The world has moved towards online sales in a big way. The events of 2020 have accelerated this trend even more, and it looks as if there is no turning back now. With this in mind, a lot of people are starting e-commerce stores of their own. While this is a great idea, and you can often launch one with a limited budget, you still need to ensure that you are doing it the right way. After all, you will find yourself facing stiff competition on all sides. Taking this into account, here is a checklist of some of the things that you need to bear in mind before you get started:
Choose Your Business Name
All of your marketing and promotional activities will center around your
business name, so make sure
you choose one that adequately reflects your company and everything that it has
to offer. Since people will be searching for you online, you don’t want it to
be too difficult to spell. While clever wordplay can sometimes be a nice touch,
you don’t want to try too hard. Ultimately, you want to make life as easy as
possible for your customers when they are trying to search for your business
online.
Establish the Domain Name and
Website
Ideally, your domain name needs to reflect your website as closely as
possible so that people can find it by typing it into the search bar. You can
then get to work designing and building the website. There are many platforms
that aim to make this as straightforward as possible to do yourself, but you
may want to enlist the help of a professional depending on your technical skill
level. If you are looking to give this a boost, you could always take a course,
such as AWS certification
training. Remember, while the design of your website should be stylish, this
shouldn’t mean that it loads slowly or you sacrifice integral aspects, such as
the navigation.
Choose Your Selling Structure
Some people choose to house all the products on-site, while others will
take part in what is known as ‘dropshipping’. Both approaches have their own
individual positives and negatives. When you take care of your own stock, you
need to first have enough space for it. Then you need to think about all the
proper security and insurance provisions to ensure that it is all properly
protected. On the plus side, you do have direct control of it, and you are able
to send it out whenever needed. As for dropshipping, this means that you use
certain partners to dispatch your products. You have the obvious advantage of
not needing to invest in anything directly, so there is a limited amount of
risk here. You also don’t need to worry about the storage space to hold
everything. However, you are very much reliant on these external partners and
you can bet your bottom dollar that customers are going to blame you directly
if anything goes awry with their order.
Start Your Marketing
Activities Early
There are several aspects involved in marketing, but you should
start all of them at the earliest possible opportunity. Even if your site is
not yet ready to launch, it is still a good idea to start generating a buzz
around it. For example, you can easily start up your social media profiles and
begin trying to accumulate some followers. Similarly, you can start writing a
blog as this is useful content to share, as well as being helpful to the overall
SEO of the website. Of course, you may not want to begin more serious marketing,
such as online ads and PPC, until you are ready to launch. When you do kick off
your business activities, it is a good idea to include an introductory offer or
a welcome bonus of some kind to introduce the world to your brand and
everything it has to offer.
Invest in the Right Software
and Hardware
While an online business can be launched with just a laptop and a stable
internet connection, you may well find that you need a little bit more to give
yourself the best chance of success. So, research your software options
thoroughly before making your choice. While there are many good programs that
are available for free, you shouldn’t worry about being too frugal at this
stage. Sometimes, the better software options are worth paying for. You may
also find that your old hardware options are simply not cutting it and you need
to invest in the latest technology for a higher level of performance.
Alternatively, you may feel like you need a degree of separation between your
business and personal lives, so you may decide to invest in a phone, or a
laptop that is just meant for business purposes.
Increase Your Customer Loyalty
It is certainly an exciting moment when you start generating some sales.
However, your best course of action is to make sure that these customers come
back to you time and time again. There are several ways of increasing customer loyalty. One of the most
effective is by creating an email list for them to sign up for. Of course, you
don’t want to bombard their inboxes, but some well-placed messages can prove to
be highly valuable in creating the loyalty that you seek. Then you have all
your social media accounts, which give you a direct means of communication and
a way of nudging your customers back towards buying your products.
This checklist gives you some of the basic ways that you can get your
online store up and running. Ultimately, you need to put a lot of focus on the
design and build of the website, and ensure that you start marketing at an
early opportunity. Not only this, but you have to consider carefully what you
are going to sell and how well it is going to appeal to potential customers.
Setting
up an agency is hard. But, keeping it in business, harder.
No
matter who you are as a business, a solopreneur, or an agency, with the
industry reaching new heights of competition each day, hitting the nail on the
head is becoming more challenging.
So
the million-dollar question here is how do you address the problem?
Enter
Branding!
