When marketing for your business, your efforts should expand beyond conventional advertising. Sure, commercials and other ads do a great job of capturing the interest of potential customers, but there needs to be something more that can help foster consumer interest and turn it into a sale. That something more is known as digital marketing collateral.
Marketing collateral can come in various forms, but no matter its shape, it can almost always help turn a researching consumer into a paying customer. Let’s look at the different types of marketing collateral and how they can help benefit your marketing efforts.
What Is Marketing Collateral?
At the root of it all, marketing collateral is a way to tell your audience that you are a knowledgeable and trustworthy source so that they feel more inclined to purchase whatever it is you’re offering. It’s not supposed to be flashy or eye-catching like typical advertisements. Its main goal is to provide information and establish credibility with your potential customers.
In most instances, the people viewing your marketing collateral are interested in your offering but are unfamiliar with your business and therefore, apprehensive to buy. Strong collateral can help put their minds at ease and make them more inclined to trust you and your offerings.
Types of Marketing Collateral Everyone Needs
Blog Posts
Blog posts are a great way to provide customers with consistent, timely, and accurate information regarding your business, industry, products, and more. They are quick to compose and can greatly benefit you while building a rapport with your customers. A well-maintained company blog allows you to consistently advertise yourself and provide a level of customer engagement that can foster trust within your customers and help leverage your sales efforts.
Blog posts are also a great way to improve your site’s organic traffic and rankings. By employing basic SEO principles, your blogs can begin to rank for competitive business-related keywords and even start to appear on the Google results page.
Case Studies
Case studies are informative documents that detail how a certain product of yours benefited a particular customer. Each case study is written in collaboration with a satisfied customer and is made to show how your product can be used. Its goal is to get readers to imagine how they could use your product and ultimately lead them to purchase. Using a reputable customer to vouch for your products can help improve your business’s reputation as a trustworthy company with reliable products.
Testimonials
Testimonials are essentially the short and sweet versions of a case study. For some consumers, reading a multi-page case study may not be worth their time. That’s why a short quote from a satisfied customer is a great way to showcase your success in a few sentences.
When adding testimonials to your site, be sure they are visually engaging, show where the quote came from, and highlight your products or services. Ultimately, a testimonial is a short and simple way to highlight the reliability of your business and inspire readers to check out the product for themselves.
The Takeaway
The main takeaway is that marketing your business and products goes deeper than regular ads and video advertising. By adding strong digital marketing collateral such as blogs, testimonials, and case studies to your website, you can improve your overall advertising efforts and generate more sales.