Designing marketing collateral for your business can be a little tricky if you don’t know where to start but that’s why we’re here!
It’s important to remember marketing collateral spans across both print and digital platforms. The benefits of printed marketing collateral are varied; it presents an opportunity for your potential customers to interact with your business on a tangible level and allows them to instantly get a sense of your business’s style.
Let’s take a look at the types of collateral that can be used and some tips when it’s time to design your material.
Types of Collateral to be Designed
The Business Card
Believe it or not, business cards are still a vital aspect of business marketing. Due to their pocket-sized convenience, business cards are the type of marketing material customers can easily hold on to for future reference or recommendation.
When designing your business cards, keep in mind they are often the first interaction customers have with your business so keep your branding strong, simple and to the point. Invest in some speciality paper stock, look into finishes such as cello glaze, UV varnish or die cut shapes that can help your business stand out from the crowd. For further tips and tricks for business card designs check out our Business Card blog post here.
Flyers
The standard flyer is DL size (100mm × 210mm or the third of a size of A4) and enables your customers to learn more about your business. Flyers generally highlight interesting information or a specialist feature of your business – so ensure you include information that will appeal to your target audience.
Brochures
Brochures are a fantastic way to offer interesting yet essential information relating to your business and come in a variety of shapes and sizes to suit your needs. An A4-size piece of paper can be folded into 4, 6 or 8 panels, allowing you to include varied information to interest your target audience.
Posters
Posters are the perfect marketing material to make a show stopping statement about your business. Different sizes from A4, A3, A2, A1 and A0 can all enable you to speak volumes about your products or services. Colour is always a must for large-scale posters and try keeping your information sleek, bold and to the point – your aim is to make an impact and to get your message across to your target audience briefly but in style.
So now you know a bit more about what collateral can be used. Here are some design tips when developing your marketing collateral.
Tips for Designing Marketing Collateral
When designing your marketing collateral, whether it is business cards, posters, flyers or brochures, there are a few key printing requirements you will need to keep in mind to ensure your design is printed just as you imagined!
Resolution
The term resolution refers to the sharpness and clarity of an image. The resolution you see on your computer screen can vary from when it is printed which is due to the amount of pixels that make up the onscreen image.
When designing your printed collateral, always ensure you set up your document at the correct resolution and ensure your photographs are large enough for your printing needs.
Colour Mode
How many times have photographs appeared bright on screen but when you go to print it, it appears with less vibrancy than you had hoped for?
This is due to the differences in the on-screen colour mode – which is known as RGB (red, green, blue) and offset printing requirements CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black).
Always check with your printer as colour specifications vary from job to job and are different again with digital printing.
Size Requirements
What might look fantastic on A4 on your computer screen might not look so fantastic blown up on A1.
Ensure you do a test run before printing numerous copies of your poster. Try different sizes to see what looks the best and don’t forget to always spell check. Need a bit more help with paper sizes? You can check out paper size guides here.
If your business needs help planning, designing or printing their marketing collateral Kwik Kopy is happy to do all of it for you!
