Making digital marketing assets can be daunting for a small business or brand. The competing demands of various promotions, creative motivations, and business identity become overwhelming and difficult to manage.
In a competing landscape of various business assets and design content, a blank canvas is daunting, and the expense of outsourcing can seem hard to justify as business expenses grow.
However unique digital content is also integral for user engagement. In a saturated digital landscape, many people are bored of common practices, become bored of design trends, and often do not engage with an image that looks more or less the same as one they saw two days ago. Digital assets that force users to pay attention will be much more likely to get results than assets that are cohesive with an explore page.
In an ideal world, a business’s digital marketing assets would be unique, unquestionably on brand, and communicate a particular message strategically and intentionally.
If you wish to produce your own design assets for your business, there are a few simple things that you can do in order to make the design process easier, to make your design outcomes more consistent and to ensure that your content looks professional.
1. Invest In Your Business' Branding
Many professionals and business owners tend towards the mindset that branding stops at the logo and the business card. While the logo and visual figureheads are cornerstones of a business’ visual identity, identity is upheld throughout a business’ entire catalogue of visual and written communications.
Having a clear branding strategy and/or guideline is essential to ensure that a business communications catalogue is clear and consistent. In order for assets to effectively communicate and uphold this identity, it should be predetermined and, usually, is collated in the brand guidelines.
‘Brand guidelines’ are a set of instructions that communicate to employees and contractors the conventions of the brand’s identity, applying to all written and visual assets.
The brand guidelines should include all logos and directions for their use, the business’ colour palette and their respective colour codes, a guideline for the tone of voice applicable to any copywriting, and examples of either the business’ previous design assets or examples from other businesses to draw from.
Investing the time, effort and resources to produce a highly considered set of brand guidelines with clear instructions will not only make the design process significantly easier but will also ensure that all content is cohesive.
Moreover, while it is not essential, I would highly recommend investing in 2-3 unique fonts and using those fonts to inform brand identity. Available from Adobe, independent designers or various marketplace websites, having a font that is unique to your brand will further reinforce your business’ identity, contribute to the tone of voice of all textual communications, and enhance the professionalism of your digital assets.
2. Invest in user-friendly design software
Commonplace design softwares like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are excellent however can also be convoluted. Without guidance, producing assets using these softwares as a beginner may become difficult and time-consuming.
Typically, it is recommended that Adobe softwares are used preferentially over other design tools such as Canva, as Adobe software offers the designer total control over every step of the design process. It is therefore more conducive to originality.
However, training on these softwares is highly time-consuming and labour-intensive, and I would typically not recommend taking it upon oneself to become proficient in these respective softwares unless wanting to be employed specifically in digital design.
I would highly recommend investing in Canva Pro. Not only is this platform easy to navigate with tools that are clearly signposted and easy to use, but the platform offers a virtually endless series of adaptable design templates.
These are a fantastic starting point for asset making, as they fill in the blank space on the screen and provide a working template by which you may then build your own assets in alignment with your brand’s identity. While this platform offers less control, it simplifies design drastically.
3. Invest in your photo catalogue
A strong photo catalogue is also invaluable. Having a diverse range of images that are applicable to a variety of contexts is something that many businesses lack.
We often speak about this in the agency. It is a common misconception that producing a high-quality photo catalogue is cost-ineffective as it requires constant maintenance and attracts ongoing studio and labour expenses amongst other factors. This is not necessarily the case.
For smaller businesses seeking out a cost-effective method to developing a photo catalogue, we would highly recommend dedicating 1-2 days at least every 6 months for content shoots.
This could then be banked for future use throughout the year, making the upfront expense easier to manage and minimising certain aspects of the labour cost and maintenance load.
With a strong photo catalogue to use as the base for visual assets, it becomes significantly easier to produce assets with a cohesive sense of brand identity.
Often, if a client has come to us with a diverse range of images that are of a high enough quality for us to use for marketing content, developing assets for these clients can be made as simple as readjusting the image to be in the correct dimensions for whichever platform it is going to be published to, and adding the appropriate text overlay.
The upfront labour and cost investment will reap benefits throughout the digital asset design process.
Whilst the individual needs of your business may differ, treating these three elements as the pillars for your business’ digital design will make the design process significantly easier and will be likely to improve the effectiveness of your social media marketing through content improvements.
Are you looking for other avenues to take your small business to the next level? Contact us today to see how we can help your business take the next step in maximising its online presence.
