As a DJ Times contributor, I’ve been able to help people all over the world with their marketing while offering some advice and suggestions on how to set their businesses apart from others in their area. Some of these topics included:
• Consumer Behavior Marketing
• Simple Marketing Ideas
• Ways to Boost Your Business During Downtime
• Marketing Tips with No Budget
• Creating Differentiators for Your Company
• Marketing New or Current Services Properly
Just about all of those things I discussed are digital or non-tangible things you can do to help your business. I’m going to spin things around a bit and discuss physical items you can offer your clients that will help market yourself more. It’s the exciting world of Marketing Collateral.
Marketing collateral helps to quickly communicate the key benefits of your business and services to potential customers in a visually compelling manner. In some ways, many of us already have collateral to show customers, such as a business card or table banner. These things can sometimes be the first point of contact they have with your company. Well-designed marketing materials make a good first impression and speak volumes about your business.
You need to be aware of how powerful the look and feel of your collateral and materials can be. When creating your basic items, like business cards or table banners, here are some tips to keep in mind:
1. Avoid Using Stock Images: It’s easy to go on a website where you order your business cards or banners and see that they offer options to use their images for your materials. While this is simple, quick and easy, you want your business to stand out so that your clients remember you. If you’re using the same exact images as the company down the street on your business cards and banners, where is the differentiator? Come up with your own unique design or use your own company branding or logo when designing collateral.
If you’re using the same exact images as the company down the street on your business cards and banners, where is the differentiator?
2. Call to Action: You should already have this on your website, on every page (more on this in a later article), but you should always have this on your collateral as well. Your website, your phone number, your email — all ways for a customer to get in touch with you easily and quickly without having to search.
Try to avoid long website addresses or a free email service, like Gmail, Yahoo, etc. It costs very little to have a professional email address (usually included with your website hosting). Even if you do not want to set up a full blown email with server addresses and passwords or if you don’t want to lose your freebie address, it’s very easy to get your professional email from your host and then have it forward messages to your “freebie” account like Gmail, Yahoo, etc. No setting up server information or having another email to log into to retrieve messages. You then would use the professional address (i.e. yourname@yourdomain.com) on all of your collateral instead of a freebie account. It looks more professional and customers will take you a bit more seriously.
3. First Impressions Matter: Your collateral is often the first impression clients have of you. You want it to be lasting and make them WANT to talk to you because they’re intrigued and have an interest in booking you for their event. Keep this in mind when creating or designing them.
Stay tuned next time for more info on collateral like Power Point and sales materials.
Joshua Volpe is owner of Kalifornia Entertainment in Rochester, NY.
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