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When developing marketing and advertising campaigns it is very easy to get caught up by the fancy stuff. We all strive to have the best and most creative execution that could win awards, but it’s so important to look beyond the surface and assess the creativity accurately and logically. But how?
I’ve both worked with and managed design teams and, as a brand advocate, there’s been many a conversation around making sure that the design meets the key objectives of what you are trying to achieve.
Creating beautiful pieces of work isn’t always the most suitable way and I know designers are going to cringe hearing this but, sometimes, it’s just needs to be down and dirty to achieve the ultimate objection.
Working in retail it’s critical that all of your marketing is cut through. You are competing with thousands (probably millions with the web) other businesses to try and capture the attention of one consumer. Return on advertising spend is extremely important and design plays a big part in making sure that you achieve this.
Recently, whilst developing a new retail catalogue, I had to challenge the design and I know that it wasn’t received all that well. Don’t get me wrong, the design was absolutely beautiful but there were some key things missing in the design that mean the message was being lost amongst the beauty. I’ve dealt with this challenge a lot and I know that designers find it difficult sometimes to mix design beauty with marketing practicality but it is something that marketers need to remain focused on.
From a retail marketing perspective, there are some key things that I believe are crucial to make a successful design:
- Clear end date: Keep it up front and on catalogues, ensure that it’s big and bold on the from page. You want to create the urgency to make customers respond to your offers.
- Hiding products: you are trying to sell the products so cutting off key features or only showing a corner of the product is not going to help. Don’t hide the products.
- Be clear on what the customer benefits are: If a customer is saving 50% or $500 – tell them. Use icons to help deliver key benefits for products. Don’t make customers read all of the detail to find out for themselves
- Tell your customers how to find you – direct them to their nearest store and make sure that the details are correct!
- Get your brand to own the marketing – front and centre, big and bold!
- In the digital world, where you have multiple products under the one offer, group them together and have them at the top of all products or create a separate content page displaying just the products included in the offer. Don’t force customers to trawl through all of your products to find out what’s on special as you will lose them! Being that most customers do their research online first, if you don’t make this experience easy they aren’t going to come and visit you.
Assessing creativity can be a difficult task and one that you need to do objectively and critically to ensure that you achieve the right outcome. Here are some further simple tips that you can refer to when you are reviewing creative elements for your business.
1. Does it meet your brand guidelines?
All creative executions must support your brand. Visual identity creates the first impression with receivers and needs to help get your brand across immediately – even before anything is read.
2. Does it read clearly?
Make sure that your offer is succinct, clear and grammatically correct.
3. Are your images a true reflection of your products?
Are they placed in a way that shows off their features to capture the attention of customers?
4. Is the creative too busy?
Having consistent elements to help deliver messages such as discounts will keep the business down. Don’t try and fit too much in to one space and make sure that the most important products or images are the ones that you see first.
5. Do you have all of the critical information in a place where it can be seen and read quickly?
Make sure that things like end dates, campaign offer, brand are all clear and given the right amount of presence in the creative to make for a simple “get” for the customer.
6. Does the design use space appropriately?
For things like brand, offer and end date, make sure that they are using up the space effectively. If you need to make it bigger then utilise the space on the page. Make sure the key messages and brand are prominent.
7. Is your information correct?
There is nothing worst than having incorrect information in your marketing – it can be a very costly mistake! Make sure that you are substantiating any claims that you make and that you aren’t adding too much “fluff” which makes it difficult for the customer to understand exactly what the product or offer is about.
8. Is the creative consistent across all channels?
This is a big pet hate of mine. I am a strong believer in starting your creative with the full customer journey in mind. What I mean by this is working through how the customer interacts with you and at what stage of the purchase process so that you can reflect this in your creative. All too often I have seen completely different designs within the different channels utilised for a campaign. This creates a disconnect and confuses the customer on whether they are actually seeing the same offer from the same business, or whether it’s completely different. There is definitely going to need to be creative differences but make sure that, if you were to put all individual creatives next to each other, no matter the channel, that you can clearly see that they belong together!
This isn’t a comprehensive list at all, but it’s a good place where you can start to assess the creative for your business.
Good Luck!
The Marketing Elf
© October 2019