Guest Blog Writer: Marilyn Wo, Founder & CEO MeetAnders.
MeetAnders is based in Singapore and consists of a team of Graphic Designers dedicated to helping coaches, content creators and small business owners with world class graphic designs that convert.
Marilyn is dedicated to training her designers every day in order for her team to provide a graphic design service as close as possible to what an in-house designer can provide you with.
Keep reading to learn more about Marilyn’s tips on how to make your marketing collateral standout and convert.
The power of Graphic Design
In pursuit of growing from a humble, small business to an industry boss, content marketing has been a best friend to many entrepreneurs. I bet you’ve spent quite some time (maybe even money) to produce THE BEST blog posts and lead magnets. But guess what, you’re not the only one who did!
With all the buzz and traffic on the internet, how can you snatch your target audience’s interest? As an even tougher challenge, how could you convince them to buy your stuff?
Gone are the days where people have the patience to read through blocks of plain texts in the newspaper. With the great branding wars moved to the internet, you’ll want to turn your materials into enticing eye candy.
However, I totally understand if you have some reservations with using a Graphic Design Team.
Trust issues against freelancers or agencies? Tight budget? High ROI goals? As a designer myself, I’ve heard it all.
And so in this guide, allow me to drop expert tips on how you could get the best out of graphic design as fuel for your business’ productivity.
#1 Hype your products and services up even before its launch
Suppose that you have a big launch scheduled in six months’ time, it’d be a terrible mistake to wait until then before releasing your first marketing material.
Sure, you won’t have the usual content (e.g. customer reviews, buying guides, tutorials, etc.) yet. But with graphic design, there are tons of opportunities to get your sales pipeline rolling way even before your first product is manufactured.
Let’s assume that you’re in the middle of renovating the weights area for your gym. In every step of your workflow, take a photo or a short clip that can be enhanced by your designers as teasers.
This way, you give both your existing and potential members something to look forward to. If you’ve been spending time on social media, you surely came across products and services that already went viral even while it was still a rough prototype.
Even better, you can build a community around your photos and videos. As you publish your progress and setbacks alike, you open yourself to engagements and helpful insights. Perhaps your audience could pitch in the types of equipment they’d love to workout with.
#2 Use graphic materials to test your marketing ideas
How awesome would it be if you could know whether on not your marketing idea is a flop even before you invest (or waste) hours and a couple of bucks on it? With the power of graphic design, you actually can!
Let’s take the classic raffle as an example. How will you know if your audience would prefer a free six-month gym membership or a set of resistance bands?
As simple as it may appear, producing materials for a single giveaway can take hours of work for your graphic design team. Before preparing the graphics for guidelines, prize features, and all such event’s essentials, consider testing the waters first.
Here’s what I did for a raffle idea I had some time back. I had some brilliant t-shirt designs in mind, and what better way to promote it than give some out as freebies, right?
And so I designed a poll asking “Would you like a free t-shirt from us?” and published it on Instagram. Guess what – out of the 300 followers I had, only two bothered to click “Yes! Dying to have it!”
That single graphic material saved me a lot of effort from designing and printing an item that my audience had no interest in.
#3 Build your brand up with graphic design
Graphic design can be your best ally in cultivating deeper impressions from your niche. Superb content, an interactive website, and a complex sales funnel are nothing when they aren’t supported by equally impressive graphics.
However, every post doesn’t have to take days to create. My team works with entrepreneurs and life coaches in creating sets of templates that could be tweaked with various content. This way, you can build visually consistent brand assets and save a lot of cash too.
Moreover, you’d also be surprised at how graphic designers’ brains are branding gold mines. Seasoned professionals will know the best type of content for each customer, depending on what stage of the sales funnel they are in.
And instead of taking advantage by charging you boatloads of dollars for a kick-ass logo, they’d also tell you that it can only take you so far in reaching your business’ full vibrancy and potential.
I have worked on thousands of contracts over more than ten years, and I’ve noticed how clients love it when designers could offer more than just talent. In managing my graphic design business, I made sure to cultivate a team that knows how to ask the best questions and how to work with purpose.
Among the questions we help our clients reflect on are:
- How consistent are you in relaying your brand message out to your audience?
- Are such messages impactful and appealing enough to spark customer engagement?
- Are your brand assets visually consistent across all your marketing mediums?
- Were you able to meet your target ROI and engagement rates?
What’s next?
Look around the websites and social media accounts of the world’s top companies, and I bet you won’t see a single one that published pure text materials or settled with crappy graphics.
If you usually shop on Amazon, you’d also notice that several stores may offer the exact same product but those with more professional-looking images and infographics enjoy higher sales.
Consider these as a testament to how powerful graphic design could be. With the right team, even novice entrepreneurs can build sophisticated sales funnels and scale their businesses.
Interested to learn more about graphic design? Let’s have a chat and drop your queries below in the comment section. I have tons more of ideas and stories I’d love to share with you!
