Having a salesperson who introduces your brand, warmly engages with your customers, and makes a sale happen would be a dream come true, isn’t it? Planned well, that’s exactly what marketing designs can do for your brand. They act as virtual salespeople who talk to and sell to your customers.
Good graphic design for marketing introduces your brand to the world, to the actual people who will be interacting with your brand and using your products and services. It is about showing how you do what you do. And how you do it differently. The key is to use your designs to convey information rather than just to create visually pleasing content. When it comes to marketing designs form always follows function.
You have designs that look great but somehow do not convert as expected. Or you have great ideas but find it difficult to get your designs to capture these ideas. Sounds relatable? Let’s change that. We’ll tell you how to create marketing designs that actually work for your brand.
But before that, let’s quickly see why graphic designs are important in marketing.
Do you think people will be willing to try a random brand just because they find the brand selling a product they are looking for? Probably not. They are more likely to go with a brand they are familiar with.
Graphic design for marketing a brand mainly focuses on consistently presenting information to the target customers. By creating a signature style for your brand and sticking with it you are building familiarity. Making customers aware of your brand and what you do is the first step to better marketing.
Earlier, there were just a handful of platforms to connect with customers. But now business interactions happen everywhere. Customers find brands through web banner ads, social media promoted posts, or even when they are watching a video or using an app on their smartphone.
A robust graphic design plan for marketing makes it possible to keep up with all these platforms. And you can be sure that your brand looks and feels the same across these customer touch points.
Will you be ready to buy a product online without seeing any product images? Not likely. Similarly, for people to trust your brand and actually be willing to buy from you, you should show them what your brand is about. And for this, you need quality graphic design for marketing.
Your marketing designs will answer their questions about your brand itself and the product they are looking for. And it will tell them how your brand solves their problem or creates value. That’s how you build trust. Building trust is the first step to creating brand loyalty.
There is only a thin line of difference between graphic designs for branding and those for marketing. Designs for branding focus on projecting your brand in the best light and creating a strong name for your business. Marketing designs focus on actually conversing with the target customers, getting them to sign up or make a purchase or fill out a form. With that said, we’ll tell you a few practical tips to fine-tune your designs for better marketing.
Brand guidelines are a must for marketing designs. From the colors and fonts you want or don’t want in your design to the tone of messaging or visual style, you might have a lot of ideas in mind. And these might be ideas based on your perception of the brand. When you put these ideas together and create a design reference manual you are creating your brand book or brand style guide.
Whether you handle the designs yourself or source them to an in-house designer or outsource the designs, the style guide will be a useful reference. It ensures that the designs are aligned with the core ideas and objectives of the design.
We easily remember people who have strong morals and live by them. Similarly, customers love brands with strong core values. So, before you start designing your ads and social media posts, you should clearly lay down your brand’s values, and the message you wish to convey.
The other main aspect is that you want all your designs to work cohesively. For example, if you talk about sustainability on social media and your ads sell products with heavy plastic packaging, do you think it will make sense to the customers? Not at all. They will not trust a brand that sends out confusing signals.
Graphic design for marketing has the power to influence the target market’s perception of your brand. Use this well. And be consistent with the message your designs convey. That’s when your designs actually add value to your brand.
Graphic design and art feel like similar concepts since they both involve creativity. And yet they are both so different. With art, you are expressing your emotions. But with designs for brands you:
All that along with evoking an emotional response of course!
So, start by pointing out what problem each of your designs will solve. Will it help clarify customer queries about your brand or a particular campaign? Or will it make it easier for them to understand a product better? When this purpose is defined, your designs feel more accurate and in line with the goals of the marketing campaign.
Every marketing design consists of a bunch of design elements that come together to convey a unified message. To make them all work in harmony towards the common goal, keep your designs simple. How do you do that?
There are various online and offline marketing channels. But what works for one brand might not work for another. Some local brands, for example, might find billboards and flyers to be the best way to reach their localized customers. But this might not work for brands that mostly sell through online channels. That’s when digital marketing might be of higher priority.
But in both cases, a good marketing plan will be a mix of both traditional print and digital graphic design for marketing. The weights you assign to them, or in other words, the number of designs you create in each category might vary based on your business model and marketing goals. Irrespective of your business model, here are the marketing design categories that fetch the best ROI especially when you have a tight marketing budget.
To maximize your returns you need a hybrid plan with both print and digital designs that look visually consistent.
So, marketing and design should go hand in hand. When you have great content and some great products to sell, what use would this be if your brand goes undiscovered? Creating strong graphic design for marketing ensures that you bridge this gap. And makes it easy for people to discover your brand and interact with it. And also to find out why it is worth sticking with your brand despite the fact that there are many similar ones out there. So, aim for designs that resonate with your marketing goals in every dimension. And when these accurately capture your brand’s tone of messaging as well, they are going to give you the best returns on your marketing budget.
