8 Marketing Collaterals for Your Business

Your marketing collateral is any branded asset or material you use to communicate with potential or existing customers. These materials help promote a product or service, build trust, and support your sales process.

Ideal marketing collaterals are useful at every stage of your customer journey. Whether it’s the awareness, consideration stage, or post-purchase phase. For instance, some marketing materials explain what your company offers, and others aim to convince ideal customers to take action.

In this post, we’ll share eight types of marketing collateral (print and digital) to consider using for your offline and digital marketing activities.

Here we go!

Print

Printed marketing collateral pieces are important resources for marketing and sales teams, especially because they are physical items people can hold or pass along.

Here are some printed collateral pieces to have readily available:

1. Brochures and Catalogs

Brochures are small booklets or folded papers that give potential clients a quick overview of your business, product, or service. They’re the perfect companions for your sales pitches. You can use brochures at trade shows, reception areas, physical store outlets, etc.

Some common brochure types include tri-fold, bi-fold, Z-fold, and booklet brochures. The kind you use will depend on your preference and the amount of information you want to share with your audience.

As Johann Becker, co-founder and editor of BlankCalendarPages.com, notes: “Printed collateral remains powerful because it’s tangible, memorable, and often leaves a lasting impression beyond digital touch points.”

Here’s an example of a trifold brochure by SpotPet:

Catalogs are more detailed than brochures. They include detailed product lists with prices and descriptions. Catalogs are ideal for retail and wholesale businesses to showcase a wide range of products.

Here’s an example from IKEA:

To make your brochures and product catalogs unique, materials should have a clean layout that leads can scan through. Consider using real product photos, not mockups. Also, add contact details (including your site’s link/ QR code) and a clear call to action.

2. Posters and Banners

Posters are often used indoors to promote events, products, or services. Banners, however, are larger than posters and are used outdoors for similar purposes. You can print out posters to display your message effectively.

Use posters and banners to increase offline brand visibility. They’re quite effective for publicizing product launches or entering a new location, typically the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey.

Here’s an example:

Banners and posters rely on good design. Like the above example, pair compelling copy with strong visuals, making you more likely to impress your audience. Best practice is to use bold fonts and colors that align with your brand.

Finally, place these materials where your target audience is more likely to see them.

3. Business Cards

Both B2C and B2B marketers need business cards to connect with prospects. These cards come in handy at networking events or sales meetings. Advisably, your sales reps and other key members in the organization should have their cards.

A well-designed business card gives a professional appeal and can encourage interested leads to follow up with you later.

Your business card should contain only the most important details. Remember to use good-quality paper to print your cards, as this can also help make a good impression.

A well-designed business card gives a professional appeal and can encourage interested leads to follow up with you later. Since business cards play a major role in relationship-building, it’s worth noting how strong networking impacts conversions (see these networking statistics for context).

Digital

Digital collateral includes the online materials you use for existing and potential customer engagement.

Here are some of the most common types:

4. Emails

Emails help marketing teams stay in touch with customers, leads, and subscribers. They’re useful for sharing updates, promotional offers, or actionable insights, which makes them great for user retention. They also have a pretty high ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.

All you need is the recipient’s email address and consent, which you can get with a sign-up form like this one:

Email campaigns are also suitable for reaching specific target audience personas and moving them through your marketing funnel with valuable content. You can send one-off emails to connect with new leads or set up a series of automated emails to streamline your customer onboarding experience.

To optimize your email marketing campaigns, prioritize simple yet engaging copy, personalized messaging, and clear calls to action (as seen in the example below).

By all means, avoid clunky emails and designs that ruin user experience. Thankfully, most email marketing platforms come with nice email templates. So, if you’re not a design pro, just customize a template that works for you.

If you’re not sure where to start, consider exploring some of the best newsletter platforms. These tools are built specifically to help businesses design, send, and analyze high-performing email newsletters with ease.

5. Digital Business Cards

Digital business cards are modern versions of printed cards that can also support your sales and marketing efforts. You can share these business cards through a link, QR code, or NFC tap.

Digital business cards often include more than just your contact info. For instance, the card can link to your social media profile, website, and portfolio. If you own a SaaS brand, your business card landing page can even link to a short demo of your product in action.

See this example:

So, if you were at an event and needed to share your contact details with a prospect, all they’d need to do is scan your card’s QR code. Then, the prospect can view and save your contact/business information on their smartphones. You can also share your digital business via Apple or Google Wallets.

You can make a well-designed contactless business card using Uniqode’s digital business card solution. The best thing about these cards is that they’re easier to update, and they provide useful analytics to show the engagement and conversions of your business cards.

6. Websites

Your website is where prospective customers go when they need key insights about your products.

Adding a blog page to your website can make it even more effective. With a strong content marketing strategy, you can use blogs to showcase your expertise and build online authority. Enrich your blog page with various content types like tutorials, news, comprehensive guides, or industry data, and you’ll be on the right track.

A good example is what De Castroverde Law Group does on its blog, which features defined categories and multiple articles covering relevant topics that clients would look for when searching for help.

Proper SEO strategy (search engine optimization) also ensures you can effectively target your customer intent. This way, your company’s website (including blogs) is likely to show up among the top search results when users type relevant queries on search engines like Google.

Your website should be easy to navigate. Also, ensure visitors have enough data to make informed decisions and use clear web copy to communicate your offerings.

7. Social Media

Social media is a top content distribution channel you can use to share updates, show your brand’s personality, and have an interesting conversation with customers. That’s why we can consider your social media platform as marketing collateral.

For instance, if you owned a restaurant, a food marketing agency would recommend sharing social media posts with different types of visual content, like food photos, cooking tips, behind-the-scenes, etc., to engage with your audience. Starbucks does that on Instagram:

If you’re strategic, your social media collateral can be an innovative community-based marketing tool. So share relevant content that’s helpful and interesting to your target audience.

Additionally, it’s smart to use a detailed marketing calendar and style guide to align your social media content across various marketing channels.

8. Paid Ads

If you run a quick search on Google, you’ll find some results tagged “sponsored,” like the example below. These are paid ads.

Paid ads are a form of marketing collateral you pay to promote online: Google Ads, social media ads, sponsored blog posts, etc. They help you reach specific audiences based on their interests or online behavior.

Ideally, your marketing budget should accommodate paid ads across several platforms. Every ad should have a specific goal and a call-to-action.

It would be helpful to plan your ads around specific customer personas, i.e., fictional characters that represent your actual customers based on common attributes.

With paid advertising, consider using A/B testing to determine the most effective content. Also, track your ad performance over time and make adjustments where necessary.

Conclusion

Effective marketing collateral helps you announce your brand on a large scale. This applies whether you’re reaching out through traditional (offline) or online marketing channels.

Major types of marketing collateral include brochures, posters, digital business cards, websites, emails, social media, and paid ads. When used well, these resources can enrich your sales efforts and drive significant customer conversions.

You don’t have to deploy these pieces of marketing collateral at once. For a start, make a comprehensive checklist of items you want to include in your promotional efforts. Then, audit marketing collateral pieces you’re currently using. Continue with what fits your overall business goals and budget. And, over time, you can explore the others as your brand grows. Good luck!