Graphic design is one of the most important components of any successful marketing campaign
The right design does everything from establishing credibility with the audience to strengthening brand messaging, and using the right combination of design elements - like color, typography, and layout - can mean the difference between a marketing campaign converting like crazy or completely falling flat.
While there are some evergreen design rules that you’ll always want to follow, for the most part, graphic design is a constantly evolving medium. What worked yesterday might not work today, and if you want to drive maximum results with your marketing campaigns, you need to stay on top of the trends and keep your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the world of graphic design.
Which brings us to the question: which graphic design trends should you follow in 2018 to knock your marketing campaigns out of the park?
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Marrying logic and magic pushes campaigns beyond the marketing noise
Today’s savvy consumers require authentic connections at precise points in the buying cycle. Brands that fail to consistently hit that mark will struggle to keep up. Instead of adding value, they end up just creating a busier, more confusing market. Finding these key points of connection requires you to get serious about data.
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Nevertheless, data without a vision is like a bad teacher just quoting the textbook: It’s all there, but there’s no meaningful connection. Additionally, bad data costs the typical company up to a fifth of its revenue each year. It takes a human vision…
Review the Business challenges caused by using separate systems and how you can overcome them
There’s nothing more counterproductive (and irritating!) than being in a situation where several people are trying to control what’s going on. It could be countless friends and associates giving you conflicting life advice, your entire family trying to plan your wedding, or a bunch of your colleagues who all think they know the best corporate tactics (when obviously, it’s you).
As an age-old proverb that has been extensively confirmed throughout the centuries, it can be true that “too many cooks spoil the broth”, and this definitely applies to your digital marketing endeavors…
One of the largest and most widespread problems in both marketing and advertising, is attempting to deliver top-end campaigns through the navigation of disparate systems. If you’re utilising multiple platforms for limited or singular purposes, you’re only going to overcomplicate matters, decrease your potential for positive results,…
Engaging eCommerce consumers during Q1 - one of the most challenging quarters of the year - is no easy feat
With shoppers now in post-holiday hibernation and product return rates at their highest, increasing engagement and retention may seem like an uphill battle. So what’s a retailer to do when the road to a strong Q1 suddenly derails?
Tap into one of the most profitable channels for communicating with your customers: social media.
It’s no surprise that social media rules the eCommerce playground. With Facebook greeting approximately 1.37 billion global users per day, social advertising is an obvious win to maximize profit in Q1 and beyond. In fact, about 3 million businesses globally are currently dipping their toes and wallets in the Facebook ad pond. But many find themselves quickly sinking to the bottom because they fail to recognize one cardinal fact when building a successful ad campaign:
Facebook advertising will only…
Digital branding visuals to help measure and deliver purpose
What’s the point of it all? Since the dawn of humankind, people have agonized over that highly emotive question. As we steadily slip and slide towards the second decade of the 21st Century, more than ever that question is pivotal.
In the sandstorm of why…how…what… when…who… and where… Rather than instinctively turning to people for answers, we increasingly gaze through windows on wrists, laps, and desks for digital to deliver neatly packaged solutions wrapped up in brand messages with emotional ribbons and bows.
Consider Turkish owned McVitie’s (United Biscuits) which combined digital (via social media) and emotions to help sell biscuits.
Emotional marketing is nothing new. However given today’s consumers wariness of algorithms, many marketers bank on emotions to help soften qualms. Such fears could be credited to many factors including the veracity of social messages (Think Russia/Trump and Twitter/Facebook)… …
Whether you’ve had any issues so far with cyber-attacks or not, one thing can’t be denied: they pose a big risk to the security of your business. And, unfortunately, they’re also more likely to happen to you than you may think
So, the question is: how protected is your online business? If you’re reading this and thinking,
“This can’t happen to me”, or
“I have a very small business. What thief would even find out about it?”
Well, you might be very, very wrong.
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The state of cyber-security
In fact, a survey from PWC conducted last year on the state of global economic crime, found that cyber-crime is now the 2nd most reported economic crime and that it is affecting 32% of organizations.
These numbers will only continue to grow as Internet…
How to generate better sales leads that lead to conversion
Many B2B sales organizations get bogged down with too many bad sales leads. Salespeople are often crying out for “more sales leads” but “more” is not always better! Instead of just indiscriminately dumping more and more leads into the top of your sales funnel, you need to think more carefully about what a “good” sales lead really looks like for your company. Too many “bad” sales leads are sometimes worse than having no sales leads at all – because they cause your sales team to waste time chasing after buyers who aren’t truly the right fit or who aren’t anywhere close to being ready to buy.
Here are a few common root causes of the "bad leads" problem, and how to address it:
1. Your website is too vague
Most B2B sales companies…
Chatbots that say “I’m sorry, I don’t understand that” fail in today’s consumer-brand interactions - here’s why!
At MarTech San Francisco 2017, Nick Pandolfi of Google’s Global Product Partnerships claimed that language is the new user interface. But chatbots are still a nascent technology, and they come with positives and negatives. People are willing to use them and find them valuable, especially during purchasing, but if a company’s chatbot is poorly designed and leads to a negative interaction between the consumer and brand, then that person will likely never come back. The more conversation technology improves, then, the more consumer expectations will evolve, too.
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As chatbots become more fundamental to consumer-facing experiences, chatbot designers must make their creations more human by improving natural language…
Fines for companies breaking anti-spam rules reach new highs
The Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) has the power to issue fines of up to £400,000 to companies that fail to comply with data handling and antispam law and it’s a power that they’re increasingly willing to wield.
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Since 2015, The ICO has issued fines of over £8.7 million to UK organizations that have broken the rules.
104 separate…
If all that is between you and influencer marketing is knowing where to begin, then read on...
It seems like just yesterday that we were packing up 2016 and placing our bets on what 2017 had in store, and here we are preparing for 2018 – scary, huh?
Once we muster the ability to look beyond the horror of how fast 2017 has been and gone, we’re actually left with an abundance of excitement. The reason for this excitement is that we no longer deem it necessary to sell the benefits or lecture brands on why they should be doing influencer marketing. Nor do we need to, or want to, shout the same old stats on the ROI of influencer marketing ’til we’re blue in the face – 2017 has been a year where many pennies have dropped.
With all this said, brands are yearning to learn exactly what they need to do…
