Do Your Marketing Materials Need a Makeover?

From your website to your logo, from your business cards to your sales sheets, it’s easy for your business image and its associated marketing materials to become outdated. To keep your business relevant to prospects and customers, your marketing assets should look current, too. If your marketing materials need a makeover, there’s no better time than the New Year to undertake it – or to start a conversation with your customers about how they can make updates or bring their marketing printing in-house by adding the right devices to their fleet. Here’s how to get started.

Gather all your marketing materials in one place. Ask every individual and/or department in your company to share all of the materials they use for marketing purposes. Scan any print materials using Xerox Capture Point technology to send editable versions directly to your chosen cloud storage. (If you aren’t currently using a central cloud storage location for your business’s marketing materials, set that up now.)

Review your marketing materials. As you look over all the marketing assets you’ve gathered, you’ll probably get some surprises. For example, you may discover your salespeople are creating sales letters that don’t accurately reflect your business’s brand, or that one of your locations is printing flyers using an outdated logo. Purge any inaccurate or unapproved marketing materials from your files immediately.

Once you get a handle on what materials exist, assess whether they need updating

Start with the basics. Does your business name, logo and tagline (if you have one) still accurately reflect your business brand? If you’ve added a new product line or are offering new services, your existing marketing materials may not indicate the full scope of what you sell. For example, if your business started out as a tax preparation service but now offers a full range of accounting and bookkeeping services as well, your marketing materials need to convey that. Is your website mobile friendly? Is it easy to navigate and use on any device? Does it clearly convey your unique selling proposition? Do the layout, graphics and colors appeal to your target customers?

Next, focus on the visual aspect of your marketing materials. Working with a professional graphic designer who has business branding and website design experience will help here. Such a designer will know the latest design trends and can assess whether your marketing materials are visually appealing and current.

Xerox channel partners have access to a wealth of marketing resources designed to help them generate leads and spur sales and drive growth. Read about them here.

Starting the Print Marketing Conversation with Your Customers

Ask most customers when they last assessed their print marketing materials and you’ll likely find that it’s been awhile.  The best print materials are eye-catching and easy to read and translate well to digital formats. Customers can save time if their print materials can translate directly to the web and vice versa. Just like their website, their print marketing assets should immediately convey the benefit of their business without a lot of reading.

Help them incorporate color. Marketing materials will pack a bigger punch when color is used to its best effect, but most customers don’t realize that color printing doesn’t have to break the bank: Encourage customers to consider using spot color on otherwise black-and-white printed materials to attract attention to the key elements, such as their offer. (Printing the business’ phone number in color has been shown to generate 44% more phone calls.)  Xerox Metallic Dry Inks can really make business cards or brochures stand out.

Once customers have the right device in place, Xerox even offers professionally designed business templates customers can use to create everything from postcards and brochures to flyers and coupons.

The print preview function on Xerox multifunction printers (MFPs) can even show them how pieces will look before they commit, so they can be confident about their results. Customers can also save money (and the environment) by using Xerox Solid Ink technology and double-sided (duplex) printing. For those who worry their employees won’t follow these rules, Xerox Versalink printers with ConnectKey technology let them set permissions restricting unauthorized employees from printing specific marketing pieces.

Putting New Marketing Materials to Work

Once new marketing materials have been created, it is easy for customers – or for you – to ensure everyone involved in the marketing plan has the most current marketing assets at their disposal. Does the team have salespeople who need to create customized materials on the fly, or multiple locations that need slightly different direct mail pieces? To ensure consistency, create templates of the marketing materials, such as a direct mail postcard that allows users at different locations to customize the street address.

The new marketing materials and templates can be easily accessed by uploading them to cloud-based storage. Xerox’s cloud connector apps make it easy to create efficient workflows for this. Just connect ConnectKey^® Technology-enabled devices to the cloud storage app you or your customers use, including Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Office 365 and more. Then documents can be scanned directly to a cloud folder for easy sharing and collaboration, or print documents stored in the cloud right from the Xerox MFP.

A marketing makeover can give a business brand the fresh, new look it needs—and bring in plenty of fresh, new business, too.

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Contact your Xerox account manager, or review the Xerox Global Partner Program and apply to become a Xerox channel partner today, to find out how we will help grow your business.

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