You can glean a lot from the quality of a company’s marketing collateral. Collateral is often the first impression that consumers have with a brand, so making the best impact is absolutely pivotal. Businesses will often be judged based on the relevancy, consistency and overall quality of the materials that organizations send to potential customers.
Think about it this way – if you signed up for an email newsletter for Coke and the actual email came with Pepsi’s blue, red and white color scheme, how confused would you be? Branding plays a big role in how consumers perceive and react to your messages, especially when engaging a consumer for the first time. It’s very important that marketing collateral is professional, relevant and compliant with brand standards.
As you design your marketing collateral and develop an execution plan for your campaign, keep these three tips in mind:
1. What is the Objective?
Just as every campaign has an objective, so too should individual pieces of marketing collateral. By identifying this goal at the start, companies can design the ideal collateral around this concept. This will help ensure that relevancy is maintained and the calls to action are clear.You should ask yourself questions such as “why am I creating this piece?” and “will this help create credibility for my brand?” Other topics to consider include whether the piece is for first-time buyers or existing shoppers, who is the intended target demographic and what the purpose is (for example, generating a lead versus pushing to close a sale).
“This will impact everything from the messages you create, how technical or simple your copy will be written, which benefits you will emphasize, to the images used in the design,” the Entrepreneurial Development Center explains.
2. What is the Message?
Once you’ve answered the “why am I creating this piece?” question you should shave a much better understanding on what to say. Every piece of marketing collateral should have a clear message that conveys a certain meaning to customers. By extension, you also need to organize your message in a way that makes sense to the recipient.
In this step of the process, the use of imagery, text and other assets is critical. The perfect collateral will capture the attention of prospects and encourage them to read the entire message. Interesting images can draw recipients’ eyes to specific calls-to-action and reinforces the brand’s personality. Conversely, poorly arranged content will cause consumers to pass over content without so much as a second glance.
3. Consider the Layout
Once the right assets are chosen, you need to arrange them in the appropriate layout. This is where consistency comes into play. If marketers have been nurturing leads with a specific layout in their email campaigns, it’s crucial that salespeople use a similar format. Using the same layouts and templates can go a long way instilling brand confidence, particularly in first-time customers.
While consistency is important, so too is visual appeal. The right assets, graphics and text can only go so far – businesses must also arrange them in the proper way. The goal is to encourage customers to move from one call-to-action to the next, and templates go a long way in helping brands do just that.
As you create relevant marketing collateral, it’s crucial that you establish objectives, maintain the message and choose the appropriate layout. This will help you convert more leads and improve your company’s bottom line.