Graphic design is one of the core factors in contributing

Graphic design is one of the core factors in contributing to the success of your business. Here are 5 ways you can improve your business's graphic design

Integrated and Consistent Approach

One of the key strategies to building a valuable and profitable brand is to have integrated branding across all your sales and marketing materials. This includes consistency across the graphic design of your business - business cards, sales quotes, product catalogues, annual report design, website, brochure design and more. Anything and everything that represents your business needs to be consistent with your brand positioning and style. This means same logo, same colours, same styles, same type of images, writing/copy styles and more.

What's in it for your prospects and customers

Often, businesses are guilty of focusing on themselves and what they have to offer, rather than focusing on how the prospects and customers can benefit from with the business's products or services. For all your graphic designs, remember that these are designed to attract and appeal to your prospects and customers - so make it about them. For example, focus on product benefits, not product features.

Your call-to-action is your hero

There is no point in launching a campaign, distributing sales flyers, and even having a website, if your prospects or customers can't easily see the call-to-action. For brochures, flyers, catalogues, the call-to-action might be to contact you to make a purchase or make an appointment. For websites, the call-to-action might be to fill in the online enquiry form now, or make a purchase with a simple click on a button. Whatever it is, ensure it is one of the most prominent elements.

Measure your ROI

It's true, you can measure the effectiveness or ROI on your business's graphic design or marketing campaigns. And the value of knowing your ROI is priceless. If, for example, you hired a new graphic designer to redesign all your brand identity and sales/marketing materials, you can measure the effectiveness of this by looking at the uplift (in percentage) compared in the same time over the last 5 years - taking into consideration other external and internal factors to help you make an assessment.

Look at the big picture, don't micro-manage

Training yourself to be strategic and looking at the big picture goes a long way. For example, rather than focusing on the tiniest element in a brochure design - take a step back and look at the overall objectives of the brochure to ensure all the most important critical factors have been accomplished in the design and in the execution. For example, prominent call-to-action, consistency with the brand, how your customers perceive the look and feel of the brochure, quality of the print (this needs to also be consistent with your brand positioning) and more.