The most important thing to consider is that your company’s marketing initiatives should always be based on what your potential customer wants, needs or expects to see and not what you as a business owner would like to see.
A great piece of marketing should instantly support and communicate, in a visually pleasing (or eye catching) manner, your company’s core sales message.
It should also speak at the level of your target market in a tone of voice that they can empathise with or even from the position of a peer. Different businesses to business sectors have different needs and these must be taken into account. Your advert or website can be visually attractive and exciting yet still be completely wrong for your target market. Tone of voice both visually and written is vital. I have spoken to many clients who have told me that they didn’t do business with someone because of their poor grammar!
Equally, targeting the correct person within a company structure can decide whether the marketing piece works or not. For instance ,when producing marketing campaigns for an IT company, we ensure that the reason for purchase is aimed predominantly at the MD/CEO and FD/CFO and not the IT director.
That’s because the IT director is not necessarily the ultimate decision maker in the process. He may be jumping up and down, desperate to play with your latest piece of software but if it’s implementation or purchase isn’t a sound business or financial decision it won’t get sign off.
Good communication can provide a great piece of marketing for your business. But it must be thought through. And that can only come about through a clear business and marketing strategy – not just some funky idea from a designer’s mind.
There is a structure to follow and it does take time, however it is time taken working on your business and this typically reaps the most results.
In my ten steps category I will be providing a basic step-by-step overview of the process we use in my company to ensure our design work creates the results that our clients expect from us.
If it works for us and our clients there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for you.
