Back to Basics: Design Elements Proven to Reach New Customers
In today’s visual world, design can make or break a company’s brand. Every website, PowerPoint presentation, marketing email, eBook, and advertisement is an opportunity to win over new prospective customers.
With the average person’s attention span shorter than the attention span of a goldfish, design in marketing assets becomes more important than ever before. However, poor design can cost marketing agencies and their clients thousands if not millions of dollars in lost potential new sales revenue.
The Cost of Bad Design
One of our favorite statistics related to the importance of good design is:
While new graphic design platforms offer all types of modern design tools, there are traditional graphic design concepts that still hold true for sales-converting design.
In the spirit of “back to school,” we are headed “back to basics” to help our Orange County marketing agency partners and clients in technology and professional services use design effectively.
Design Elements Proven to Reach New Customers:
-
- Stay consistent and on-brand
Did you know? The University of Loyola, Maryland did a study and found “Color increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent.” Consistent coloring is crucial to effective graphic design in every marketing asset, such as your website. - Create & use a style guide
A style guide enables your marketing team and entire company to stay on brand to support stronger market recognition and customer loyalty. A style guide includes all details of a company’s visual and content marketing components from how to use the logo to color codes for the branded palette and more.If your company (or your client’s company) creates a large number of content marketing pieces such as eBooks or other gated content, then you’ll also want to consider a content marketing style guide. The Content Marketing Institute offers a nice overview of what to include in your business’s or client’s content marketing style guide. - Use fonts that resonate with digital audiences
Stumped by an overwhelming choice in fonts? Here at Revealed Creative, we know font type is as important to your brand as your logo. Using a font that is appropriate for your customer base is a key factor for strong design. Company branded fonts should be determined at the start of your branding campaign by your creative team. It’s especially helpful if the font type, approved sizing, and all details on variations are noted in the style guide. - Use colors best for web
Unless you focus solely on website design and development like we do, you or your team may not have the right color hues handy when creating a marketing campaign landing page. This is where we’ve been able to save other marketing agencies time and money by providing the expertise they need so they can concentrate on other aspects of account management. Additionally, we help companies stay on brand by noting all core colors and directions for usability in the style guide to help maintain consistency and design effectiveness. - Design with the end in mind
One of our favorite books is “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” but who knew it applies to good marketing design? Habit #2 from author Dr. Stephen Covey is Begin with the End in Mind. The concept describes the importance of focusing on your end product before creating anything to help increase its effectiveness. Whether your team is creating a new landing page, PowerPoint presentation, or conference booth graphics and literature, always begin with the end in mind.
- Stay consistent and on-brand
Here at Revealed Creative, we’ve helped dozens of marketing agencies, technology start-up’s, and professional services companies in Orange County, California increase results with better design. Visit our work page to learn more about ways we’ve helped other business reach customers.
Not ready to hire a full-time graphics designer?
Our team can supplement your existing staff or marketing agency teams.
Contact us to learn about our project-based expertise.
