Brands

The difference between direct marketing success and direct marketing failure can often be incredibly small. Minor factors such as calls to action, headlines and other design elements can turn a campaign from a loser into a winner – or vice versa.

While it’s easy to test these elements online, testing design elements, copy and the other components that go into marketing materials is significantly more difficult in the world of print media.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. With the right strategy, it’s easy to split test your brochures, posters and other print marketing materials to find out if one version is more effective than another.

A great deal of brochure design advice is generic – tips about layout, font choice and color with little in mind about the primary purpose of a brochure itself: to generate either leads, sales or interest for the company.

There’s a world of difference between effective brochure design in B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) industries. Each requires a different type of approach, not just to product and copy, but to the design of the brochure itself.

Ignoring these differences and applying B2B design principles to a B2C brochure, or vice versa, can have disastrous consequences for your marketing campaign’s return on investment and results.

Choosing stock photos for your company’s brochures, print advertisements and online content can be a challenge. With millions of images to choose from, often available for just a few dollars, which should you select to represent your brand?

Stock photos can range from excellent – many may perfectly capture your target audience or company values – to low quality or contrived. We’ve all seen generic corporate stock photos before, and most of us can spot them immediately.

Because of this, choosing the right stock photos for your company’s branding and marketing materials can have a huge impact on their efficacy. In this guide, we’ve shared five tips to help you choose effective stock photos for your branding.

What design elements do you think have the greatest impact on your brand? While most business owners think of color as having the greatest effect on the way people perceive their business, the typefaces you use often have an even greater effect.

Choosing the right font can set your business apart from its competitors and give it an unforgettable visual identity. Choosing the wrong font, on the other hand, is one of the biggest branding mistakes your business can make.

From quirky fonts used to promote serious businesses to archaic fonts used in the high-tech sector, there have been plenty of font and business mismatches over the years.

Many business owners think of brochures as corporate documents explaining their business to people. This isn’t far from the truth, but it’s not on the bullseye either; a brochure is equal parts informational document and persuasive advertisement.

Just like the design of a banner ad or newspaper ad can affect its response rate, the design and layout of your company’s brochures can have a significant effect, either positive or negative, on their response rate and return on investment.

Structure your brochure right and you’ll gradually warm prospects up to your offer and generate responses. Structure it the wrong way and you’ll end up with very few convinced prospects and a great deal of lost attention.

Is your retail store’s signage failing to attract the attention it should? Signs are great marketing tools when used correctly. However, the wrong design can often result in almost no response to your signage and little effect on your store’s revenue.

Signs are advertisements for your business, even if they’re located close to (or right outside) your store. Like any advertisements, they can be designed to enhance your brand or to produce an immediate, action-driven response.

In this blog post, we’ll share four design tips that you can use to give your signs the highest possible response rate, leading to more foot traffic, more attention in your area and, most importantly, more sales for your business.

What makes a sign, brochure or business card prestigious? We can often sense if a brand is prestigious and trustworthy within seconds of noticing its logo, without a deep understanding of its history or culture.