How To Better Manage Your Sales and Marketing Collateral
Introduction
Marketing is an important part of any business, but the marketing process can be difficult to manage. Your marketing collateral (all the content associated with your campaigns) is a big part of this process. In fact, without proper management, everything from your brand to your bottom line could suffer. If you're struggling with managing your marketing resources, don't worry! There are some simple ways to start improving right away that will help you get on track and simplify the process:
What is marketing content, and why is it important?
Content is the foundation of your marketing strategy. It's the backbone, and it's what you use to tell your story. More importantly, content is how you attract customers and build trust with them—and there are so many ways that you can do this.
In order to be successful at content marketing in 2022, it's important to understand what's changed since last year and how these changes will affect the way you market yourself online.
Why do you need to manage content?
Content is an integral part of your marketing strategy. It can help you attract and retain customers, build relationships with them, educate them about your products and services, generate leads that result in sales.
So why do you need to manage content? The answer is simple: because it’s one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from competitors who offer similar products or services. By creating compelling content that speaks directly to the needs of your target audience, you can distinguish yourself as a thought leader in your industry — and build trust with potential customers during every stage of the buying process.
Know what assets you have
You need to know what assets you have. This is crucial because it will help you prioritize the content that needs to be developed and optimized. You also want to make sure that your content is always relevant and up-to-date, so knowing what your customers want or need will help with this process.
Knowing what your competitors are doing in their marketing collateral strategy is another way of staying on top of things when it comes to creating high-quality content for your audience. Having this knowledge gives you an advantage over them because it’s easier for you to create things that are unique compared to other companies in the industry, which could lead them back into your sales funnel once again!
Find out what content you're missing
In order to know what content you’re missing, you need to first take stock of everything that you have.
Have a content audit. This is an important step because it allows you to look at what you have as well as identify which pieces are working and which ones aren’t. It can also help prioritize which types of collateral best fit the needs of your audience. For example, if an email campaign performs well with existing clients but doesn’t resonate with new prospects, it might suggest that there are holes in your marketing strategy where educational content could fill them. Once this analysis is complete, it will be easier for salespeople to identify what additional messaging may be needed for specific audiences—and then create more targeted collateral around those topics (see next point).
Assign responsibilities and set up workflows.
Assign responsibilities and set up workflows.
The first step in creating the workflow is to define the roles and responsibilities of the people involved in the process. Once these are established, you can then determine how each person should interact with others throughout the process, as well as what deliverables they will produce. If your organization has more than one person working on a project such as a sales collateral piece or marketing piece, it’s important to understand who will be responsible for each step so there aren’t any surprises later on in development when you need something changed or added unexpectedly. Additionally, it’s critical to define timelines so that everyone knows how long they have until deadlines must be met (i.e., when final versions need to be delivered). Quality control processes should also be outlined since mistakes can happen at any point during production which may lead inadvertently result in loss of money due to having spent resources unnecessarily--or worse yet--having produced something that does not meet customers' needs/expectations which could potentially result in loss of future business too! Lastly but certainly not least importantly...metrics should always come into play when setting up workflows because knowing where things stand helps quantify progress toward completion which aids decision making around budgeting/resource allocation etcetera).
Set up and test your campaign landing pages early.
You can't improve what you don’t measure, so the first step for improving your landing page marketing is learning to track and measure all of your campaigns. If you don't do this, then it will be impossible to know whether or not your campaign was successful.
Once you've set up the analytics tracking for all of your campaigns, it's time to start testing different variations of landing page designs. You want a landing page that will convert as much traffic into leads as possible because this means more opportunities for sales and revenue generation in the future. But how do you know which design is best? One way is by A/B testing—i.e., splitting traffic evenly between two different pages with slight differences in copy or design elements (for example, one version might have a green background while another has blue). You can then compare conversion rates across both versions over time until they converge on one winner or merge back together into one final prototype that combines elements from both versions (or maybe even more than two versions).
Consider a digital asset management (DAM) tool for large campaigns.
One of the best ways to manage all of your sales collateral is with a digital asset management (DAM) tool. These tools allow you to organize and find all of your assets in one place, making it easier for you to share them with others. They also help reduce the costs associated with managing sales collateral by allowing for easy access and sharing among different departments. In 2022, you should consider using a DAM if:
Your company has large campaigns that require coordination across multiple teams
You want a comprehensive view of all assets across departments
There are many great DAMs out there; some are free but most cost money for businesses.
Marketing collateral can be confusing to manage, but there are ways to get the process under control.
Marketing collateral can be confusing to manage. It's a broad term that covers any kind of content that is used to market a product or service. Marketing collateral includes things like brochures, flyers, ads and more. Since these types of materials can be expensive to produce and distribute, it's important that they're managed effectively so they deliver the right message at the right time and in the right place."
Conclusion
Great marketing collateral is essential for any organization that wants to make an impact and succeed in the future. It’s also something that can be confusing to manage, but there are ways to get the process under control.
If you want to know more about how to improve your marketing and sales collateral management efforts, check out our free ebook: 5 Tips for Better Marketing Collateral Management. In it, we'll cover topics like your brand's voice and tone (plus why they matter), as well as best practices for creating effective campaigns with clear goals.
