The 7 Types of Marketing Collateral Your Business Needs

As a business owner, you know that marketing is essential to your success. But in today’s business climate, it’s not enough to only focus on offline marketing. You need to create a variety of digital marketing collateral as well.

But how do you know what types of marketing collateral you should create?

In this article, we explore seven fundamental types of marketing collateral you should create today to put yourself in a better position for success when generating new leads for your business.

What is Marketing Collateral?

Marketing collateral is any physical or digital material that helps promote your brand and products to your target audience. It can be a brochure, a website, a social media post, or any other type.

One of the goals of marketing collateral is to provide information and establish your brand’s authority in its chosen niche. Another is to capture and retain the attention of your target audience and build trust with them over time.

But to create adequate marketing collateral, you first need to know who your target audience is and create a clear message that will appeal to them. 

You should also align any creative you make with your brand’s voice and personality and ensure it provides clear value to the reader.

What are the Benefits of Marketing Collateral?

Well-designed marketing collateral can effectively support your brand’s marketing efforts and sales teams. 

It does this by building brand awareness and boosting recognition and recall. It should also deliver valuable information and support customers at every step in the buyer’s journey.

Thoughtful marketing collateral is also an effective way to show your brand’s competence and unique selling proposition (USP) and thus create space in the hearts and minds of your audience.

If done well, marketing collateral can help power your inbound marketing efforts. It can also empower your marketers and sales reps to develop a meaningful relationship with customers, boosting customer lifetime value (CLV). 

Ultimately, it can generate many tangible results, such as a broader customer base, improved lead generation, and higher sales and profits.

7 Types of Marketing Collateral You Should Create

Now that you understand the value of creating marketing collateral let’s discuss seven types of marketing collateral your marketing team should create to effectively promote your business to your target audience.

Website and Blog

Your brand’s website is the central hub of your online presence. It’s where your customers will go to learn more about you. As such, it should be well-designed, visually appealing, and user-friendly. It’s also essential to keep it updated with the latest information about your company.

The website should attract visitors, retain their attention, and convert them into customers. All web pages should be mobile-friendly, accessible to a broad range of users, and easy to navigate.

Some more tips for creating an effective and memorable website:

• Limit menu choices to minimize confusion
• Use text and visual elements thoughtfully to highlight high-priority information
• Make sure it supports multiple devices and browsers
• Add CTA buttons to encourage visitors to take some action and engage with your brand
• Focus on a clean look, soothing colors, and a consistent tone in the copy

Your website should also include a blog. Blogging is one of the best ways to establish yourself as an expert in your field. It allows you to leverage the power of content marketing to share your thoughts and opinions on topics that matter to you, and it helps you build a loyal following. 

Make sure your blog posts are well-written, informative, and engaging.

Landing Pages

Landing pages are another essential digital marketing collateral. When conversion-optimized, they are a very effective way to increase leads and sales from your website through targeted offers and call-to-actions (CTAs).

The best landing pages are relevant to the target audience. They are designed to capture the attention of potential customers and encourage them to take action, such as filling out a form or clicking on a link.

Ideally, you should create a specific, standalone landing page for each marketing campaign. But you can also create multiple landing pages for a campaign that takes a user to the same page after they complete a survey or fill out a form.

Some more tips for creating optimized and effective landing pages:

• Include a CTA to capture the user’s contact information
• Serve personalized content based on the information provided by visitors
• Include an attractive incentive to move visitors along the sales funnel

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful way to connect with your audience, build relationships with current and prospective customers, and garner their loyalty and support. 

For this, it’s important to send relevant, valuable, and personalized content. Also, make sure you are targeting the right audience to increase email opens and click-throughs. 

Finally, include CTA buttons or links in every email to encourage recipients to take action that can benefit your brand.

There are many kinds of emails you can create to engage with customers and build your brand’s presence:

• Welcome/onboarding
• Thank you for your purchase
• Special occasions such as the recipient’s birthday
• Abandoned cart
• Abandoned browse
• Engagement and re-engagement
• Drip campaigns
• Upsells
• Referrals
• Holiday promotions, e.g., for Black Friday or Christmas
• Events

Some tips to power your brand’s email marketing campaigns:

• State the value proposition clearly
• Personalize the subject line and greeting
• Save time by selecting pre-built templates in your email tool
• Create “dynamic” emails where the content adjusts automatically for each subscriber
• Place at least one CTA above the fold
• Use white text and contrasting colors to improve visibility and readability
• Balance textual and visual elements for a clean look and added impact
• Test all emails before sends

Social Media

Social media is a powerful way to create a community around your brand, connect with customers, and build one-on-one relationships with them. You can share valuable content, interact with followers, and promote your brand.

Make sure you are active on the social networks that matter most to your business. Finally, don’t forget to test and optimize your content for different platforms!

Some tips to get it right with your social media presence:

• Make every post eye-catching and engaging with high-quality images, infographics, and videos
• Create a solid call to action to encourage engagement
• For Facebook:
  • Include a cover photo that represents your brand in a visually appealing way
  • Make all posts shareable
  • Use relevant hashtags
• For Twitter:
  • Use high-quality visuals
  • Include relevant hashtags
  • Make sure tweets are easy to read
• For LinkedIn:
  • Provide high-quality, valuable content
  • Use professional business language
  • Include infographics, videos, and images where relevant
• For Instagram:
  • Post high-quality images and videos
  • Include relevant hashtags
  • Run contests and giveaways to build a community and deepen brand engagement

Online Videos

Video is becoming increasingly important collateral for online marketing. It’s a great way to engage viewers deeper, communicate your message, build trust, and drive conversions. 

Plus, videos can be easily shared online, helping you reach a wider audience. Make sure to create high-quality, engaging, and informative videos.

Also, keep these other tips in mind:

• Keep videos short and sweet
• Make sure they look professional
• Use exciting visuals and animations to capture viewers’ attention
• Engage viewers by prompting them to take action
• Create short (1-2 minutes) explainer videos for your website home page, landing pages, and pages for new products

Infographics

Infographics can help you communicate complex information with your audience in an easy-to-understand, visual format. Infographics are popular because they’re easy to share on social media. 

They can also help you attract more leads and customers, engage readers, and drive conversions. If you’re using infographics as part of your marketing strategy, make sure they are high quality, visually appealing, and informative.

Here are some more tips for creating impactful infographics:

• Include exciting data to support your main message
• Create a storyboard or outline to organize your ideas
• Use a professional graphics program
• Include clear and concise text to explain the data

Other Types of Marketing Collateral to Consider

You can also create many other types of collateral to support your brand’s messaging. These include:

• eBooks and whitepapers: Share your expertise and know-how with a large number of people and provide in-depth information about a specific topic to your audience
• Case studies, success stories, and testimonials: Validate your brand’s effectiveness with real examples and results
• Corporate brochures and product guides: Provide information about your offerings in an accessible, digestible format
• Newsletter: Engage with your audience with valuable content, and drive traffic to your website

Interrupt Media Can Help You Create and Leverage Marketing Collateral

When it comes to marketing collateral, the choices are virtually endless. But each type of collateral has a unique purpose and target audience. 

So, make sure to choose the ones that will work best for your business. We hope this article and the included marketing collateral examples help you understand which collaterals could be most effective for your business and marketing budget.

If you need further support, connect with the Interrupt Media team! 

We can help you identify and create compelling, on-brand marketing collateral that resonates with your audience. 

Contact us to create collateral that unlocks the potential of your marketing function and enhances your brand’s value.

Topics: B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing