Ask five people on a marketing team to define “collateral” and you’ll get five slightly different answers. Some mean the sales deck. Some mean the printed brochure at a trade show booth. Some mean the PDF one-pager attached to every cold email. They’re all right — collateral is a wide category, and that’s exactly why it’s worth defining clearly before you plan what to make next.
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What is marketing collateral?
A working marketing collateral definition: any piece of material, print or digital (sometimes called marketing collaterals), that a business creates to support its marketing or sales message and move its audience through the funnel. Each piece is a marketing asset aimed at a specific audience, whether prospects, existing customers, or partners. The collateral meaning in marketing comes from “collateral material,” a phrase used in traditional advertising for the printed promotional collateral (brochures, flyers, catalogs) that supported a broader ad campaign.
Today the definition has expanded well past print. Marketing collateral now includes:
- Print materials: brochures, flyers, catalogs, posters, direct mail
- Digital documents: PDFs, one-pagers, white papers, ebooks
- Web-based formats: landing pages, digital brochures, interactive microsites
- Visual and video: social graphics, explainer videos, product demos
- Sales-specific pieces: case studies, proposals, pitch decks, battlecards
In short, the marketing collateral meaning is defined by purpose rather than format: collateral exists to communicate a consistent brand message and move a prospect, customer, or partner toward a specific action. Other names for it include marketing materials and promotional materials.
Marketing collateral vs. sales collateral
Sales and marketing collateral get used interchangeably, but they’re not identical.
Marketing collateral is the umbrella term — anything supporting the brand or a campaign, often aimed at broad awareness or lead generation. Think blog content repurposed as a PDF guide, event booth graphics, or a product launch one-pager.
Sales collateral is the subset used directly in the sales process — the material a rep shares one-to-one with a specific prospect to move a specific deal forward. Proposals, case studies tailored to an account, ROI calculators, and competitive battlecards are all sales collateral.
Every piece of sales collateral is marketing collateral. Not every piece of marketing collateral belongs in a rep’s hands mid-deal. Keeping the distinction clear helps teams avoid a common failure mode: reps forced to use generic marketing assets that weren’t built for a live sales conversation.
Types of marketing collateral (with examples)
The marketing collateral examples below cover six common formats, from print to interactive.
Brochures. The classic format — print or digital, covering a product, service, or company at a summary level. See our full digital brochure guide for how these are moving online.
One-pagers. A single-page summary built for a specific use case (a product, a service line, a partnership). Fast to produce, quick to share, and genuinely useful mid-conversation when done well. See these one-pager examples for B2B sales.
Case studies. Proof-driven collateral built around a specific customer outcome. Among the highest-converting formats because they answer the buyer’s real question: has this worked for someone like me?
Sales decks. Presentation-format collateral used in live or async selling conversations, usually structured around problem, solution, proof, and ask.
White papers and ebooks. Longer-form, education-first collateral aimed at earlier-stage buyers who are still researching, not yet comparing vendors.
Digital brochures and microsites. Interactive, web-based collateral that replaces a static PDF with a navigable, trackable experience — the same brochure content, but built to show engagement data instead of disappearing into an inbox.
Marketing collateral examples by funnel stage
Each stage of the funnel calls for different collateral, because the audience is asking a different question at each one. Use this table to check whether your current assets cover every stage or cluster at the top.
| Funnel stage | What the audience needs | Marketing collateral examples |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness (top of funnel) | To understand a problem or opportunity | Blog posts, social graphics, infographics, short videos, ebooks |
| Consideration (middle of funnel) | To compare approaches and shortlist vendors | White papers, webinars, product brochures, comparison guides, one-pagers |
| Decision (bottom of funnel) | To justify the purchase to their buying committee | Case studies, proposals, ROI calculators, sales decks, security documentation |
| Retention and expansion (existing customers) | To get value quickly and see what else is possible | Onboarding guides, customer newsletters, client portals, training materials |
The decision stage is where sales collateral and marketing collateral overlap most.
Why static collateral is a measurement dead end
A PDF, once sent, is a black box. You know it left your outbox. You rarely know if it was opened, read past the first page, or forwarded to the actual decision-maker. For collateral you’ve invested real design and messaging time into, that’s a significant blind spot.
