What Should be in Your Marketing Toolkit?
Tools exist to help us effectively accomplish a project or task. In business, you need sales and marketing communication tools to inform your buying market about your products and services. Often this means you need to bridge the gap that exists between your offerings and the market. Information about your offerings should be conveyed to a prospect so that they have a clear understanding of your solution. This can be accomplished by developing tools such as a well-structured digital brochure, video, testimonial, printed material or a presentation. Add "more power" to these tools by including benefits-rich content for success stories, customer profiles, solution overviews, white papers, and more.
In some situations you may want to customize your materials for a particular vertical market or for a specific solution. All of these are tools that can be developed by your marketing resources to properly equip your sales team. Collectively, these tools form your marketing toolkit to help you communicate with your buying market.
Tools with a purpose
Your sales and marketing toolkit should be viewed as an instrument designed to accomplish an objective as effectively and intelligently as possible. To do that, consider these points:
- Determine the purpose of each communication tool and what you want them to help you accomplish
- Focus on the intended audience and how to best connect with them
- Develop and design formats based on how your audience prefers their information to be presented
- Create a logical flow to your communication content that unfolds your story
- Use language that relates well with your audience and demonstrates your knowledge for addressing their needs and solving their challenges
- Keep your content benefit-rich and results-oriented rather than over-baked with hype
- Leverage the power of client testimonials, quotes and endorsements that offer “proof” of your marketing claims
- Provide enough information to convey a strong message, but not so much that the piece does all the selling for you
- Use visually appealing graphics, illustrations and pictures that relate well to your prospects
- Be consistent with your company’s brand strengths and reputation in all communication tools
Your marketing toolkit is purposed to enhance the sales process in order to professionally convey your solution offering to buyers. Each of your communication tools will serve a specific purpose on their own and collectively form an integrated sales and marketing toolkit designed to connect well with your market.
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