You have a great product or service that you know will help make your ideal customer’s life a lot easier. You have put together some marketing material on your PC and have made a great deal of effort getting it into the hands of your prospective customers. But despite your hard work, you are not getting any calls or interest in your product or service.
Perhaps it is time to take a good hard look at your marketing content and consider whether it shows any of the following signs:
1. You are not making a good first impression
First impressions matter. Particularly when it comes to attracting strangers to your brand. When you first approach your ideal customer, they have very little information to go on other than their first impressions. And it only takes a few seconds for them to judge your businesses based on visual information alone.
If you showed up at a prospective client meeting in board shorts and flip-flops, it would be hard for them to take you seriously. The same principle applies to your marketing content. Professional graphic design gives a business credibility. It shows that you have taken time and care to present your brand in a professional manner.
You may save a few bucks by doing it yourself or asking your friend/nephew/niece/cousin/etc to do it for free, but unless you or they are professional graphic designers, you will end up paying the cost of making a bad first impression.
2. Your brand is not easily recognisable
A unique and memorable brand builds brand awareness – the ultimate goal of which is top of mind awareness. At this level, customers think of your brand first when they want to buy something within your product or service category.
To be memorable, it needs to be consistently featured in all your content. A professional graphic designer uses precise colours, fonts, themes and images that are particular to your brand. They understand that these elements are what identifies and sets your brand apart and will ensure that all your content is consistent with your brand identity.
A company’s brand is one of its most valuable assets. It is what sets it apart from its competitors and tells customer what it can expect beyond the product or service offering. In the ongoing battle for customers, a strong brand can help your business get ahead of the pack.
3. Nobody’s taking any notice
Despite going out of your way to get your marketing content in front of people, no one seems to take any notice. The fact is that every business is fighting for people’s attention and so are your competitors. If you want your business to get noticed, you need your content to stand out.
Research has shown that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and that visuals are processed 60 000 times faster in the brain than text. And in our information-saturated culture, good design can communicate even the most complex messages simply and memorably.
It’s important to understand that good graphic design is much more than ‘making things look pretty’. It’s about communicating the right message to the right people in a way that will attract their attention and pique their interest. A professional Graphic Designer will combine creativity with solid research to find the best approach to communicate your message to your target audience.
4. You don’t get any referrals from the marketing you have done
It’s all good and well to get their attention, but that doesn’t mean the phone will suddenly start ringing off the hook. Your content should be designed to entice your target market to take action.
Good design will make it clear to your audience what they should do next – whether it is to click the ‘Buy Now’ button on your website, book a seat at your restaurant, visit your store or book an appointment. Whatever your goal is, your content should be designed to persuade your audience to take the next step.
5. Your content is not getting shared
Small businesses rely heavily on positive word-of-mouth when it comes to getting their company noticed. Today, that word-of-mouth comes largely from social media through likes, shares, upvotes and comments. These social media shares expose your business to a whole new demographic of potential customers, while also having a positive effect on your search engine traffic.
To get those elusive shares, you need to design your content for maximum impact. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that people are more likely to share content that evokes an emotional response. People are also more likely to share visually appealing content. Blog articles that feature relevant images get 94% more views (Skyward) and Twitter and Facebook posts with images get 2.3 times more shares and retweets (BuzzSumo). In addition, 95% of B2B Buyers prefer shorter, more visual content formats (Demand Gen Report).
A professional Graphic Designer understands the psychology of design and how to make an emotionally evocative impact that is greatly shareable.
6. You are spending time on design when you should be selling your product or service
One of the toughest challenges faced by small business owners is that they often need to wear many hats, juggling multiple roles of worker, manager, accountant, human resources professional, marketer and whatever else the business needs.
Graphic Design shouldn’t be one of them. If you do are not a professional designer, you could be wasting your valuable time and money on something that should help your business, not harm it. Let’s imagine that you have put something together and you send it off to the printer or upload to your website or social media. When it comes back from the printer, it does not look at all as you had imagined. Or perhaps you realise that your design significantly slows down your website or doesn’t fit on mobile screens. That is a lot of time and money wasted.
I’ll say it again, graphic design is more than just making things look pretty. There are specific ways design needs to be created depending on the medium you will distribute it in. Print production requires specific colour set-ups, bleeds and margins. Web images need to be a specific size and format, promotional clothing uses a different design format altogether.
A professional Graphic Designer will know the requirements of each production process and will create the correct design file for each output.
7. Your brand is outdated
If you haven’t changed your brand since you first created it, it may be time to take a good, honest look at it and ask yourself if it still represents your business and if it would appeal to your current customer base. As your business grows, you may change the focus of your core services or add additional products and services. Your customer base also may change. Perhaps you found that your product or service appeals more to women than men or more to millennials than baby boomers.
Graphic design trends also change. Logo colours, images and fonts that were popular ten years ago may have gone out of style and if your brand doesn’t keep up, it may give the impression that your business is not forward-thinking. Even classic brands such as Coca-Cola, Apple and Nike update their brands every few years to remain modern and fresh. And you don’t necessarily need a whole new design. A few simple tweaks to bring your brand into the 21st century could make a big difference.
Professional Graphic Designers keep up with the latest trends and styles and would be able to help you update your brand style.
Graphic Design plays a large part in how your business is presented to your potential customers. It affects how your brand is perceived and, if it is good, can help your small businesses stand out from the crowd. The investment you make in professional Graphic Design today, will pay off well into the future. It will help you attract the right customers, make your content stand out, entice potential customers to take the desired action and save you time and money spent on ineffective or bad design.
Sources:
http://www.howdesign.com/design-business/small-businesses-graphic-design-priority/
http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8516-design-for-small-businesses.html
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-reasons-you-should-hire-professional-graphic-designer-rob-garza
http://www.idesigni.co.uk/blog/what-can-a-graphic-designer-do-for-your-business/
https://www.visualpeople.com/blog/hire-graphic-designer/
https://designschool.canva.com/blog/design-at-work/
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=6239
http://www.ereleases.com/pr-fuel/signs-brand-is-outdated/
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