Three problems come up repeatedly with static, print-style collateral:
- No engagement data. You can’t see which sections a prospect spent time on, or whether they opened it at all.
- Expensive to update. A pricing change or a new logo means re-exporting and re-sending every version in circulation.
- Inconsistent branding. Without a shared source, reps and regional teams tend to build their own versions — and brand consistency erodes over time. (See our brand consistency guide for how to prevent this at scale.)
How to digitize marketing collateral in 4 steps
Step 1: Audit what you have. List every active piece of collateral, its format, its owner, and when it was last updated. Most teams find more outdated material in circulation than they expected.
Step 2: Prioritize by usage. Start with the collateral reps and marketers touch most — the core one-pager, the flagship case study, the main product brochure. High-usage pieces deliver the most tracking value once digitized.
Step 3: Rebuild as a trackable format. Move the content into a digital brochure, interactive one-pager, or microsite instead of a static export. This is where you gain per-visitor analytics: who opened it, what they read, how long they stayed.
Step 4: Centralize and govern. Store the source in one place with clear ownership, so updates happen once and propagate everywhere the link is shared. A content governance framework helps formalize who owns what.
Marketing collateral vs. a content experience platform
Traditional collateral is built and exported once, then distributed as a static file. A content experience platform takes the opposite approach: collateral lives as a web page, updates propagate instantly, and every visit generates engagement data.
That shift matters most for high-stakes collateral — proposals, pitch decks, and onboarding material — where knowing whether a prospect actually engaged changes what a sales or customer success team does next.
Zoomforth is built specifically for this kind of collateral: brand-locked templates that let marketing and sales teams assemble digital brochures, one-pagers, and proposals without a designer for every update, plus per-visitor analytics on everything you send.
Request a demo to see how enterprise marketing and sales teams turn static collateral into a trackable, on-brand experience.
Frequently asked questions
What is marketing collateral?
Marketing collateral is any material — print or digital — used to support a brand's marketing and sales efforts, from brochures and one-pagers to case studies, sales decks, and digital brochures. The term originated with printed materials (brochures, flyers, catalogs) but now covers digital formats as well, including PDFs, landing pages, videos, and interactive microsites.
What is the difference between marketing collateral and sales collateral?
Marketing collateral is the broader category — any material supporting the brand or a campaign, aimed at building awareness or generating leads. Sales collateral is a subset used specifically inside the sales process — one-pagers, proposals, case studies, and battlecards a rep shares directly with a prospect to move a deal forward. All sales collateral is marketing collateral; not all marketing collateral is sales collateral.
What are examples of marketing collateral?
Common examples include brochures (print and digital), one-pagers, case studies, sales decks, white papers, product sheets, email templates, social media graphics, video content, and interactive microsites. The right mix depends on the buyer journey stage: awareness-stage collateral (blog content, social graphics) differs from decision-stage collateral (case studies, proposals, ROI calculators).
Why should I digitize print marketing collateral?
Digitizing collateral turns a static, one-way document into something you can track and update. A digital brochure or interactive one-pager tells you who opened it, what they read, and for how long — data a printed flyer or static PDF can't provide. It also removes reprint costs: update the source once and every shared link reflects the change instantly.
Do I need design skills to create digital marketing collateral?
Not with a modern content experience platform. Tools like Zoomforth use pre-built, brand-locked templates so marketing and sales teams can assemble a digital brochure, one-pager, or proposal without touching code or waiting on a designer for every update.
What is the difference between marketing collateral and marketing assets?
Marketing assets is the broader term: any reusable resource a marketing team owns, including logos, photography, brand guidelines, templates, and video footage. Marketing collateral is the subset of assets built to be put in front of an audience to communicate a message and move it through the funnel, such as a brochure, a case study, or a sales deck. A logo is an asset; the brochure that uses it is collateral.
Is it collateral or collaterals?
In US and UK marketing writing, collateral is normally used as an uncountable noun: our marketing collateral, or three pieces of collateral. The plural marketing collaterals is common in international business English and is widely understood, but many native readers see it as non-standard, so collateral is the safer choice in customer-facing copy.