Branding
is the one-stop sustainable strategy that enables you to establish a long-term
relationship with your consumers making sure your agency garners the strength
to glide during the next wave of disruption. But setting up a brand identity is
much more than a cluster of visual identity; a set of logo, color scheme,
typography, and a catchy tagline.
AsForbes explains it, a brand is everything that sets you apart
from your competitors. It is the tool that helps you communicate with your
audience and an opportunity to be an indispensable part of their lives.
So
the question here arises how do you overcome this critical point?
The
answer lies in brand surveys.
Brand
Surveys make it easier for you to understand your consumers; their preferences,
likes, and dislikes. It gives you a complete understanding of the lives of your
target audience, and their motivation towards a relationship with your brand.
1. What Is A Brand Survey?
A
brand survey is a valuable tool for gathering information about your target
consumer’s business, product, target market, competition, and other valuable
information that gives you an insight into how you can add value to their
business.
A brand survey typically hosts a series of questions related to the service you provide as a service provider. It often has questions related to feedbacks of previous services, past brand experiences, and how the audience feels about the brand.
2. What Is The Purpose Of A Brand Survey?
There
are two primary goals of a brand survey: provide a thorough understanding of
how your brand is perceived by your audience and understand your targetconsumer preferences.
After
all, it is your audience whom you are trying to serve with your products.
Brand
surveys act like a guide leading you to ask the right questions to your
audience to better understand them and come up with improved products and level
up your brand value.
Here
are a few merits that you can readily achieve:
It
helps you measure the brand image in the eyes of the stakeholders from time to
time
It
helps you to measure the efficacy of your brand policies
It
helps you devise a strategy to boost your brand equity in the long-term
It
tracks campaign effectiveness
Keeps
you informed about your competitors
Helps
you measure R-O-I of marketing initiatives
Keeps
you connected to your customers
3. 5 Brand Surveys for Graphic Design
Business
No
matter if you are a newbie design agency or a very established one here are 5
brand surveys that your graphic design company cannot fail to execute.
a)Brand perception survey:
This type of survey allows you to understand your
audience’s perception of your brand. It gives you a clearer picture of how your
customers think and feel about your brand and products.
A brand perception survey is an important
tool in brand management That assists you in building the right image of your
agency. Also, it is a one-stop solution
for receiving real-time feedback from your stakeholders.
Some of the key benefits of this survey
are:
Tracking brand performance
Competitive advantage analysis
Delivering
superior customer experience
Improving brand loyalty
Optimizing target audience communication
Here is a sample questionnaire that can give you an
insight into a typical brand perception survey:
Are you familiar with our brand?
Are you familiar with our product or
service?
When you think of our brand, what is the
first thing that comes to your mind?
How likely are you to recommend our
product to your friends?
How was your last experience with our
brand?
b)Brand positioning
survey:
This
survey is a critical data collection tool for improving brand equity. It helps
in the strategic alignment of your brand addressing business organizational
decisions.
The data obtained from a brand positioning survey is
critical in determining how you present your product or service to your
audience. This survey should essentially solve the unique challenges of your
organization, the vertical you operate
in, and the target market.
Some of the key benefits of this survey are:
Helps in developing brand strategy
Helps in developing a unique selling
proposition for your target audience.
Reinforces unique brand features and
helps to develop a key differentiating factor in your product or service.
Strengthens your core business and
establishes you as an industry differentiator
Develops an emotional connect with your
stakeholders
Here is a sample questionnaire that can give you an
insight into a typical brand positioning survey:
Why do you buy from us?
What kind of brand appeals to you?
What are the brand qualities that stand
out for you?
How would you read your experience with
our brand?
What is unique about our product that
appeals to you?
c)Brand awareness survey
This survey directly helps to measure the level of
awareness or popularity of your brand in the industry. This survey gives you a better idea of
devising a strategy for improved outreach to your target audience.
Few of the key benefits of this survey are:
Understanding the brand’s stand in the
target market
Increasing customer awareness about the
product and brand
Improving customer engagement with the
brand
Here is a sample questionnaire that can give you an
insight into a typical brand awareness survey:
Are you aware of our brand?
Are you aware of our product or services?
When was the first time you heard about
our brand?
How did you come to know about our brand?
When was the last time you used our
product?
d)Brand identity survey
This survey entirely focuses on brand
communications. It helps you to understand how well your organization
communicates its core values and image to its direct stakeholders maintaining a
positive overall impression, authority, and credibility in your domain of
service.
