5 Ways Graphic Design Builds Profit for Your Business
Business owners constantly look for ways to grow revenues and profits.
This is often a more difficult task than most business owners expect.
That’s why it’s so unfortunate that many business owners overlook one of the most important tools they have to boost sales and increase revenue.
This tool captures people’s attention, helps them recognize and remember a business, communicates essential messages, and builds (or breaks) people’s trust.
This essential business tool is graphic design.
That’s right. Graphic design isn’t an “extra.” It’s not something you do only “when the money’s there.”
Graphic design is a core, must-have tool in every entrepreneur’s arsenal.
And you should be using it if you want to build a more successful business.
Here are five ways graphic design grows profit for your business:
1. Graphic design builds compelling brand identities
Every business needs a recognizable visual identity representing its brand to its audience.
A business’s identity is called its brand identity. And the cornerstone of every strong brand identity is the logo.
Company logos are the core visual representation of a brand. They’re the “face” of a business.
Logos are a big deal as the primary means by which people visually identify your business.
Graphic design includes logo design. But graphic design also consists of all other brand identity building blocks, like color palettes, typography, website design, signage, business cards, and more.
So, how do all of these elements combine to deliver higher profits for your business?
- Your brand strategy focuses on making your brand well-known to customers and prospects. A compelling brand identity helps to accomplish this by making your business recognizable and distinct from the competition. First impressions are unquestionably powerful. A well-designed visual brand will resonate strongly with your intended audience and create a positive image.
- Good graphic design always aims to be unique. This helps your brand stand out from the competition and attract the attention of potential customers.
- Well-designed brand identities visually communicate authentic details about your business. And an honest portrayal allows you to attract the people who genuinely find your business most appealing. These people are your best leads and are most likely to convert.
So, let’s take a look at how you can put graphic design to work, building a compelling brand identity for your business.
Here are a few tips to help you get started:
- Invest in a custom logo and display it consistently. If you’re serious about running a successful business, you must invest in your business. A custom logo that reflects your unique brand and attracts customers is an essential investment. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be expensive, as this cost of logo design guide shows.
- Create a signature color palette that complements your logo’s colors. Use these signature colors consistently throughout your website, packaging design, marketing materials, etc.
- Select 2-3 typefaces (aka fonts) to represent your business. Use them consistently alongside your logo and your brand colors.
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2. Graphic design improves communication
It’s easy to put your foot in your mouth.
We’ve all done it at some time or another.
But, even in the most innocuous communication, there’s plenty of wiggle room for misunderstandings.
Your business will be most successful (and profitable) if it communicates clearly.
Well-executed, custom graphic design allows you to communicate more effectively than with words alone. This is true for a few reasons.
First, many visitors to your website will not bother to read all of your carefully crafted copy. So, supplementing that copy with graphics that tell the same story – or provide a deeper understanding of it – will increase the chances that people will receive the message you want to share.
Second, images convey far more information and nuance than text in the same amount of time. And people are rarely willing to spend more time figuring out what a product or service is.
So, when your product or service is complex and hard to explain, illustrations can save the day. They allow you to communicate your message more quickly, clearly, and with higher chances of being understood.
Finally, images can communicate emotional tone far more effectively than text. Research has shown that emotions play a vital role in people’s decision-making processes. So, emotionally charged designs can persuade more effectively than words alone.
Graphic design allows a business to communicate more information quickly and effectively.
Here are a few ways you can use graphic design to communicate more effectively and win more revenue:
- Illustrate essential concepts or product details on your website for ease of understanding.
- Define the positive emotions you want customers to experience when using your product or service. Showcase those positive emotions in product illustrations and throughout your website and marketing materials.
- Identify the steps in the customer conversion path that present hurdles. Supplement your existing communication with illustrations to clarify what is expected in those steps.
3. Graphic design enhances the user experience
Graphic design saturates every platform and medium through which a business engages with its audience.
From your website to your social media content to your marketing emails, to digital ads, signage, product packaging, and more… graphic design is everywhere.
People engage and see your graphic design every time they engage with your business.
And, if graphic design is not helping, it’s hurting your business.
Noticeably poor design undermines your business’s credibility. It looks unprofessional and scares potential customers away.
