After you conquer the challenges of defining your brand with your designer, including your logo and messaging, there are many more choices and decisions to be made.
How do you share your brand and communicate your messaging?
You do that through engaging marketing collateral.
Creating Marketing Collateral
Your collateral needs to make a great first impression and also create a lasting impression. It must be memorable. Here’s some things to keep in mind…
- Using your logo and graphics consistently across all marketing collateral will help make you and your company recognizable.
- Your marketing collateral should include photos and graphics that convey your message and help set the expectations for your product or service with your target audience.
- The photos you use should convey the look and feel that you are trying to achieve. People showing emotion will engage readers or users.
- The words you use must connect with the graphics and photos. Look at your adjectives again (see my first blog post). Set the mood with the right tone of voice and the choice and phrasing of your words.
- Make sure you use similar messaging in all types of collateral, so your target audience receives the message again and again throughout all media.
Delivering Your Message
Reaching your audience involves several media channels – it used to be said that 7 to 10 touches with a company was necessary before a prospect will do business with you. With the rise of the internet and social media it’s likely 3 times that is needed now.
- Everything from traditional brochures to product sheets to business cards and presentation materials onland will be important. Many collaterals can be repurposed and utilized online as well (ie. pdf brochure).
- Online collateral must include a website. It should also include search engine optimization (SEO), and possibly social media, regular e-newsletters emailed to your list, blogging, video, Google and other search engine advertising – the list goes on.
- Research what your competitors are doing and determine how to differentiate your products or services with your message and media.
- Reach out to business organizations, consultants, and your designer, for advice and suggestions.
- Once you have some collaterals planned, create a regular schedule for communication and stick to it. Be accountable to your schedule. Remember the 3 times 7 to 10 touches noted above.
Marketing Results
Measuring your results can be challenging! How can you evaluate results to learn how to modify collaterals to better meet the needs of your audience? Measure different communications in different ways. That’s a subject for another blog article.
E-Newsletter Campaign Results
Until the next blog article, here’s one example of what to look for: Send out your email newsletter to a subscriber list that you have created (per CAN-SPAM Act) and then review your statistics.
- What does the open rate show?
- How many people are reading the newsletter?
- How many people are clicking through to your website?
- What was your goal for click-throughs?
- What do you need to do to encourage more people to read the newsletter?
Email newsletters help build a relationship with customers, allowing you to keep in touch and stay top-of-mind. Setting a regular schedule of weekly or monthly newsletters will achieve a sense of consistency for your audience.