Here is a sample questionnaire that can give you an
insight into a typical brand identity survey:
When was the last time you used our
product or service?
How would you describe our brand to
another person?
What is the first thing you associate or
brand with?
What unique value does this brand serve
you?
How long have you been our customer?
e)Brand loyalty survey
This survey deals with measuring the probability of your
customers repurchasing from you. It also tells you about how strong your brand
communications are on the level of emotions.
Here is a sample questionnaire that can give you an
insight into a typical brand identity survey:
a) How
much do you trust the brand?
b) How
happy were you with your last purchase?
c) Would
you prefer our brand over a competitor?
d) How
likely are you to depend on our brand?
e) How
much likely are you to switch to another brand if its alternative was cheaper?
4.Tips To Optimize Your
Next Brand Survey
Conducting brand surveys is expensive. However, if
performed right, they can bring you extensive rewards. Following are a few
guidelines that can make sure all your brand surveys drive your business to the
next level.
a) Define
the purpose of the survey: Make sure you align the primary objectives with
the type of survey that your participants take. This sets a clear expectation
for the survey respondents.
b) Map
your audience wisely: No matter what kind of survey you indulge your brand
in, your survey participants should always be the ones who have some level of
brand awareness.
c) Map
the feasibility of the survey: A good set of questionnaires in your survey
is of no use if no one is willing to take your survey. The first metric to keep
in mind is to make it hassle-free to participate, opt for online surveys. This
not only helps you collect data from a large amount of audience mapping
qualitative analysis but also improves the dropout rate dramatically.
d) Organizing
is key: One of the primary reasons for the high dropout rate of surveys is
their incapability to motivate respondents to take the survey. So what’s the
solution?
Make it human. Make it fun for your
respondents.
Empathize with your target audience and design the
structure keeping both the usability and desirability in mind. Use color
schemes, layout, and graphics to balance the goals of your questionnaire in
alignment with the taste of your audience.
5.Avoid asking leading
questions
Data is no doubt the most critical point of running a
modern-day business. It is the fuel on which your business runs.
Biased misleading data can break it beyond repair. Loaded
questions are a big no. Avoid asking open-ended questions. Make it simple and
direct.
To Conclude
Humanize
the process of your survey. Make it exciting for your respondents.
Remember
not to make the brand survey feel like an interrogation. Instead use this
powerful tool to eradicate future disputes and improve chances of brand
interactions.
Let
this survey be an opportunity for you to develop a long-term relationship with your
customers.
We are all aware of the importance of presence in the search engine for a
brand and the results. A successful online business is never possible without a
good position on the search engine results page.
For example, if your site ranks on the 5th page of Google, then you wouldn’t
get the traffic because the majority of users stay on the first page to get
their query answered.
But what is required is the marketing plan and the techniques that would
elevate your position upwards.
Various factors such as digital marketing, SEO, content marketing influence
the digital presence, and all of these factors are directly related to the
quality of a higher ranking.
Before you proceed with the knowledge of SEO techniques in your digital
marketing, you should know that the search engine or any other publisher is
always looking for high-quality user experience.
To do this, the quality of the content must be high, while the layout of
your website should be friendly.
Here are some of the techniques that might work for you:
1. The quality of the content
Not only in SEO but also digital marketing, there
is a demand for high-quality content that positively influences the audience.
If you want your audience to stay longer on your
website, then quality is the fact that could help.
A normal user usually stays on a website for less
than a minute, and during that stay, your content should be such that the user
stays on your website for longer.
Professional authors usually write the content
that is compelling for the user to stay and read the full article.
Most SEO factors depend on the content, while
this is also an SEO factor for your site.
The content is the fact that the visitor is
transformed into a permanent customer, which increases your traffic, turnover,
and leads.
2. Optimize your content with the paraphrasing
tool
If you are thinking about the quality of the
content, the paraphrasing tool can help you.
It is available online, which replaces the usual words
with the synonyms most suitable for the standard form that’s why it is also
known as phrase tool.
Rewrite the content for uniqueness
Not only the optimization, but also the content
you post must be unique, and in this sense, the rewrite can also help you.
For example, if you write the content by copying
articles published on the Internet, the rewrite would make it unique.
This tool will rephrase sentences
without changing the actual meaning of the content.
