As a business owner, you might think that in today’s fast-paced digital world, digital marketing services are the most important. Things like professional website design and social media services should be a top priority. While you’d be right (these things are important), that doesn’t mean you should forget about other important things like marketing collateral.
The problem with most businesses today is that they either A) don’t see marketing collateral as important because they think it’s outdated or B) they think marketing collateral is too expensive; in reality, this isn’t always true. This article outlines five reasons why your business needs marketing collateral and the purpose that marketing collateral serves.
1. Sales Collateral Helps You Tell a Story
Let’s face it, if you’re the owner of a business, you’re probably not a storyteller or a writer. The way you’d explain what your business does may make perfect sense to you, but won’t make as much sense to the average person. That’s what marketing collateral is used for—storytelling.
Storytelling benefit is one of the most important, if not the most important benefit of sales collateral; it ties into so many other benefits. Being able to tell your story in a concise and consistent way will help your business in so many ways, including the following:
- Prevent your message from getting diluted. The owner of a business doesn’t have to follow a sales deck, they could probably deliver a pitch in their sleep. The problem? Not everyone in the company has this same level of knowledge. Marketing assets help everyone within an organization tell the same great story over and over again.
- Document your story so you never forget it. When a business is in its early stages, the owners should clearly define what the business offers/what they do and why people need it. Marketing assets keep the story on track and document it so that you can touch it, see it, feel it, use it, and even tweak it as time goes on.
- Not everyone speaks your language, so help them understand. Marketing assets help anyone understand exactly what it is that you do. If you’re an engineer or a doctor or an IT professional, you probably can’t write as well as a professional writer. You can’t design as good as a professional graphic design agency. A partner who creates marketing assets professionally can tell your story in a way that is digestible. For example, if you’re a cybersecurity company trying to grow, you might be struggling with defining your services/what you do to prospects. Sales collateral can explain your services in a way that is easy for the average consumer to understand; thus, helping your cybersecurity lead generation efforts.
- Salespeople will feel less frustrated. Many salespeople are frustrated because they can’t properly communicate a service offering to prospects. Marketing collateral solves this problem. When you have everything about your business clearly defined on paper, it makes salespeople’s job’s a lot easier. It also levels the playing field for all salespeople because they now have the same materials to reference when calling prospects.
The biggest reason to invest in marketing collateral is simple: it helps you tell a story. Marketing collateral helps you tell a consistent story to potential customers. And without the help of a professional marketing agency, you won’t be able to tell that story as well.
2. One Asset Can Be Used in Multiple Scenarios
If you need something standardized for multiple purposes, marketing assets are the answer. One asset can be used for dozens of different situations. Think of a brochure design, for example. A brochure can serve the following purposes:
- Your sales team can use brochures to give an elevator pitch
- You can send a brochure digitally in an email to a prospect to elicit a response
- You can leave a physical copy of your brochure at a business or in someone’s mailbox to build brand awareness and keep your business top-of-mind
- Brochures serve as a reference point for prospects who aren’t ready to buy right now
- A current customer can send a brochure to another business if they want to refer you and the message won’t get diluted; it’s consistent every time
Whether you want to spice up your email marketing or help your salespeople perfect their pitch, marketing collateral can help you do it all.
3. Sales Collateral Flows With the Sales Conversation
Brochures, sell sheets, case studies, and various other types of marketing collateral are extremely useful in guiding a sales conversation. Different pieces of collateral flow perfectly with a sales conversation. Think of it like this:
“Tell me about your company.”
Send them a brochure.
“Okay, now that I understand what you do, can you provide me with some more information about this specific product or service?”
Send them a sell sheet that talks about a product or service in-depth.
“Who have you worked with in the past? Have you worked with companies similar to mine?”
Send them a case study or a video testimonial.
Thinking fast and answering questions quickly is tough, even for an experienced salesperson. No matter what a prospect asks if you have something to send them, it will not only make you come across as more professional, but marketing collateral will tell a story way better than you can. By having marketing collateral, you’re telling a story and helping a prospect walk down a path with a piece of ammo for each step along the way.
4. You Should Worry About Marketing Collateral First
There are a lot of things you can spend money on to improve your sales process and grow your business, but marketing collateral should be at the top of the list. Here’s why your business should want to spend money on marketing collateral before anything else:
- Make the most of the conversations you’re having today. A lot of smaller companies think the way to grow is to buy more leads. Before you spend money on leads, ask yourself, “is my sales process totally figured out? How are you making the most of the opportunities you’re currently getting? Do your salespeople have the answers to every question? Marketing collateral does this for you—straightens out your sales process by giving your salespeople an elevator pitch, a full pitch deck, and everything in between.
- Document your story and get it out there. We’ve already established that marketing collateral helps you tell a story about your business. The reason you should want to develop these materials before you do anything else is because once you have them, you can push to get them out there as much as possible. Right now, your salespeople might be having mediocre conversations with prospects who are not that impressed. Elevate those conversations with sales collateral—tell your story on why someone should buy from you, get it documented, and start getting it out there.
5. Close More Deals and Increase ROI
Last but certainly not least, marketing collateral helps you close more deals and increases ROI. Be careful though, you’ll only see a good return on investment if you’re working with a partner who can produce professional marketing collateral at an affordable price. This is the mistake many businesses make—thinking that a pricey custom video or an expensive brochure is going to solve all of their problems. Instead, you should look for a partner who can produce many types of marketing collateral to support every part of your sales process at a reasonable price.
Once you have appointments, you have to sell them. Marketing assets help you close more deals by guiding your sales team through the sales conversation and delivering your story in a way that makes sense.
B2B Appointment Setting and Marketing Collateral—The Perfect Combination For Business Growth
Videos aren’t going to go out and show themselves. The same goes for brochures, sell sheets and case studies. Once it’s created, your sales collateral has to be put to good use. How do you do this? With consistent, high-quality opportunities. Expensive, highly-custom collateral isn’t going to solve your problem. What you need is as much collateral as possible with consistent branding and messaging so you can share it with as many potential customers as possible.
Are you looking for consistent high-quality opportunities AND professional marketing collateral? Good news—Abstrakt offers both. Our B2B appointment setting services help you build a healthy sales pipeline so that you can consistently generate opportunities. Our team of marketing collateral professionals will also guide you through a plan that makes the most sense for your business so you can start selling more. Huge companies cannot do what we do at the price that we offer, because we designed our marketing collateral services to complement our lead generation services.
Are you ready to experience unmatched business growth using marketing collateral and appointment setting services? Contact Abstrakt Marketing Group today to learn more.
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