The 33 Best Types of Marketing Collateral: The Massive Guide for Better Marketing Material
How to Create Blog Posts
You don’t need to be Hemingway or Goethe to start writing blog posts. Concentrate on the challenges of your prospects, and help them solve them. Convert this knowledge into text, and post it on your corporate blog. You can use a content-managing system such as WordPress to set up a blog within 5 minutes.[9]
3. Case Studies
With Case Studies[10], you can show prospects what other customers have achieved in the past by using your product or service. For example, if you’re selling marketing software, you could illustrate that a customer increased his ROI by 123% through using your tool.
When to Use Case Studies
Case studies are particularly powerful if they involve popular companies. For example, doing a case study of Microsoft will provide strong evidence, which should convince prospects from similar industries to test—or even purchase—your product or service.
Create a separate section on your website or blog that features all case studies.
How to Create Case Studies
There are many great resources out there about creating case studies. You could use this template (or the included case study examples) as inspiration.[12]
Throughout years of testing different collateral I believe case studies have the best impact on your businesses growth. A case study backs up your pitch to prospective customers with real world proof. The idea would be to have multiple case studies that focus on all the verticals you sell in to. If the prospective customer can relate more to case study it will increase their chance of purchasing.
Garrett Smith, Founder of RepCheckup[13]
4. Company Awards
Company awards are good ways to demonstrate your quality work to prospects. Put them on your website, and let them bloom into results that will convince your potential clients.
(Image Source: Content Marketing Institute[14])
When to Use Company Awards
Of course, the requirement for presenting company awards on your website is that you’ve won some. If you have, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t place them on your site.
How to Win Company Awards
First of all, identify important awards in your niche. After you google and find suitable awards, you’ll often be able to apply for one without being nominated. For example, if you’re a content marketing agency, you could apply for a Content Marketing Award.[15]
5. Company Background
People prefer doing business with people they know. Make the first step, and inform prospects about your company and its background[16].
Let them know about the way you were founded, your progress during the first few years, important milestones, and the ways that your company has evolved. Inform them about your values. Then your potential clients will become more familiar with your company.
When to Add Company Background to Your Website
As long as you have an interesting story to tell, put your company background on your website, and help people get to know you and learn about your values.
How to Use a Company Background on Your Website
Write compelling text about your company[18], and add some visuals. Make everything as personal as possible.[/vc_column_text]
6. eBooks and Downloadable Guides
In the modern era, eBooks and downloadable guides are some of the hottest marketing materials. Everyone loves free things that are entertaining and educational. Hence, people love free eBooks and guides.
These PDF files should contain actionable, supportive, useful information. eBooks and downloadable guides will help you gather emails and generate leads.
When to Use eBooks and Downloadable Guides
If you know that your prospects and customers are struggling to tackle specific topics, make it your job to help them. Compile an eBook, and offer it on your website for free. But ask interested visitors for their email addresses. That way, you’ll be able to reach out to them later and continue nurturing them.
How to Create Ebooks and Downloadable Guides
Creating an eBook or guide doesn’t need to be that complicated. If you’ve already written lots of content, just take 3-5 blog posts about a specific topic, merge them together, and convert them into an ebook. For the conversion, either use eBook templates or a tool like Google Docs or Word. [20]
I would argue the most important marketing collateral is not physical, but a digital downloadable PDF directed at your target audience used as bait to get your audience to give you their email to download.
Then you have their email in exchange for giving them valuable information and can use that to market to them and stay in touch for the future.
Stacy Caprio, Founder of Accelerated Growth Marketing[21]
7. Email Signature
Your email signature is marketing collateral? Yep. You’re sending out hundreds of emails per week. So use your email signature as an inconspicuous way to promote your product or service.
When to Use an Email Signature
You should use one whenever you want to make a good impression, such as following up with a potential client.
How to Create an Email Signature
You can easily use one of the signature generators out there, and create a compelling email signature in seconds. [22]
8. Explainer Videos
Did you know that people view more than 500 million hours on YouTube every day? People love videos. [23]
Explainer videos can present your product or service in an easy and intuitive way. Is your product rather complex? Even better. Use an explainer video to simplify the product’s functionality.[24]
When to Use an Explainer Video
Explainer videos can be used if you have a product or service that can be visually described in 1 to 2 minutes. This definition should apply to most businesses. Put the explainer video on your homepage, or share it via social media.