Sometimes, businesses don't understand the positive impact that hiring a graphic designer can have, and try to do everything themselves. As a cost saving measure they might get a staff member to do their design, even if this isn't the staff members area of expertise. This quite often leaves staff struggling to effectively create and design, taking longer than needed and neglecting their core tasks. A good graphic designer not only adds value to the business from a design and branding viewpoint, but also has the additional bonus of allowing staff to concentrate on their core jobs and what they are really good at.
The Attention Span of a Goldfish
But why should a business care about what they are putting out there to represent their brand, or try and help grow their business?
Well, the old saying "A picture says a thousand words" has never been more relevant than in today's fast paced, visually dominated world. Digital devices along with decreasing attention spans in young audiences (on average about 8.25 seconds....which, by the way is shorter than a goldfish of 9 seconds), means marketing messages not only need to be delivered as quickly as possible, they need to grab attention in a visually saturated market.
Modern audiences just aren’t as willing to invest as much time in reading your message through text - images and videos are the way to capture your market's attention, and a Graphic Designer not only quickly and effectively creates beautiful visuals that will be effective at grabbing your market's attention, but also has the knowledge to adapt your digital marketing to different platforms so you get the most bang for buck.
What is a Graphic Designer?
A Graphic Designer is a professional who creates and assembles images, typography, or motion graphics, improving the aesthetic appeal of your business. A great Graphic Designer makes your brand stand out in a crowded market, appear professional, and helps opens your company up to entirely new audiences. You can think of Graphic Designers as some of the the best communicators in the world - their work doesn't need to be explained, the audience just gets it - and that's powerful for you and your brand.
A great Graphic Designer will:
- Boost Your Brand
- Save You Time
- Ensure Consistent Messaging
- Improve Digital Marketing Returns
- Provide Expertise
- Inspire Employees
Boost Your Brand
High quality branding is vital - your brand is how your customers perceive you - in every customer facing element – the tone of your communications - verbal and written, your company name, your customer service policy, and – most importantly – how your brand looks. Your brands look and feel encompasses everything from your logo, colours, website and marketing materials, vehicle branding through to chosen fonts for communications - this is your branding speaking for you - so make sure it gives customers the correct impression.
A great Graphic Designer helps you manipulate these elements to ensure that every customer perceives you in the right way - the way you want to be perceived. Having a strong brand is so vitally important - it builds trust, which in turn encourages positive referrals from customers.
Save You Time
Most businesses simply don’t have the time to make a great job of their own graphic design. Good design is not something you can just make do - it’s a combination of skills with a lot of time and energy behind it - and takes years of dedication to master the software needed to complete all your graphic design work to a professional level. Great graphic designers come with all these skills intact, ready to use them to your advantage, and free you up to focus on your core business for which you do have the skills.
Ensure Consistent Messaging
Inconsistent messaging appears unprofessional and confusing to your audience, especially when they see different logos appearing in odd sizes across communications, all with different fonts and and layouts. The message you portray without even realising it, is that you provide an inconsistent service and doesn't inspire trust among your customers. A graphic designer can create, and implement a design style guide which can help you deliver a consistent message right across your brand, and ensures everyone is on the same page.
Improve Digital Marketing Returns
When running a a digital marketing campaign, quality graphics have proven to be one of (if not the) most important factors to success, particularly when it comes to content marketing, and this is where your Graphic Designer really helps your business grow,
- Blog articles posted with images get 94% more views than articles without images
- Twitter and Facebook posts with images lead to 2.3 times as many shares and retweets
- Press releases with images increase views by 45%
- 63% of online shoppers consider the quality of the product image to be more important than the product information and 53% consider them more important than ratings and reviews
Inspire Employees
Great design inspires people - if all of your internal communications, operations folders, website, and business cards are amateur and shabby they don't inspire much pride in your employees. But get them created and polished by a professional graphic designer, and employees begin viewing the company in whole new light. By creating a new website and polishing up internal communication materials your employees will consider themselves to be working for a professional, successful company, and in turn might even put in extra effort in helping the business succeed.