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Marketing/Sales Tool Mania: Right Sizing Marketing Collateral
Visit an established high tech company and you will find a plethora of
marketing collateral - product datasheets,solution overviews, customer success stories, technical white papers, business
white papers, ROI calculators, and more. In some cases, marketing teams develop
a wide array of marketing tools for a new product launch or new product positioning. Alternatively,
a single, long marketing document is created to answer any and all questions; a one size fits all
approach that carries the risk of truly fitting none. In many case, the tools are created without
sufficient consideration to the correlation between marketing tools, target markets/segments and
the sales process.
Well-developed collateral is obviously essential to the sales cycle. Creating effective collateral
can be time consuming and costly. However, companies can "right-size" their marketing
investments and produce more effective pieces by taking a step back and first creating a thoughtful
collateral plan that is tied to sales activities and processes.
The goal of every marketing tool is to accelerate potential opportunities through the sales process
- from awareness/lead generation through sales close. At Stage 4 Solutions, Inc, prior to developing
new collateral for our clients, we begin by asking a few questions:
- What is the goal of each tool?
- Is the collateral piece focused on a specific customer segment/buying executive?
- When and how is each piece used during the sales cycle?
Stage 4 Solutions has developed a marketing collateral development process
where sales tools are designed in context of the buying cycle. Tools are strategically tied to each
stage in the sales process, the intended target audience(s), the needs of the audience(s) at that
specific time, and the desired outcome. Stage 4 Solutions’ process results in focused, targeted
tools that accelerate sales.
Strategic Development of Collateral
To begin the process of strategically developing marketing collateral,
Stage 4 Solutions identifies the target market and the target product/solution to be sold to that market.
Next, for each target market/target solution combination, sales stages must be defined. Typically,
the sales organization has identified predictable stages in their sales cycle. Marketing teams need
to become knowledgeable about these steps and activities. For each sales stage the following factors
must be understood:
- Stage goal
- Potential customer participants in that stage
- Each participant’s needs and focus areas
- Stage exit criteria
Once this information is collected and/or defined, marketing collateral
pieces are identified to support each stage and meet all associated requirements. Then, for each
collateral piece, key marketing messages for the target audience, product/solution detail, business
processes explanation and/or technical details are defined, created and written.
This approach not only ensures all marketing collateral is relevant to the sales team and sales
process, but it also aligns sales and marketing teams and activities to accelerate sales.
to learn more about this strategic
marketing collateral development process.
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