Graphic Design & Marketing: Why They Go Hand-in-Hand

October 11, 2019

One of the most eye-catching ways to attract consumers to your business is through high-quality user experience and print design. Marketing your brand sends a strong personal message to your consumers. This message should carefully: create a strong first impression, build your brand’s identity, deploy your brand’s message, attract a following, and develop trust among consumers. Not only do major business’ use graphic design to cultivate a following, but you should too and here’s how:

Create a Strong First Impression

More often than not, a consumer’s first impression is going to be your company’s marketing design and branding collateral. You want this visual to be strong and alluring. For some business owners, this could be a tough decision. So often times, we run focus groups to get feedback to figure out how to make a strong visual impression. Focus groups are intended to test out your market, use them to your advantage.

Once you’ve come up with a strong and deliverable identity, use it consistently. Often times, consumers will judge which company to choose just based off of their branding. Inconsistency in look and feel of your collateral could lead to a negative impression. Consistency generates trust and likeness, users enjoy being able to recognize you and your logo frequently.

Build a Brand Identity

This is more than just your logo. While important to have a forefront image that accurately portrays the message you want your business to send, establishing a logo is just a portion of your brand’s visual identity. Often times we will work with organizations to assist in communicating their messages. Having an identity for your brand is how you’re going to stand out from the competition and keep consumers coming back to you again and again.

Your brand identity should establish your presence among consumers and your competitors within the marketplace. Moreover, knowing how you are situated within your market will allow you to drive your brand’s specific design content. How do you fare amongst your competitors? Knowing the answer to this question is key to cultivating and driving your business’ messages and designs.

Design Drives the Content

Define what it is you are trying to sell before you start creating. Clearly defining your content leads to a successful campaign. Have defining images that align with your business’ goals. These images should align with not only the message you are trying to convey but must accurately consider your audience. Are the images you are portraying appropriate for your campaign and its target audience? For example, we will often discuss the message behind our photos and create a photography brief before our photo shoot. We often advise our clients to have a conversation with their designer or marketing consultant to receive input on what the visuals should and should not portray.

Additionally, we advise our clients in terms of coming up with a copy and tagline and ensuring that it is compelling and engaging.

Deploy Your Brand’s Message

Knowing how your brand is positioned is key to delivering a message that will resonate with your target audience. This message should communicate a feeling about you and your product. Do you have an emotive, functional or symbolic approach?

For example, in a recent blog, we discussed how we positioned Full Spectrum Health Services (FSHS) as an emotional brand to help them stand out. While many of their competitors were functional brands, we decided to take a different approach. Thinking about how your company chooses to reach its consumers is the first element to marketing the design of your brand. The second is to apply images, fonts, and colors effectively. These all play a significant role in communicating the feeling your brand is striving to portray. If feeling and evoking emotion is how you choose to approach your consumers, perhaps adding glaring red colors and fonts to your designs is not the way you want to go. Positioning FSHS as an emotional brand drove every design-content decision. Therefore, it is an important first step on the marketing side.

Attract a Following

Speaking of visuals, use high-quality and high-resolution media to attract users to you and not repel them away from you. Size your media appropriately; in the case of a website, images could slow down how fast the website loads. Incompatible images may face slow load times which will impact your SEO (search engine optimization) score.

For print media, blurry photos do not communicate a proper brand message. Media implements your design to attract the audience that you need. What about your brand’s behaviors attract your audience to you? Communicating these behaviors through your design will not only attract users to you but keep them there. This manifests in website traffic and Calls to Action (CTA). Allow users to connect with your media by leaving social cues (likes, comments, and shares). Establishing interaction between your media and the user will make them feel more connected to you as a brand.

Final Thoughts

Marketing and graphic design both send strong personal messages to your consumers. These messages should always create positive first impressions, uphold your brand’s identity, deploy your brand’s personal message, attract a following, and develop trust among your consumers. Communicating your message should align with your company’s position and always go beyond just your brand’s logo. Using carefully constructed content-design and marketing puts your organization in the position to reach its target audience and thrive.

Success varies between organizations, review your organization holistically to examine all of its practices. Looking at the process of design and implementation from a holistic sense allows for success for years to come.