limited to strictly sales. These assets could be used to rebrand the company and boost workplace culture. 

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Using Marketing Collateral

Now that you understand what marketing collateral is, how do you begin to effectively leverage it? The key actions to keep in mind are to focus on the audience, stay on brand, and use data to make decisions. 

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This means, as you are creating materials and strategically placing them, keep your target audience at the center of it all. Think about their needs, wants, and preferences. Show you truly understand their pain points and have a solution that clearly solves their problem. 

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All marketing collateral should have clear branding across all assets. This brand cohesion keeps it clear for your audience that these great solutions are all coming from your company. Brand consistency is important to build credibility and trust. A brand book or guideline is helpful in creating this cohesion. 

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Finally, listen to your customers when they tell you what they want! Use that information coupled with data from your website and Google Analytics, for example, to gain deeper insights into your users. This data will tell a story of its own and it just might show you a key behavior about your audience that they don’t consciously realize. User feedback and data analysis are crucial so you can quickly adjust your strategy to make the most of your marketing collateral. 

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Print vs. Digital 

While we are in a digital world, both print and digital marketing materials have their place. Traditional or print assets include brochures, displays, brand magazines, direct mail, swag items, and more. While print isn’t the go-to marketing method nowadays, it still has its place and can be extremely useful, depending on your business. If your business does well with print materials then it can be a great way to stand out and break through the digital noise that is all too common in current markets. 

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Digital marketing has a global reach and is easily scalable. Assets in the digital category include websites, blogs, white papers, e-books, infographics, reports, downloadable one-pagers, videos, webinars, and more. With so many digital options, it is important to understand the benefit of each new piece. Blogs, for example, are wonderful for showing a quick insight into the brand, the company and their expertise. Reports are a great way for companies to establish themselves as a credible information source on a specific subject. Using the visual content appropriately can give you the most bang for your buck so to speak. 

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