5 Ways Design Enhances Your Marketing Efforts

June 4, 2015

We’ve already established that design matters even to small businesses, but how exactly can it be used to bolster your marketing efforts? As a web design firm, we pride ourself on knowing how to dream up designs that combine visually appealing elements with solid functionality, ultimately creating a marketing platform for your brand that always relies on clear communication.
Many times people think of graphic design simply as a way to make things look pretty. We’re here to tell you that’s a bunch of bologna. Design brings unity to the look and feel of your brand while also providing practical organization to your content and materials. We’ve outlined 5 solid ways design is used to enhance your marketing and make your brand stand out from businesses who don’t see the value in quality design work.

1. Good Design Boosts Your Professional Appearance

If you showed up to a job interview wearing a ratty looking t-shirt and dirty jeans with holes in them, do you really think you’d get hired? Probs not. But if you showed up wearing clean, professional attire, the hiring manager would know you’re serious about the position and ready to take on the job.

The same concept applies to your business. Your brand image should always be interview ready, looking crisp and clean. Design helps to give your brand a professional look by establishing your business as authentic and trustworthy. Instead of looking like some sketchy business without a unified identity operating out of a basement, invest in design to show people that you’re proud of your brand and serious about growing it and forming relationships with customers.

Exerting a level of professionalism through your image is about making connections both in the short term and in the long term. As Paul Gustafson said in a Business 2 Community blog post, “High-quality design bolsters trust and fosters loyalty for a brand – and those benefits can continue to pay dividends well into the future.”

2. Design is a Gateway to your Brand Personality

While good design is meant to give your brand a professional vibe, don’t mistake professionalism for a boring look. You can still have a fun and bubbly appearance for your brand while presenting the company as a professional entity. The idea is to utilize design in a way that shows off your unique brand personality and highlights the assets that set you apart from other brands.

By capitalizing on your brand’s unique traits through the design incorporated into all of your marketing materials, you’ll be able to build relationships based on those positive perceptions. Be sure to follow brand guidelines as described in your style guide in all aspects of your branding. When someone sees a piece of your marketing, even just at a glance, they should be able to quickly associate the materials with your brand based on the distinct design style.

While color choices and images are important parts of the design, creating marketing materials to highlight your brand personality is also about tactically combining copy with the visuals. Remember to use strong copy and carefully select word choice to reinforce your brand persona beyond the aesthetics.

3. Design Helps to Maintain a Clean Look

Here at MayeCreate, we believe in designing to create visually engaging websites by employing simple and clean layouts. When a design is overly cluttered, viewers can’t tell what information is the most important, they don’t know where to look next, and they ultimately become so overwhelmed with the visual stimuli that they’re not going to retain any of the information you’re spitting at them.

A clean and clutter free appearance uses design elements to guide the viewer through the messages without having to say “Look here first!” By playing around with font and heading sizes, call-to-action boxes and interesting visuals like charts and diagrams, you can maintain a clean look while also getting people through the content in the exact order you want them to digest it.

You don’t have to cram every little bit of information about your product or service into a single place. Remember to use white space, simplify your text, and link people to additional resources where they can find more information if they’re interested. Don’t waste your breath assuming everyone is interested in everything you have to say about how your business works in an email. Instead, give the recipient a brief snippet and make it easy for them to learn more if they’re interested by linking to a more in-depth article on your website.

4. Strategic Design Attracts Attention and Engages your Audience

Looks are important in the business world. Good design can help you communicate brand messages in a way that attracts attention and builds interest for your brand, with the end goal of engaging audience members. By incorporating attractive, eye-catching designs into your marketing materials through color and font choices, you’re setting a tone and giving people something to remember you by. The visual interest your design stirs up in potential customers entices them to learn more about your brand and to take the next step of listening to your business pitch.

Keep in mind that there’s a clear line between strategic and tacky design techniques to attract attention. Avoid using deliberately obtrusive visual elements, like starbursts, splats and flashing graphics, to get potential customers to notice you. Instead, highlight special offers and important selling points by playing around with colors, shapes and font sizes already natural to your brand image to persuade your audience in a nonchalant way.

5. Solid Design Doesn’t Have to Cost an Arm and a Leg

What’s the point of paying to boost your messages on Facebook or place an ad in a magazine if the design of the content isn’t going to make people want to do business with you? Design can enhance your marketing efforts by acting as a cost effective way to:

• position your brand in a professional manner.
• reinforce your brand personality.
• give the brand a clean look.
• attract attention and build interest with a target audience.

Graphic design isn’t about having the fanciest, most expensive design software out there; it’s about having an artistic eye and knowing how to combine various elements in a unique way to form meaning and purpose distinct to your brand. Of course you’ll need to invest a little bit into creating high-quality design work, but it can be done on a budget to give your brand the lift it needs and prepare you for better engagement on any marketing platform.