But graphic design can help improve your users’ experiences in the following ways:
- Intelligent graphic design will make it easier for visitors to navigate your website and find what they want.
- Well-branded graphic design helps people recognize a brand and reassure them that they’ve found the business they sought.
- Effective graphic design allows people to understand content more quickly and thoroughly – making them feel more confident.
- Tasteful graphic design makes interacting with your brand more pleasant – creating positive associations and motivating people to spend more time with your brand.
Well-executed graphic design smooths friction for customers and potential customers. When people encounter ess friction, they are more likely to buy from you and help you increase profits.
These tips will help you create a better user experience:
- Use graphic design elements like line, color, white space, and icons to focus on the most critical places in an ad, webpage, email newsletter, or anywhere you want people to take action.
- Choose high contrast or highly visible colors to highlight calls to action so they’re easy to spot.
- Custom icons can improve navigation on your website. Use small custom icons to show people what they can expect to find when they click, helping them move quickly through your site.
- Use your logo, brand colors, typography, and any other graphic elements consistently to make your brand easy to recognize wherever it appears.
4. Graphic design delivers more effective marketing campaigns
The first step to making a sale is to make people aware of your existence.
And graphics are more likely to catch the eye and capture attention than text.
People like interesting, engaging visuals. For example, TikTok and Instagram as the two fastest-growing social media platforms in 2021. Both specialize in visual content.
And while radio once was king, television and the internet have surpassed it as the most popular forms of entertainment. The people have spoken.
So, if you want customers and prospects to pay attention to your marketing, giving them something appealing to see behooves you.
But that’s not the only reason.
Pairing generic stock art or photos with a specific marketing campaign for a particular target audience weakens your strategy.
People respond positively to messages that they feel are addressed to them.
This means the message and the imagery supporting it must align correctly.
Marketing design needs to hold up a mirror to your audience, showing that you know them and understand them. And it needs to reflect your brand and the message you’re sharing accurately.
Stock art and photos aren’t up to this task.
But custom graphic design is.
Customized graphic design will align with your message and audience because it’s designed for your message and audience.
Campaigns that resonate with your audience, accurately reflect your brand and communicate your message will succeed over those that don’t.
These tips can improve your marketing campaigns:
- Create a brand style guide so that anyone creating visual marketing content follows the same overall look. This consistency will serve your business well.
- Hire a graphic designer (or use a crowdsourced design service like crowdspring) to create original branded graphics for your marketing campaigns. This specificity of message, brand, and audience will improve your conversion rates.
- Invest in a custom email template design. Emails that look professional, attractive, and consistent will create positive, memorable impressions for your recipients.
5. Graphic design builds trust and relationships
Graphic design creates the branding that people associate with your brand.
It’s this brand identity to which people relate – and eventually develop relationships.
Thoughtful graphic design can communicate authentic details about your brand. Authenticity resonates with people in a visceral way that carefully contrived façades (or generic clipart and stock photos) never can.
Most importantly, authentic, honest brand portrayals attract the people who naturally resonate with your brand. When people honestly like your brand, they’re likelier to buy from you. It’s as simple as that.
But trust relies on more than people liking your brand. People need to know that they can depend on your brand before committing to becoming a customer.
Graphic design helps communicate reliability in a few ways:
- When your visual brand design is consistent, it shows that your brand (and, by extension, your business) is consistent.
- Well-branded graphic design shows that your visual identity aligns with the words your brand says.
- And good graphic design looks professional and builds credibility. People trust businesses that look professional.
Follow these graphic design tips to build stronger customer relationships:
- Execute your graphic design professionally. Ensure your logo is a vector file on a transparent background. Use high-resolution graphics that look sharp and in focus. Simple design errors will undermine your business’s credibility. But good design fundamentals show that you know what you’re doing.
- Develop packaging designs that reflect your overall brand design so that people can see the relationship between your brand and the products it sells.
- Refer to and follow your brand style guide for all visual content representing your business. Consistency shows that your company is reliable and trustworthy.
- Take time to discuss your brand with your graphic designer before they begin work. And be honest about who you are. Designs that show an authentic brand will inspire more trust than a polished façade.
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