Most people want a well-designed offer, but paying for professional design is not always in the budget or within the timeline. But doing it yourself doesn’t mean your offer can’t look great or have all the key elements of a successful promotion.

Design isn’t just about the graphics

When we talk to people about design, their mind always jumps straight to the visuals – pictures, logos, photographs, etc. But from a marketing standpoint, design should be less about the visuals and more about the goal of your campaign and the structure of your promotion. Some aspects to consider:

• What is your goal? Are you trying to acquire new customers, or connect with existing ones that are already familiar with your brand?
• What is your offer? – what incentive are you giving that will drive people to connect with you? Whether you are directing individuals to a storefront, a website or right to your customer service team, you are going to need a hook to bring people in.
• Do you have a deadline? All great offers come with an expiry date. It creates an urgency that encourages people to connect with you as soon as possible, rather than putting your piece away and eventually forgetting about you altogether.

These aspects are critical to many marketing campaigns, and therefore very important to your overall design.

Why? You need a place to include them, and you need to make sure they don’t get overlooked. How will you include your offer on a piece that is visually appealing and not distracting? Obvious, but not obnoxious. What is the best placement for that deadline to drive a great response?

These questions may not involve the main visuals for the offer, but they require critical design decisions that will determine the effectiveness of your promotion. In the Smartmail Marketing world, we follow the 40/40/20 rule: 40% Audience, 40% Offer, 20% Everything Else (design falls into this 20%).

What you don’t say is as important as what you do

While you may agonize over every font choice, every picture, every placement of text (and you’re not alone), know that the reader won’t. You will be lucky if the recipient or passer by takes a fleeting glimpse at your piece. Luckier still if they remember your name or offer. Long, over edited paragraphs (depending on the promotion), are rarely read. Imagine each viewer will spend no more than 1-3 seconds looking at it (and even that’s being generous). With this in mind, the goal with your design should be to utilize visuals and incorporate your message in a way that quickly creates an impression, or tells a story. Then use short bits of copy to drive home your offer.

If your design is feeling too dense or containing too much information, try removing elements. Busy is never better – the goal is to have a concise message, without over doing it on the fillers. The more overwhelmed people feel by your piece, the less likely they are to read it.

Make it pretty

We leave this point for the end since for most do-it-yourself designers it should be your last concern. Once you have figured out what you want to say, and how you want to guide the reader through your offer, the visuals tend to find their way to you. If you start with visuals and end with the rest, you’ll often find you are wasting a lot of time revising, and revising, and revising from your original design.

While everyone has their own taste, you really can’t go wrong with keeping it simple. The following is a list of tips that should help keep you on track:

Start with a good colour palette – choose shades that complement each other (your logo too), think about using a colour wheel for inspiration.

• Don’t get too carried away with fonts – the fancier isn’t always better. The simplest and most easy to read fonts are always at the top of the list for a reason (don’t let Times New Roman and Arial make you think you don’t have syle), and try to limit yourself to no more than 1 or 2.
• Feel free to mimic other designs – don’t be afraid to “borrow” elements you like.
• Design for your audience – think about who you are writing for and make sure your promotion and language appeals to them.
• Align objects and text to keep them neat and professional.
• Don’t forget to use Bold, Italics and underlining to highlight important parts of your message.

We hope these tips help with your next ‘Do-it-yourself’ design project.

If you are still having problems getting creative, or making your vision come to life, contact Classic Impressions today. Our design team is ready to help bring your next offer stand apart from the rest.