Marketing collateral plays a unique role in the world of advertising and brand communication. Unlike traditional flashy advertisements, the main goal of marketing collateral isn’t to grab immediate attention but to maintain and enrich it.
Let’s explore why marketing collateral is valuable for businesses and how different marketing collateral strategies can be implemented to improve marketing efforts.
What Is Marketing Collateral?
Marketing collateral is an expansive term, covering all resources from print and digital materials to multimedia content used to engage potential customers, clients, and partners.
It’s a key element in a company’s marketing toolkit, aimed at promoting the business and its offerings while reinforcing the brand identity.
The quality and effectiveness of a company’s marketing collateral can significantly impact its overall success. That is why a good chunk of a company’s resources are often dedicated to developing and distributing marketing collateral.
In this way, anything from brochures and t-shirts to testimonials, case studies, and e-books can be placed into the category of marketing collateral. With that in mind, it becomes clear why a good chunk of company resources are often dedicated to promotional materials.
Key Takeaways
Marketing collateral refers to the marketing materials a brand uses to promote its products and services, whether those are printed or digital;
One of the main advantages of marketing collateral is the fact that it increases brand awareness and helps to spread your content across multiple marketing channels;
Using different types of collateral is an excellent way to differentiate your brand and reach a greater percentage of your target audience.
How to Define Marketing Collateral?
Marketing collateral serves as a vital component in a business’s strategy to convey a uniform message, enhance product and service visibility, and foster brand recognition and loyalty.
The term originated from the idea of accompanying something else as a secondary support, in this case, these are the resources that support the primary marketing efforts.
This approach is crucial for distinguishing offerings in a competitive market and establishing customer trust. Beyond traditional print formats like brochures and flyers, marketing collateral extends to digital realms, including websites and e-books.
Each format type serves a distinct purpose and, when utilized strategically, can yield impactful results. Drawing inspiration from other brands that adeptly leverage collateral across multiple channels can offer valuable insights.
Furthermore, marketing collateral is instrumental in targeting specific audience segments and consistently reinforcing a brand’s core values. This makes it an indispensable tool for businesses aiming to secure a competitive edge and resonate deeply with their customers.
Why Is Marketing Collateral Important?
Marketing collateral is more than just a set of promotional tools; it’s a key driver of a company’s brand visibility and a critical factor in setting it apart from competitors.
1. Maintaining brand awareness
Marketing collateral is instrumental in crafting and sustaining a company’s brand identity. It ensures a unified and professional look across all marketing initiatives, contributing to a strong and recognizable visual representation of the company’s products and services.
For instance, a tech company might use sleek, modern-looking brochures and videos to emphasize its cutting-edge products, creating a distinct visual identity.
2. Driving sales and consistency
These materials are pivotal in driving sales growth, linking brand recognition with consistent messaging. They provide potential customers with essential information, thereby facilitating informed purchasing decisions.
An example is a retail brand offering detailed product catalogs and online buying guides, which help customers make informed decisions, leading to increased sales.
3.Targeted marketing
In targeted marketing, marketing collateral allows for the customization of content to address specific customer needs and pain points effectively. Consistent branding across various channels, accomplished through cohesive marketing collateral, establishes trust, credibility, and recognition among the target audience, reinforcing the company’s presence in the market.
A health food company, for example, could use targeted email campaigns with nutrition facts and recipes to appeal directly to health-conscious consumers, ensuring consistent messaging across platforms.
What Are The Best Marketing Collateral Strategies?
Picking suitable marketing materials to captivate your target audience is lengthy. An ideal marketing collateral strategy will be visually engaging and provide concise, eye-catching content tailored to the individual needs of the customer.
However, a few key strategies can be implemented to raise the chances of your marketing materials capturing new customers.
1. Use multiple marketing channels
The best marketing collateral strategies involve utilizing multiple channels and platforms to reach your target audience. This includes online and offline solutions such as web banners, print materials, video content, and email campaigns.
2. Personalize content
Focusing on creating effective content that brings value often turns out to be a fruitful idea. By creating compelling visuals, informative texts, and customer reviews, your prospects will have a greater chance of becoming customers.
Effective and personalized content are often synonymous. Personalizing your collateral is one of the best ways to pique the interest of potential customers and generate leads.
A study, “Personalization in email marketing: The role of noninformative advertising content,” shows that personalized email campaigns have significantly higher open rates and click-through rates than generic emails. The study also found that adding personalized recommendations into emails can increase sales conversions by up to 35%.
3. Implement changes and measure results
Effectively tracking and measuring the performance of your marketing collateral is key to refining your strategies and enhancing future success.
Utilizing various tracking mechanisms and analytics tools, such as engagement rates, click-through rates, conversions, and sales attribution, provides valuable insights into the collateral’s effectiveness and its impact on the sales funnel.
The critical step is to analyze this data and implement changes that resonate with your target audience, continuously optimizing your approach.
4. Focus on quality design and visual appeal
A crucial marketing collateral strategy is to prioritize quality design and visual appeal.
Eye-catching and visually appealing materials have a higher chance of grabbing the attention of potential customers and leaving a lasting impression. A well-designed brochure or visually engaging sales collateral enhances the credibility and professionalism of your brand
Meaning, an increased likelihood of customer engagement and conversion.
5. Leverage storytelling
Enhancing your marketing collateral with storytelling can deeply engage and connect with your audience. Use narratives, like customer success stories or brand journeys, to make your materials more relatable and memorable.
For instance, a short video testimonial highlighting a customer’s experience with your product can be more impactful than conventional advertisements, fostering a stronger emotional connection with potential customers.
Additional Tips & Tricks
- Google Cloud survey underlines that 82% of users claim the values brands translate should correlate with theirs to make a purchase or become a client;
- Sales and marketing collateral are different and sometimes depend on each other. Improving both equally will help your business scale;
- Digital marketing collateral can be repurposed more efficiently than traditional marketing collateral;
- Printed marketing collateral, such as product catalogs, can be made available to customers through third-party agencies to save time and improve reach.
The Bottom Line
Marketing collateral refers to the marketing materials and content that a brand produces and shares with its target audience to promote a product, service, or its own brand. The types of marketing collateral and content within it can be adjusted and improved to achieve greater marketing performance.
Today you’ve learned what stands behind the term marketing collateral and which strategies you should apply to make the best out of it. With all this knowledge and information, you can determine if marketing collateral is the missing piece you need to create to reach your target audience.
Marketing Collateral FAQs
Similar to a brochure, business cards are a typical example of marketing collateral. Business cards convey relevant information to a business and create greater brand awareness.
Marketing collateral is one of the most important elements of content marketing. Whether that is traditional or digital marketing, the content is that which converts customers and drives sales.
Social media collateral refers to the content used to promote a business or brand on social media platforms. As such, social media collateral can refer to any content, such as an illustration, video, or other social media post.