3. Keyword research
Keyword research is the foundation of SEO for
your site because this is the word your site might appear for. Keywords are
mandatory to attract a particular audience.
Choosing a keyword, however, is difficult as you
need to have certain criteria, thanks to the technology that supports keyword searches through online
tools.
For example, the Ahrefs can help you get the
statistics of a particular keyword, and you can also get keyword suggestions
from these tools.
Ahrefs can tell you the search volume of multiple
keywords along with the CPC and the difficulty level.
Keep in mind that the CPC and volume should be
high, while the difficulty level should be low to allow for easy ranking.
4. On-Page SEO
To strengthen your position in the search engine
and improve your user experience, on-page SEO is very mandatory.
On-page SEO has the factors that are applied
directly to your site while it holds the majority of SEO optimization.
On-Page SEO has factors like URL structure, Meta title, meta description, image optimization, speed optimization, image alt text, and many more.
All these factors help the search engine to
better recognize your website and rank it higher.
If the crawlers find your website according to
the recommendation of the search engine, then it would index your web pages and
rank it higher.
5. Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is a process that takes place
outside your site, but for your site. For example, backlinks are one of the
main components of off-page SEO and its place on the other site that refers to
your site.
The off-page SEO is also mandatory because it
creates a reference for your site by connecting to other websites.
More reference for your site from others would
give the search engine a positive impact to rank your site higher.
Off-page SEO also has some other factors such as guest posts, back-linking, social media marketing, search engine marketing, and other features.
You can get backlinks through blog comments, form
submissions, directories, infographics, and backlink generator.
6. Image ALT text
We all know the importance of images in digital
marketing and this is not only beneficial for digital
marketing, but also the SEO of your website.
Images are considered as a ranking factor in the
search engine for a website, especially when you add the image alt-text.
Image-Alt-Text is the text that explains the
purpose of the image to the search engine. Google images also use the
image-Alt-Text to display the images via certain queries.
7. Easy navigation
Digital marketing needs decisive facts quickly,
as when the user visits the Facebook ad, then you should have the post that
explains your entire brand quickly.
Not only for social media, but the site also
needs navigation that is easy and convenient for your users.
The search engine recommends easy navigation
because they want your site to display enough content for users.
This allows you to navigate your user to another
helpful article to better understand him.
Remember, the reason internal and outgoing links
are important for your website is that they generate better navigation.
8. Analysis
The analysis is essential to make your SEO
campaigns successful. As you invest your time, effort, and time in SEO
campaigns, you need to monitor your campaign to make it efficient.
For example, by analyzing, you can easily see
which of your campaigns are successful, while which modifications are needed to
run successfully.
There are various tools for analyzing your site,
including the Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, UberSuggest.
These tools work to monitor campaigns such as
keywords, backlinks, traffic, top sites, countries, and content marketing.
However, you can also know your competitors and
their strategies through these tools, which would help you easily defeat your
competitors.
You can use their keywords and make an effort to
rate them.
Customers, whether they visit your website or step in your store, turn away to competitors when they don’t find the information they are looking for.
That’s where the concept of conversion rate optimization of your website and physical marketing comes into the picture. Bringing visitors to your brand is one side of the coin but converting them to customers is another side.
Source With companies spending only $1 on conversion rate optimization for every $92 on customer acquisition, it’s clear that preference is given to bringing traffic over converting the traffic to customers.
Creating intriguing landing pages, leaflets, pamphlets, and presentations impresses the customer, making you look professional and memorable. To strike a balance between the conversion rate and optimization, you need to develop a design that sells.
5 Ways Graphic Design Can Improve Your Conversion Rates
We’ll walk you through five ways of improving your physical marketing and website conversion rates.
For physical marketing
Create flyers and posters with selling capabilities
The best flyer marketing starts with the way you present the offer visually to the target audience. A strong flyer or poster design is one that is beautiful, thought-provoking, and memorable. As your customers can touch and feel a handout, it creates a lasting connection with the customers, resulting in higher conversion rates.
Steps of creating a flyer and poster
Use software like Piktochart’s presentation maker to create professionally and aesthetically looking posters with brilliant colors, the right font style, and size.
Focus on the benefits you offer in the poster. Use powerful words such as ‘free,’ ‘save,’ ‘discount’ and guarantee to keep the customers interested.
Keep the content simple by using bullet points and catchy titles.
Use images that lift your flyer or poster.
