Advertising & Marketing
Small and medium businesses are often without excessive funding to pour into
advertising agencies and are left to forge ahead by themselves. They go to
a printer to make some flyers, they ask publications to make some advertisements
and call a website company for a website. With such a lack of consistency,
this method is often unsuccessful in boosting sales or profits. This can be
very disappointing and frustrating for small businesses. Using so many different
people for your marketing is tragic for your business, but it's not just the
lack of visual consistency that is the problem. It is that print designers,
publication designers and web designers often lack the same thing. They don't
care about your content.
Key Marketing Tips
1. Good design + Good content works. It's not enough just to have a flash looking flyer or a fancy website. You have to tell your potential customers what they want to know. How do you know what that is? If you want to be a successful business you need to know what people want before you try and sell them something.
2. Brand association. Your brand needs to be more than just a sharp logo.
Again, good design is only one half of successful marketing (albeit a very
important half). You need to build a brand that has meaning that customers
can associate with you. What are the meanings or benefits you associate with
the Mercedes symbol? What are the meanings or benefits of McDonald's Golden
Arches?
3. Focused advertising. Many businesses make the mistake of trying to say
everything to everyone and as a result they end up saying nothing to no-one
The majority of people will only glance at the first headings on your poster
and you only have seconds to win their attention. What you want to say must
be quick and focused directly at your customers or they will have walked past,
or thrown your flyer in the bin.
4. Offer something. It's simply not enough just to tell people who you are
anymore. You need to offer something. This might be a discount or a free voucher,
but it might be that you are free-trade or that you put money back into the
community. Whatever it is, it needs to separate yourself from your competitors
and 'offer' something more than just 'we are here - give us a call.'
Activate Marketing
Activate Design doesn't bog down in expensive marketing research, graphs
and pie-charts. We do however provide a useful base of support for small and
medium businesses to avoid costly marketing mistakes. We sit in on clients
marketing meetings and give our valued opinions. We offer creative marketing
ideas and feedback. We are not just graphic designers who can make your brochures
look good. We care about your content and making sure that your marketing
and advertising has the highest chance of success.
Activate Advertising
Want to run an advertisement in a publication? Publications have graphic designers whose job it is to lay out the content and pages for pre-press. They don't look after specific clients and do not have time to sit down and discuss each advert. Although most publications will offer advert creation this is not your best option. Activate Design can meet with you and put together exactly what you need for any form of publication. The advertisement will conform to pre-press and individual publication specifications, be exactly what you want and often for a fraction of the cost. We can design advertising for billboards, posters, flyers, magazines, newspapers, yellowpages, websites, the lot.
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