CHECKLIST Marketing Collateral Checklist A tool for gathering the branding assets for an effective marketing strategy Marketing Collateral Checklist A tool for gathering the branding assets for an effective marketing strategy by Camille Winer Camille is Chief Operating Officer at Yodelpop. With 20 years' experience working with companies and organizations, Camille loves helping clients succeed through effective marketing, web development, and design. Camille lives in Highland Park, Illinois, with her husband and two sons. She was president of her high school theater guild and still enjoys a little drama from time to time. Introduction In order to create an effective marketing strategy, you need to have a solid foundation in place. Your branding & marketing assets are the building blocks of a successful marketing strategy. Your marketing collateral will help your ideal personas through the buyer’s journey The buyer’s journey is the active research process a buyer (or patient, supporter, client, etc.) goes through leading up to a purchase (or an appointment, donation, etc.) The 3 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey 1 Awareness 2 Consideration 3 Decision The 3 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey 1 Awareness Awareness In the awareness stage, a prospect is doing research to get a clearer understanding of their challenge or opportunity, and to frame and give a name to it. Marketing Asset – A blog built around a good longtail keyword attracts prospects at this stage. Your logo and color palette as displayed on your blog need to earn the trust of your prospects. The 3 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey 1 Awareness 2 Consideration Consideration In the consideration stage, the visitor has now defined and given name to their problem or opportunity. They are researching and gaining an understanding of all of the available approaches and / or methods to solving the problem or taking advantage of the opportunity. Marketing Asset – A mobile-friendly website and in- depth informative content, such as an ebook, gives prospects what they need to consider solutions. The 3 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey 1 Awareness 2 Consideration 3 Decision Decision In the decision stage, your prospect has decided on their solution strategy and is compiling a list of available vendors and products in their given solutions strategy. They are narrowing the list of options toward making a final decision. Marketing Asset – A webinar, demo of product, and / or a brochure, presentation or sales sheet answers your prospect’s questions about why they should choose you. The Checklist Marketing Assets Checklist Following is a checklist of the critical assets for branding / marketing success. It’s formatted to easily print and share with your team and includes a summary of the buyer’s journey. Marketing Collateral Checklist: Introduction Digital marketing has introduced a whole new way of thinking about marketing collateral. While most companies and organizations haven’t abandoned business cards and letterhead, these assets have taken a back seat to the website, blog, ebooks, and other digital assets that give a concrete return on marketing investment. The following pages provide a checklist of the most common marketing collateral that companies and organizations find necessary. The first page starts with fundamentals – assets you need to have in place before you create the collateral itself. After that you’ll find the essentials – online collateral. On the final page are the classics – oldies but goodies that most businesses and organizations still find useful in marketing, sales, and serving their ideal customers and supporters. As you create your collateral, it can be helpful to think about which phase(s) of the buyer’s journey the item targets: 1. AWARENESS: Prospect is doing research to get a clearer understanding of their challenge or opportunity, and to frame and give a name to it. A blog built around a good longtail keyword attracts prospects at this stage. Your logo and color palette as displayed on your blog need to earn the trust of your prospects. 2. CONSIDERATION: Visitor has now defined and given name to their problem or opportunity. They are researching and gaining an understanding of all of the available approaches and / or methods to solving the problem or taking advantage of the opportunity. A mobile-friendly website and downloadable informative content, such as an ebook, give prospects what they need to consider solutions. 3. DECISION: Prospect has decided on their solution strategy and is compiling a list of available vendors and products in their given solutions strategy. They are narrowing the list of options toward making a final decision. A webinar, demo of product, and / or a brochure, presentation or sales sheet answers your prospect’s questions about why they should choose you. MARKETING ASSETS: THE FUNDAMENTALS DUE IN PROGRESS DONE PERSONA PROFILES Identify the specific ideal customers and supporters that you want to attract.. Use Yodelpop’s persona template for companies or template for nonprofits. MESSAGE PLATFORM 2-5-page document for internal use that provides approved, standardized language describing the who, what, when, where, and why of your business or organization. Includes keyword-driven content. LOGO Visual manifestation of all that is great about your business or organization. Make sure that it reflects who you are, looks up-to-date and professional, and appeals to your buyer or supporter personas. COLORS Complementing the logo, the color palette contains approved color swatches and formulas and guides the visual elements of marketing assets to ensure brand consistency. BRAND STYLE GUIDE Helps ensure consistency by giving key staff and vendors a guide for how to use logo, colors, and other style elements as well as other important guidelines for your brand. MARKETING ASSETS: THE ESSENTIALS DUE IN PROGRESS DONE BLOG Provides your ideal customers and supporters with valuable content that solves their problems in the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. Increases your SEO performance and attracts traffic to your site. WEBSITE Serves as your marketing hub (not a brochure) where you attract, educate and inform your audience and convert them leads and then customers or supporters. SOCIAL MEDIA Drives traffic to your website and promotes your business or organization as a thought leader for your ideal customers and supporters. EMAIL MARKETING Nurtures your relationship with leads to help them become customers or supporters. Should be tailored to each persona and / or phase of the buyer’s journey. EBOOK Provides in-depth information on a topic of interest to your ideal customer or supporter. The content is educational, not salesy. It’s focused on solving a problem or meeting a need that you know this person has. Converts visitors to leads when people download, filling out a form. MARKETING ASSETS: THE ESSENTIALS cont. DUE IN PROGRESS DONE CASE STUDY Shows how you’ve solved problems for your ideal customers or advocates in the past. Includes the metrics / measures of success you know are important to them. DUE WHITE PAPER In some industries, white papers are more the norm than e-books. White papers show your thought leadership by presenting research, findings, and / or analysis on a relevant topic. WEBINAR Allows you to educate attendees on a topic in a one-way (but engaging!) multimedia format. The group setting builds trust in your company or organization through social proof. VIDEO Provides instructional or entertaining content in a highly shareable format that can also maximize search on video search engines such as YouTube. Can generate traffic and, if gated, leads. MARKETING ASSETS: THE CLASSICS DUE IN PROGRESS DONE BUSINESS CARDS Share your staff’s vitals with prospects. Still important symbolically, on location, and when working with prospects who don’t have a 100% digital lifestyle or industry. BROCHURE Advances the consideration phase of the buyer’s journey. Can still be critical in location- and event-based marketing, especially with prospects who don’t have a 100% digital lifestyle or industry. SALES SHEETS Hard copies can still be useful for some prospects, but they should also be online. Combined with marketing software, they give key intelligence on lead progress based on activity on your website. REPORTS Hard copies can still be useful, but reports should always be rendered digitally as well and placed online as downloads, with gating used to generate leads who value your content. DISPLAYS Essential for location / event marketing, but consider adding a URL unique to the event so you can measure resulting traffic. PRESENTATIONS Essential for meetings / sales; consider repurposing as Slideshares / PDF downloads on your website to convert visitors to leads. ABOUT US Yodelpop helps organizations and businesses have a positive impact through their products, services, and activities by providing inbound marketing, web development, and graphic design. We create experiences that engage, delight, educate and inform in a respectful and humanizing way. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you, you can get a free marketing assessment with an inbound marketing specialist. .