Finally, remember you’re selling and not telling. So, close it with a call-to-action. It could be a prompt for the customer to purchase, participate, or register.
With 48% of customers responding to flyer advertisements creating a beautifully designed flyer that sells is imperative for businesses looking to build their customer base.
2. Create memorable business cards
Surprisingly, a little card can make a massive difference in the conversion rates.
For companies small and big, these little cards are handed to potential clients, left on the windshield of cars, pinned to a board at a coffee shop, slipped into magazines or books at a store, or left in shops relevant to your business. A business card provides incredible marketing value.
According to data, 72% of people judge a company based on their business card’s quality, and 39% of people prefer to ignore businesses with a cheap looking card. And, with sales increasing by 2.5% for every 2000 business cards handed out – you’re missing out a lot if you ignore an aesthetically designed and eye-catching business card.
For websites
3. Use the right colors
Of all the visuals cues, color is probably the one that differentiates a successful brand from an unsuccessful one. What color comes to your mind when thinking about Airbus?
Blue, right?
Visit their website, and you will see the brand using shades of blue in their web and graphic design to relate with the customers. In the above picture, the designer presents a contrast between text and background colors. It ensures the legibility of the text, which is essential for conveying a business message.
Performable increased their conversion rates by 21% on changing the CTA button from green to red.
Apart from improving readability, using the correct contrast psychology helps you create an emotional impact with the customer. In website design, follow the 60-30-10 design rule for increasing conversions. It’s a scheme of using colors to create the maximum effect.
60% – dominate hue,
30% – secondary color
10% – accent color
This helps in striking a balance allowing the eyes to move from one focal point to another effortlessly.
Using too many colors is one of the most common graphic design mistakes. It’s more like trying to convey a million emotions on a single webpage. Therefore, before choosing the color on your website, study your target audience because men and women like and dislike specific colors. Many colors have opposite effects in different parts of the world. White is considered positive in western culture, but it’s an indication of sadness in the Asian region.
Rely on the power of usability testing to gather information about the customers and make an informed decision.
4. Use direction cues toward your CTA.
Visual cues are a part of graphic design that draws attention to the critical areas on the website. It helps the website visitor to interact with the brand.
Here’s a great example of a visual cue from Google’s marketing platform. These people are talking to each other. Just near to their hands is the CTA to talk to the sales team of their marketing platform.
The way they’re seated makes your eye look towards the bottom of the page to the CTA.
From the above example, it’s clear that visual or directional cues help direct a person’s attention to a particular area for increasing the conversion. Instead of searching the entire webpage, the visual cues narrow the scanning space of the visitors. The visitors know where to click to get more information.
According to research, there are two types of visual cues in graphic design, which drives maximum customer attention, and they are:
A human-looking at the CTA or the form
A hand-drawn arrow pointing towards the CTA or the form
Human beings are naturally inclined to follow traditional cues like eye-gazes, arrows, and more as it helps figure out the next step. Whether it’s a signup form, CTA button, or a social media share, visual cues have come a long way to help the website increase their conversion rates.
Finally, focus on performing usability testing to understand the directional cue resulting in maximum clicks on the CTA.
5. Religiously follow the 8-second design rule
Websites have just 8-seconds to grab the visitor’s attention. With such a small window of opportunity, make every millisecond count. From using action words to making large CTA buttons, leave no stone unturned in creating a positive first impression through your design.
Focus on including eye-catching images, interactive content, or information videos for winning their attention. You can even use animated exit-popups to re-engage a customer who loses interest.
The few seconds of customer interaction are crucial for boosting sales and conversion rates.
Conclusion
Graphic design is not bread and butter, and getting it right in an uphill battle as it differentiates a successful business from an unsuccessful one.
According to Adobe, 66% of time-starved and skeptical customers crave content that is beautifully designed. Such is the power of design.
Whether it’s infographics, web design, leaflets, presentation, flyers, landing pages, or posters, the need for the hour is creating a design that resonates with the customers.
Using these five graphic design principles, you can give a massive boost to both your physical marketing and website conversion rates.
After implementing these principles use usability testing to test actual customer behavior and validate against your instincts. It helps in understanding what’s visually attractive and what’s not.
Try and test to increase the conversion rate exponentially.
