Everyone understands the value of visual communication, whether you’re a startup or a ten-year-old, a small or large business.
The means of marketing communications are changing regularly. So, the need for an excellent graphic designer or graphic design agency is critical today.
The consistent competition, shrinking markets, and informed customers have compelled everyone to cultivate new techniques for promoting their products.
In addition, with the rise of different digital media, the need to keep pace with the competitor’s marketing plans has become inevitable.
The basic need for marketing communication is to be crisp and concise. It should be to the point so it connects with the customer in a short time. It should be appealing enough to entice customers to interact with the communication material.
Business communication should be structured to capture the customer’s visual attention. It should arouse the customer’s interest, and evoke his curiosity about your products/services. It should further motivate him to contact you, resulting in lead generation and finally sales.
The reason for this is today everyone is loaded with lots of information coming from different media. Therefore the marketing communication needs to stand out from the crowd.
A good graphic designer or agency is required to overcome these challenges. They can come up with excellent ideas for your marketing communication.
An experienced graphic designer or agency will study your products/services in detail. They will have a background check on your competitors from the same segment. They will try to come up with different and excellent ideas than your competitors.
The graphic designer or agency will have a thorough knowledge of what’s trending in the market. They will strategise your marketing designs, which will bring you the desired results.
“First Impression” is very vital to put your mark on your associates, be it business or personal space. For having this impact you need to have a good graphic designer or agency at your disposal. It will help you in creating/retaining your brand.
Well-designed marketing communications help you gain visibility and build trust in your potential and existing clients. You can achieve this with the help of a good graphic designer/agency. You will be getting high-quality marketing materials from them regularly.
What makes an excellent marketing communication:
For coming up with appealing marketing communication, you will need good stock images and compelling/convincing copy. The graphic designer/agency will structure and combine all these elements. They will come up with an eye-pleasing layout, which could grab most of the customers’ attention.
The graphic designer/agency will consider all the factors required as per the media, be it print or digital. They will change the layout as per the need. E.g. for print media, the emphasis is on the visual appearance. But for the electronic media along with the visual appearance, user experience needs to be considered too.
What is preferable: Graphic designer/Design agency?
Well, this is a tricky question!
Creativity is so powerful that a creative individual can outperform most established agencies with a fleet of graphic designers.
An individual graphic designer can be affordable as compared to a design agency. Since he will be working on his own, chances are that he might get busy with his other clients and cannot service you in case of urgency. In that case, it is recommended to schedule his time hourly on all weekdays or selective weekdays and plan accordingly.
Another critical problem working with an individual graphic designer is he might be unavailable if he gets sick or goes on vacation. Though the latter can be covered today as most of the work can be done from a remote location also.
The design agency on the other hand can charge you more. But they will have a backup system with them, so in case any graphic designer working on your project is unavailable, they will provide you with an alternate person, to keep your work going.
The design agency will have fixed hours, while the individual graphic designer can be called at any time of the day. You will find more flexibility working with an individual graphic designer than with a design agency.
An individual graphic designer might fall short of ideas as compared to a design agency. Design agencies have a fleet of graphic designers and can come up with more ideas due to their team strength. Exceptionally, as mentioned earlier, if the individual graphic designer is of high creative standards, he/she can provide more creative ideas as compared to the agency.
Today, many individual graphic designers working as freelancers are associated with each other, trying to enhance their service level. So this is also a good option for you as you will be able to have a graphic designer at a lower cost as compared to the agency.
An individual graphic designer will only create your designs, he/she won’t be able to come up with the copy that goes with the material. For that, they can outsource the copy-writing or content-writing to another freelancer. The same goes for stock images also. The graphic designer may not be having access to stock image libraries and if any images needed for the material might be purchased as per the prevailing rates.
Whereas, the design agency many times has the copywriter and content writer in their team. Also, the design agency might have subscribed for stock images with any image gallery portal. This can help in getting the stock images at discounted rates.
It’s up to you which way to go, individual graphic designer or design agency as per your budget and policy.
The maths is pretty simple. The agency has to maintain its office and overheads. Hence they cannot bend their charges below a certain level. On the other hand, many individual graphic designers work from home, cutting off the other expenses.
Publishing marketing communication shouldn’t be a one-time activity. It needs to be properly scheduled over a specific period. Before this, we need to set goals on what we need to achieve from the marketing campaign. This will help the graphic designer/agency to come up with ideas accordingly.
Goals could be anything ranging from public awareness, lead generation or sales conversion. Based on that the graphic designer/agency can provide you with solutions which will work the best for your products/services.