I recently subscribed to an email list for a friend’s business. But, when I saw the first email newsletter, I found myself very uneasy. The business deals with photography and design, and yet the email that landed in my inbox was a bare-bones, plain text email. You’d think someone like that would put more care into the message he’s trying to convey — maybe I need to tell him that the team at our Orlando marketing agency has a few ideas to help him understand the role of design in marketing.
Now, in marketing, each of us has our strengths. I understand that a copywriter at our Orlando advertising agency shouldn’t necessarily be counted on to design a document, or a strategist doesn’t need to know a ton about website development. But I do think design should permeate through all areas of business.
It’s important to have consistency in all brand assets. This doesn’t just mean print ads, but applies to internal and external marketing tools including sales decks, memos, website design, social media and, as you saw above, the email experience. The goal here is to make sure you’re telling the same story across all platforms. This will make it easier for people to identify your brand, and they can then follow along for the ride when they see your emails or your Facebook posts. And, it just looks nice!
Thinking about my friend’s photography business, he probably has a number of excellent assets to help sell the story of his business. He’s asking people to spend a lot of money to use his services, and while having an email signup list is a great first step, that list also needs to reflect the essence of the brand he wants to create. A plain text email? I see plain text emails all the time. What I want is for you to really wow me! Use these visual techniques to help entice me to choose you over competitors.
Your website should be a reflection of your business. The assets you put on your site and photos that you choose are all ways you market yourself, so it’s important to take care in what you’re presenting to the world. This even goes into the user experience of the site – you need to make sure that if you have a shopping cart feature, it’s easy to use, and that if you have a ton of content on the site, it’s easy to navigate. For some reason, people tend to overlook these essential aspects in trying to design websites —but these days, you can’t afford not to think about them because they translate to real ROI.
Recently, I heard about the Barbarian Group, an innovation agency in New York highly focused on design. True to the brand, when they moved to a new office, they emphasized the importance of design. As such, they created a massive single sharable desk as a place for people to keep ideas flowing. It’s a testament to the fact that design truly permeates every aspect of the business – even in the workplace setup.
The team at our Orlando marketing firm knows the value of design, and would love to help you create and execute design-oriented marketing strategies. Contact us to set up an appointment to learn about how we can help you!