Today search engines are training Algos to be more ‘sapio-pathic’ for traffic retention. Allowing empathetic websites for more organic click-through action. Interactive fit-bits call for User experience designs (UXDs) that match the tone for the served contents. Designs that speak through aesthetics, and layouts that foretell the wants and needs.
If you are getting high traffic but no business, then it’s high time to rethink your website design.
Don’t worry, there is no need to redesign from scratch. Rather UX/UID makeovers allow more accessibility to your website contents. An interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI) that lingers and ensues longer interactive sessions. Of course, a great way to tap the mobile net surfers and users. Because bigger fonts, a background shader, or a ‘read aloud’ option is fun to fetish.
Know how UX/UI web designs are tapping the ranking factors for future SEO specialists. Here I am leaving 3 pro-tips to steam your interest over UX/UI designs.
Before that, know few traded false-beliefs about UI/UX design fidelity which needs to busting
White space is never a waste space
Simple designs equal to fewer elements
UX is only for usability
All web users are readers
Need for 100% design originality
The Ultimate 3-click rule for web navigation
Now feel smarter. Smash the UX/UI bluffs who try to pitch such fossil ideas.
Moving on….. UX/UI –
Improves SEO
User Experience (UX) ensures a ‘longer’ click-through.
A User-friendly design will make your users obsess over your website. For all ‘content is king’ influencers out there, trust the design aesthetics. Rich web designs with easy navigation, less page-load time, and optimized to fit any screens are a must to stage your content.
Kill the negative space on your website! UXDs understand that visual organization of web layouts will generate more leads. Serving not only the purpose of more content visibility but also increases the conversion rate for the users.
A successful landing page conversion strategy will debunk the contenders in the market. And when your web designs resonate with your visitors, you are all set for the long run. Be it event call-outs, awareness campaigns, or delivering opinions, you will always have enough virtual attendees for participation.
It is very likely that a researcher who landed at your website, hungry for answers and yet not contented. You might think that you lost a lead, this is where one can go wrong. Redirect the lead towards other curated contents. With which you can transform slug moments into a head-turning event.
Ask your visitor what they are looking for. Plant a few relatable blue links or consider a UX Design suite for your website.
Whereas using Interactive templates, you can churn-up endless possibilities. Small survey boxes to get the user’s views, a panel window with many FAQs, or even tips to improve searches online.
You might be thinking that aligning such concepts within a single-window view is an impossible feat. Instead, ask a professional UX designer to chalk-out an engagement plan for your organic web visitors. The clutter-free designs will promise an immersive user interface that adjusts the eyeballs screening the contents.
Acts-Out Emotions
Who doesn’t like to click on jolly features? Or play with elements that animate when touched? Narrating one of my personal experiences where the pet-care website had a ‘waking dog’ cursor when you land on their web page. A minute detail has touched this pet-lovers heart and that’s how UI designs imprint on visitors.
In developing quality user facets, User Experience designers rely on evidence decked by behavioral sciences. Take Nielsen Norman for example, how his design team works on evidence-based UX designs by collecting proof of events on user testing and behavior.
Ending with a happy note for the crawlers who are reading the article, look out for SEO – UX/UI collabs. The integrated application is revolutionizing the concept of what the web designs were yesterday and are now.
Here is what I suggest. First you must have a portfolio of your samples. If you do, then look for temp agencies to show your portfolio. These temp agencies help find production and design jobs in large and small corporations and companies. For example, when I first moved to Dallas, I looked up a company called Art Squad. They found me a job in less than 2 weeks as a freelance designer for Blue Cross. I use Art Squad anytime work is slow. They always have some type of work, whether good or bad, but it all pays the bills. I have listed below a few places you should look into to help you find temp to full-time work.
Nowadays, when digital marketing is a must, you shouldn’t
neglect the power and effectiveness of more traditional marketing tactics.
Print marketing is one of them, and it’s still highly
relevant.
If you’re wondering how this kind of promotion can help you
grow your business, it’s worth mentioning that 56%
of customers believe that print marketing is the most trustworthy type of
marketing.
While online ads and email marketing are great strategies
which will definitely help you stay on your prospects’ radar, print marketing
has another quality which will improve your brand awareness and make it more
memorable in the eyes of your audience – it’s tangible.
Unlike online promotional materials which are in a way
ephemeral and available only on mobile and computer screens, print media items
stick around homes and offices for days or even months, thus having a longer
impact.
Here are a couple of print marketing ideas that you can
leverage.
