Collateral Design – Printing with your Brand in Mind

Valuable resources are spent on creating your brand and company logo, but if the effort stops there you might be missing out on a great marketing opportunity: applying your marketing design to brand collateral.

Extending your Brand
Collateral is made up of everything a company distributes – business cards, flyers, promotional materials, packaging – every physical item that leaves your business should be seen as collateral and as a marketing opportunity. Consistent and unique branding on your company’s collateral will go a long way toward creating your identity in the market.
Even things used in-office can become inadvertent marketing tools: whether intentional or not, office supplies often end up outside the office so why waste such an organic marketing possibility with brand-less materials? Collateral design and branding can help turn waste into exposure!

Planning Collateral Design
Here are four tips on creating engaging collateral design and inspiration:

  1. Think Broadly – Don’t limit the extension of your brand identity to just your logo or your website. Instead find ways to incorporate your branding decisions across a wide spectrum – business cards, promotional materials, brochures, physical signage, apparel, and office supplies.
  1. Follow (or create) a Style Guide – Getting everyone on the same page can be difficult, but a style guide takes out the guess work. When it comes to a style guide, the more specific the better. Start with colors, logos, and fonts – but also include key words, phrases, and logo usage guidelines. Having a complete style guide makes your decisions easier, quicker, and always on brand.
  1. See Shipping as an Opportunity – If you are sending physical products to your customers, then extending your collateral design to include shipping materials is a great way to stand out. Think of the Amazon smile logo that comes on the side of every package sent by the giant retailer – at an estimated 608 million packages per year that is 608 million opportunities to reach customers! Even on a smaller scale branded packaging helps create a distinctive look and brand loyalty, while also reaching postal workers, neighbors, and friends.
  1. Include a Call to Action – Creating appealing collateral is important to establishing a consistent brand, but it is only effective if it drives more business. In some cases this is obvious – business cards, promotional materials, and signs – but it’s surprising how often businesses can miss an opportunity to turn an interested party into a future customer. Including, at a minimum, contact information on every piece of material is a way to insure that no potential customers are left in the dark. Beyond that, collateral material can include discount offers, push a newsletter, or social media interaction.

We Can Help
Finding ways to extend your brand vision into every corner of your collateral creation can be a difficult task. If you’re struggling with how exactly to capitalize on consistent branding, Fusion Group USA combines expertise in branding, graphic design, and custom printing in order to provide top to bottom branding and printing solutions for your business – including collateral design.
Call us today to see how we can help create branding solutions for you.

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