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Collateral Planning
By Joe Purcell
Expert Author
Article Date: 2011-08-04
Ecclomedia released a publication on collateral planning to help marketers be proactive about the publications they release. There are a number of great tips worth looking over.
The four steps they propose are as follows:
- Identify your needs
- Identify audience themes
- Choose your collateral types
- Coordinate with other teams in your organization
They propose following these steps to avoid the situation that many marketers find themselves which is essentially misallocation of resources by either overspending time and money on content or overspending on content for a specific product while leaving other products out. They define collateral planning as "the process of identifying the types of collateral best suited to the preferences of your target audience, then strategizing the delivery of the content so that you can drive sales while amortizing costs."
The first step is to determine what collateral is needed for upcoming products. Then identify what audience those products are targeting, which in turn, determines which audience the collateral should target. Identify everything you can about the audience, their interests, what they don't like, etc., which will be used to tailor the collateral. After choosing which forms of collateral to use, they suggest coordinating the collateral content with others in the organization to fit their needs as well.
The article gives some great additional tips to make the best of your efforts spent on creating collateral. There are a number of other resources and discussions on the topic, and even organizations that can help consult the best collateral strategy for your organization.
About the Author:
Joe Purcell is a technology virtuoso, cyberspace frontiersman, and connoisseur of Linux, Mac, and Windows alike.
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