Marketing: Put In the Prep Work!

Ready to do marketing for your business? Great! Desire is the first step toward putting together a marketing strategy. There are a few lucky people that can just whip something together and magically make it all happen. For the rest of us, it’s working with a necessary evil for our business growth.

There’s a bit of prep work to be done, so let’s get to it.

Prepare To Prepare

First, you have to decide if you’re marketing online or offline. Then, you have to decide what type of marketing you’re going to use.

For example, let’s say you’ve decided to do online marketing. Here are some questions you may or may not have thought about:

• What size graphic will you use for your post?
• Are you using a graphic for your post?
• Is the image you’re using with your graphic one the company owns, you own, or you’re renting (i.e., image foundry)? If you found an image using a Google or Bing search, make sure you have the rights to use it without being sued over it. Personally, I like using websites such as Pixabay, Canva, Pexels, and All-Free-Download.com.
• What product or service are you going to market?
• What is your CTA (Call To Action) statement?
• Have you tested the email address, phone number, or email capture form you’re using in your CTA to make sure it works?
• If the CTA involves a different department, have you collaborated with them?
• Is there a time limit or deadline for this offer?

The Creative

While I love my Adobe products, I’m really enjoying the flexibility of Canva! There are a variety of templates, colors, images, and fonts available from the website, all within your browser’s reach. The fun part: you can save your design as either a .JPG, .PNG, or .PDF file. The best part: you can use Canva.com from your desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone!

Here are some do’s and don’t’s from my years of experience as a graphic designer:

• DON’T try to squeeze all the text into your design. Strategically leaving items out creates questions, and questions generate phone calls or emails from those interested.
• Go for balance. Use different font sizes and weights (i.e., bold, italics, condensed). Make the important parts bigger and use your company’s main color.
• DON’T use more than three (3) font types in one design. Two is actually the goal — one serif, like Times New Roman or Century Schoolbook, and one sans-serif, like Arial or Century Gothic.
• Thin sans-serif fonts like Raleway Thin or Gotham Light are very hard to read when surrounded by a color background. Serif fonts like Times New Roman or Century Schoolbook are almost impossible to read with a color background because serif fonts have thick and thin parts, and the thin parts tend to get overwhelmed by color backgrounds.
• Use one (1) image to grab attention. If it’s the main image, make it stand out BUT be sure to balance it with your text, especially the headline.
• If there is a time limit to the offer, make sure that is stated on the artwork. Typically this is small, but not microscopic.
• If you need different sizes of your creative for different social media posts, Google ads, or other channels, make sure these are created and ready to go. There are a few sizes that are universal for most social media channels or posts, but DON’T assume your artwork will work for all without testing and re-checking the size required by each channel.

More Marketing Considerations

Now that you have your creative ready, just a few thoughts:

1. What is your marketing goal or ROI: eyeballs or a specific action?
2. How will you measure the success of this marketing?
3. Where are you marketing? Which platforms or social media channels?
4. What audience are you targeting?
5. Why are you marketing this product or service?
6. What’s in it for your audience?
7. What should your audience do next?

I’ll dive deeper into these sections in future blog posts. Feel free to bookmark this website and check back for updates.

Be strategic. Be visible. Be found.

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