How do you take an idea, a brand, an offer, or any other notion and turn it into an effective piece of marketing? Different agencies and organizations have a variety of practices and mantras they stand by, but they usually all have something in common.
Good Design Means Everything
Graphic design helps bring an idea into reality, puts an image into the mind of a consumer, and transforms copy from simple words into an effective marketing tool. Design is one of the most important and effective tools in captivating an audience and engaging a target market. Visual design helps elicit certain emotions and feelings that copy or other materials just don’t have the ability to do a justice. The age-old adage of “pictures speak a thousand words” is especially true and especially important when you could only fit so many words on an advertisement to begin with.
Developing Design for Advertisements
The Black Bear team, from our account managers and copywriters, to our developers and designers work seamlessly hand-in-hand to create beautiful graphic design for websites, flyers, banners, and all sorts of media placements.Two areas Black Bear focuses its expertise on, Social Media marketing and Pay Per Click, are prime examples of areas where good design can make all the difference.
Social Media Marketing
When designing for social media, Facebook, and Instagram especially, it’s important to remember the size and content limitations for advertisements. Facebook’s recommended size is 1200 x 628 pixels, with no more than 20% of the image having text. That’s not a lot of room to work with! Fortunately, our design team knows how to make the most out of every pixel.
Sites like Facebook and Instagram like to see brighter and “happier” images that relate to the product. It’s best to include your logo somewhere in the image as well as a quick headline. When you don’t have much room to work with, you really have to rely on that image and headline combination to do the heavy lifting.
There are a few ways to get a bit more text and size out of advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, and our design team works tirelessly to create the best designs and most effective advertisements. We put all our designs through a checker before sending them to clients to be sure they are approved content.
Pay per Click Advertising
Pay per Click advertising can be anything from the skyscraper ads you see on the sides of articles and websites, to regular square display ads, to the top featured search results on google. PPC advertising is a great way to maximize your budget and focus on clicks and conversions.
When designing PPC ads, it’s all about the button inside the ad that directs the user to some sort of action. Whether it be a sign up, a request for more information, or just a simple “click here” the button is the most important part—clicks and conversions.
With any display advertisement, you have an extremely short amount of time to try and get the user’s attention, and with PPC advertisement you have roughly one second to catch the eye, disrupt the action, and try to attract the user.
It’s important to make the design flexible so it can fit in any size space. It’s good to have colors and callouts for important messages and buttons, and having a strong image to support a quick headline is paramount. Many of these advertisements will be viewed at small sizes, so it’s important to make sure all copy and images are visible and legible.
The environment of the advertisement is crucial to consider. Consumers are trained to ignore the ads they see, so you need to focus on the right content for the right circumstance. Ads should be simple, but not boring. You need to catch the eye, but not overwhelm it. It’s important to make sure all tone, imagery, and colors fit the brand guideline for your client.
