Most likely, your firm spends a lot of time and money to create marketing collateral pieces to communicate your brand and to sell your services. In some instances, you actually may be recreating content that has already been created. This could include letterhead, ads, rack cards, blogs, videos, images, client testimonials, business cards, websites, promotional giveaways, and more.
Do you know what you have, where they are, how they are used, and when they were last updated?
It is important to keep content (including dates, stats, headshots) and the design current, and updated and reuse when you can, to get the most out of your efforts.
If you haven’t created an inventory of your marketing assets, you should. If you are just starting out anytime you create content for marketing, take the time to start an inventory list. This could be done using a simple Microsoft Excel template or purchasing an online management software tool.
Your inventory sheet/tool can include things like the name of the collateral piece, the location of the asset, a category (blog, website, image, handout), format (html, .ppt, .jpeg), target audience, current status, date created, date updated, update frequency, and even the author.
You should audit your collateral inventory every 3-6 months. If you are very familiar with your content this may be only necessary at time of reprinting, repurposing, or a yearly review may be sufficient.
Should you ever rebrand, change your firm name, add partners, change your logo, add a tag line, or even change firm colors, having this information will save you lots of time and effort.
Managing and analyzing your collateral also helps you know when to retire and remove old, unused, and duplicate content. It also allows you to ensure that all your pieces match your current branding style guide. Once you know what you are keeping, you can review your strategy to see how you can use them in new ways across your media platforms (web, social, digital, direct mail, etc.). You can also make it available to your attorneys and staff for use.
Knowing and managing your marketing assets, it is also important to track, measure and optimize your marketing collateral. It is important for you to regularly review and understanding your metrics and analytics. You can review costs, open rates, downloads, client intake, calls, etc. Are you meeting your goals. This helps you understand if the collateral piece or asset is helping or hurting you. Which then allows you to address any issues, make changes, or remove the piece from your inventory.
