How to promote your business with marketing collaterals?
What are marketing collaterals?
Wikipedia tells us that ‘marketing collateral is a collection of media used to support the sales of a product or a service’, which simply means that anything that you can use to communicate the message of your brand (the mission statement) is called marketing collateral. It brings to one’s mind, things like landing pages, newsletters, blog posts :), pillar pages, eBooks, emails, case studies, customer testimonials, etc. In today’s age, digital media marketing is slowly but effectively taking over other means of marketing.
Whom are marketing collaterals meant for?
As obvious as it sounds, it is meant for your business’s prospective customers. However, it is not as simple as obvious it is. Depending on whether your company offers a service or product, to a consumer or to another business, your marketing collateral can take different forms. Consumer targeted marketing collaterals come into play only after you have made customer contact via advertising or other means. Business to business collaterals, on the other hand, also called sales collaterals, are used to acquire new channel partners, to give them details of your services, etc.
Consumer-oriented collaterals are emotionally appealing to the consumer and give then a unique user experience. They reflect the user benefit found in the brand’s mission statement. Your marketing collaterals should tap into the psychology of your prospects and make them believe in your product. This, however, is tougher than it sounds.
Where and why to use marketing collaterals?
Your customers don’t become customers in a day but go through an entire journey from just knowing, to placing their complete trust in your brand before making a deal or a purchase. These stages can be broadly classified as awareness, interest, decision, and action stages. Your marketing collaterals change in the sense that they provide different amounts of information to your prospective customers.
In the ‘awareness stage’, you want your target audience to know about your company. The best way to do this is to put a mirror to their problems, i.e. to bring their pain points to light. Let them know that you understand their difficulties and challenges. Fliers, landing pages, branded content, social media, press releases, SEO, paid advertisements are a few ways you can do this.
Once your customer is aware of your company, he/she will wish to find out about the services you offer. You can use, blog posts ;), eBooks, pillar pages, event or customer magazines, infographics to convince get your customer to take interest in your company’s products and services and enter the ‘interest stage’. This is where your lead turns into a prospective customer. Your aim here is to establish yourself as the expert and your product and services as the best.
The next stage is the ‘decision stage’ where your prospective customer is in the process of deciding on purchasing from you. Here, you need to provide detailed information about your product and services. You can engage your prospective customer with case studies, white papers, corporate brochures, product catalogues, free consultation, and demos.
Note that case studies, testimonials, or any other content that the prospects can resonate with are the best tool for marketing.
Pro tip: Most marketing collaterals should have at least one ‘call to action’.
The last stage is the ‘action stage’ where your prospective customer is finally your customer and has decided to purchase your product or service. The collaterals you can use here are presentations, proposals, re-engagement emails, etc. There is another stage which is very often overlooked, which is the ‘loyalty stage’. This is where you retain contact with your customer so that if a need arises in the future, they would be willing to do business with you. You can use newsletters, email marketing, and even customer magazines for this purpose.
Marketing is a game of timing, wit, and psychology. You need to be creative, inventive, and opportunistic to market your business, which is why it is best to use a mix of collateral spread over a while. Knowing what your customer wants is key to using the type of marketing collateral which best sells your product.
Hope this helped!
*winks*