1. Business Cards
Despite the fact that people have their smartphones with
them at all times, and that they can easily memorize phone numbers or start
following businesses on social media, business cards will never go out of
fashion.
They’re excellent for traditional, person-to-person
networking.
You can hand them out at expos, trade shows, meetups, or any
other industry event you attend. You can also leave them on the counter in your
store or give a bunch to your friends and family so that they can promote your
business within their networks.
Business cards help you establish both a mental and visual
link with your prospects. Given that these wallet-sized pieces of paper give
you a chance to make a great first impression, it’s crucial to make sure to opt
for a quality, visually appealing design which will present your business in
the best possible light.
Remember that 72% of
people will judge your company based on the quality of your business cards.
2. Postcards
Postcards are a pretty convenient medium for conveying your
promotional message. They can be read
without opening and turning pages, so that you can be almost absolutely sure
that your prospects will at least have a glance at them even if they decide to
throw them away.
Again, aesthetics play an important role, which means your
postcards have to be eye-catching and printed on high-quality materials if you
want them to stand out from all the other direct mail your prospects receive.
You can score additional brownie points if you decide to
send birthday and holiday postcards to your customers, as this practice is a
great way to build an emotional bond with them.
3. Branded Merchandise
People love freebies especially if they’re functional and
attractive.
That’s
what makes pens, thumb drives, phone chargers, or tote bags with your logo on
them great
for marketing purposes. Your customers will be happy to use them every day,
which means your brand becomes a part of their daily routine.
This is a great example of subtle and nonintrusive brand
repetition – your customers promote your brand simply by using the pen you gave
them, and by circulating around this small item reaches a lot of people and
spreads brand awareness.
Similarly, you can use digital printing to customize your
branded T-shirts and turn your customers into your walking advertisements.
4. Flags, Signs, and Banners
All brick-and-mortar stores need proper signage.
This means that your business will greatly benefit from
custom flags, signs, and banners that you can put both in your store as well as
in front of it.
It’s equally important to take advantage of these
promotional materials to distinguish your company from your competitors at
different trade fairs.
As these events tend to be crowded, it can be hard to stand
out.
Printed banners are an essential element of any successful
trade show marketing strategy, which is why you need to include them in your
trade show kit.
A well-designed display will turn heads and attract visitors
to your booth as well as reflect the identity of your brand.
5. Stickers
Although seemingly obsolete, this old school marketing
tactic has great potential for promoting your small business.
If you look around, you’ll actually see a lot of stickers on
car bumpers, laptops, windows, phones, and any other place you can think of.
Politicians have been using them for decades to promote
themselves and attract supporters.
Popular brands, such as Apple, give away branded stickers
with every item they sell.
The best part is that this tactic is very affordable,
cost-effective, and sticky – these promotional items generate long-term brand
exposure.
Besides, you can use stickers as part of a guerrilla
marketing campaign and place them on signs, poles, bus stops, and other public
spaces – this is a strategy that helped Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder,
promote the social news aggregation website on a budget.
According to him, the company only spent $500 on marketing,
and a big portion of that money was used on stickers.
6. Catalogs
You probably wonder why we are suggesting physical catalogs
in the age of Amazon and digital promotions.
Just like business cards, these colorful booklets are still
here and they won’t go away soon, because they deliver a unique, rich, and most
importantly, tactile customer experience. There’s something irresistible about
flipping through glossy, crisp pages of the latest product catalog from your
favorite store.
For example, IKEA is still big on the idea of print catalogs
– more than 210 million copies are delivered to their prospects in 44 different
countries. And this strategy apparently works, as the Swedish furniture giant
invests in this strategy despite the fact that the online version is available
too.
To make the most of your investment in this strategy,
combine it with customer data and target customers who are likely to spend
more. Another reason for the persistent success of catalogs is that they offer
a more intimate customer experience.
These traditional print marketing ideas can help you cut
through the noise more easily and outperform your competitors who rely mainly
on digital strategies. By combining online and physical marketing, you can
expand your reach and make sure that your message is properly conveyed and
heard by every segment of your audience. Michael Deane is one of the editors of Qeedle, a small business magazine. When not blogging
(or working), he can usually be spotted on the track, doing his laps, or with
his nose deep in the latest John Grisham.
The image above looks like a collage of photographs, but in fact, it’s been generated by an artificial intelligence. And as real as they may look, the people in the image aren’t actual humans.
