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It is important to understand the power of visual elements in ensuring the success of your business. After all, people are visual beings, and this is a card that you simply have to play. In terms of branding, the visual style that you choose for yourself is essential. It is the first thing that your potential clients are going to come in contact with. And first impressions matter a lot. Furthermore, after you have moved past the stage of getting someone to fall in love with you at first sight, you need to continue earning their trust through a consistent visual identity.
So, the keyword here is consistency. The visual elements that you employ need to be consistent throughout all of your efforts, covering logo design, marketing materials, website colors, even your own office space. Making sure that your visuals are appropriate for your chosen target audience is the way to gain attention and build trust.
In this article, we are going to discuss a variety of visual elements that you can implement, which can do miracles for your business efforts if used properly.
1) Create the perfect logo
Your logo is your brand signature. It is one of the most important items regarding your brand identity. It has to be professionally-designed and memorable so that people will recall it to mind whenever they see or think about your brand. It is a visual element that is going to be everywhere – on your website, your marketing materials, in your offices, on your documents, and so on, so you have to get it perfect.
Now, you are most probably going to go through various versions until you the right one. And that is perfectly fine because it is crucial that you find a design that perfectly fits your brand personality and also is bound to attract attention and be memorable.
2) Be creative with the graphics that you use
If your website doesn’t focus heavily on images and videos, there is a wide variety of creative visual options that you can implement. For example, infographics have become an extremely popular visual medium, and for good reason. Your social media updates no longer have to be bulky texts that people cannot be bothered to read. Infographics are a lot more user-friendly and present information in a clearer and more engaging manner.
Furthermore, you can use this medium to create animated slides for your meetings both with employees and clients. It is a much clearer and more engaging approach than old-style PowerPoint presentations that were all the rage a decade ago.
The most important thing about your graphics is, again, to make sure that they are consistent with your brand identity. However, it is also vital that you let your creativity bloom and come up with visual elements that truly personalise your content. At the end of the day, a well-made meme can do a lot more than a whole bunch of words written by a team of experts.
3) Choose the right colour palette and font
Think about all those giant brands out there. When you do, does it instantly bring certain colours to mind? For example, when you think about Coca Cola, it is pretty much impossible not to visualise the colour red. This is because every brand that knows what it is doing chooses a particular colour palette for their visuals and sticks to it.
What you should do is pick a few colours that perfectly reflect your brand image and then use them for everything that you create. This includes your website design, marketing materials, office space, and of course, product design if you are selling a physical product.
It is also crucial that you pick the right font that matches your brand identity and the products or services that you sell. A font can tell a lot about who you are and what you are like as a business. For example, Comic Sans and its cousins are certainly not the right choices for a serious company (let’s say, a law firm). On the other hand, if your business is more light-spirited and nonchalant, those fonts will suit your visual efforts better than many other choices.
Of course, it is also important to apply the right font size to different mediums. Your website probably won’t look the same as a poster or a billboard that you create. Readability is one of the most important factors because otherwise all your efforts are for naught.
Furthermore, make sure that you use white/ blank space properly. When posting textual content on your website, break the text into smaller paragraphs and let the white space make your content look significantly cleaner and more approachable. Finally, make sure that your headings and subheadings stand out so that it is simple to navigate through your posts.
4) Use offline marketing visual assets
Now, many people today think that focusing on their online marketing efforts is enough to effectively drive sales. But, even though we live in a digital world, and a company is nothing without a website and supporting social media channels, offline marketing tools and methods cannot be dismissed. The perfect marketing campaign synthesises both traditional offline and modern online content. You want to make sure that you cover as much ground as possible, which means using tactics that attract both the people who spend most of their time in front of a computer and those who are more affected by tangible, real-world visuals such as billboards, posters, pamphlets and the like.
One of the best approaches out there is branding vehicles. When you cover them in high-quality ads, they literally work as moving billboards, marketing your business wherever they go. According to professionals, such as those at Octane Signage, it is important to choose top-notch materials, preferably made out of vinyl, and also make sure that they have a quality adhesive backing. Basically, cover a number of vehicles in high-quality decals and have members of your staff drive them across town.
5) Create amazing video content
Depending on what your business is all about, videos can be an extremely effective and engaging form of communication with your target audience. You can use them to present pertinent info about your business or product in an engaging way, without spending too much money on the whole process. If your company revolves around selling a particular kind of product, you can create valuable videos that explain it and demonstrate how it is used to potential customers.
You can also make interesting videos explaining what your company looks like from the inside. Take the viewers on a little tour through your offices, let them see your staff members at work creating the products that they love, and give them a behind the scenes look at how your business does what they love. You can also use videos of satisfied customers talking about your products as a form of testimonials. People today tend to trust the reviews of others, and if they see a video of a happy client, you will gain their trust easily.
Final words
Ultimately, one of the most important things that you need to do is test everything out and keep optimising until you nail the perfect strategy. It is pretty hard to get it right the first time around, so you should gather as much feedback as you can from your customer base, as well as other professionals.
When you get the whole thing right, you should document it so that you can keep reusing it, especially in case new designers join your team. This will make sure that none of the elements that you have come up with end up being forgotten
The visual elements that you use go hand in hand with your strategy. Once you have the right strategy in place, creating the right visual elements should be pretty much intuitive.
“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."
