As a business owner, you understand that your marketing can define your brand and drive sales and profitability. Your goal may be to create marketing material that is fresh, lively and exciting. You want your target audience to be as excited about your brand as you are. However, if there is currently a large gap between this desire to have amazing marketing material that drives your audience to action and the unfortunately dull material that you are currently using, you may be wondering how you can create a message that is fresh and exciting. The solution to your dilemma may be as simple as infusing your material with the right visual content strategies, and there are many hip and trendy options that you can use to generate the results you want from your marketing material.
Add Coupons to Your Website
Consumers love to save money on their purchases, and you can add an exciting visual graphic for your coupons that consumers can print out and use with in-store purchases. These printable coupons may also have a promotional code that can be used with online purchases. Simply select a few products or services that may be top-selling items or that you feel are not as popular with your customers as they could be. You can attach a coupon to your website for your customers to get excited about.
Run a Contest
There are some elements that you can add to your website that ultimately can engage your target audience in exciting ways, and running a contest is a great idea. There are numerous ways that a contest can be implemented by your company. For example, you can run a photo contest where your customers are asked to submit a picture of them using your products creatively. You can also run an essay contest, a recipe contest, a drawing contest for kids or another type of contest. While this alone can get your audience excited about your products and services, it can also create a buzz and can even have an almost viral effect for your marketing message.
Create an Instagram Direct Offer
If your company utilizes social media for marketing purposes, you may consider using an Instagram Direct option to announce a special promotional offer for your target audience to enjoy. You can announce this on your website, or you can announce it only through those who follow your Instagram account. Both can create an almost viral-like buzz if your offer is good enough. In addition to savings available for a limited time, you can also offer free merchandise or samples to those who follow your account. Keep in mind that these are limited time offers, so you may want to create an offer that is simply too amazing for your audience to pass up on.
Offer a Snapchat Incentive
Instagram Direct offers can be run for as long as you desire, and this may be for a few hours, a few days or longer. With a Snapchat incentive or offer, you can create a limited time offer with a significantly reduced time period attached to it. The image for your offer or promotion will self-destruct or disappear at a certain moment, and this will be when the offer ends. This creates a sense of urgency in your target audience to take a desired action and to move forward with the offer. These offers may be print and save coupons, links to free e-books and a special coupon code that is valid for a limited time only.
Add Visual Appeal to Your Email Marketing Messages
If your current email marketing campaigns are rather dull and boring with black and white text, you may have a low click-through rate. A better idea is to create a graphic-heavy email marketing message. It may showcase your products or services with vivid color photos or exciting graphics. It may offer special tips that portray your company as a true leader in the industry, and this can help you to position yourself ahead of the competition.
Give Your Customers a Gift
Everyone loves something when it is free, and you can use this desire to your advantage when you announce a giveaway or a free gift. This may be something as small as a free cup of coffee to your target audience on a specific day if they make another purchase, or it may be an e-book or access to an online seminar free of charge. You can create a free gift that encourages your customers to take action, but the free gift can also benefit your customers in a certain way. For example, a free e-book can be used to educate your consumers about when your services may be needed or to help them to decide to purchase your products by giving them great information for all of their needs.
Add a Visual Call to Action to Your Material
While you can create a hyperlink to download an e-book, as an example, you can also create a graphic element with an enhanced call to action. While it may be easy to overlook a black-and-white offer, it may be harder for a busy customer to overlook a full color graphic with a call to action. This may be placed on your website, on your social media site or on email marketing campaigns. This draws extra attention to your free offer, your coupons or other promotional efforts that your company is making, and you will enjoy greater results when your target audience is visually drawn to your special offer, coupon or incentive.
Add a Human Touch to Your Messages
Marketing messages can have greater appeal when they pull at the heartstrings or have some other emotional appeal or tie. You can attempt to create a human element of emotion by creating necessity or showing how helpful your products or services can be. Think about the problems that your products or services solve, and address those in a human way. For example, a sleepy commuter may be more alert after stopping at a coffee shop for a cup of coffee, or a couple may have a great time on a first date when they visit your romantic restaurant. You can also use graphics, such as color photos, to create emotional appeal. A well-created video embedded in your messages can also be a great idea.
Demonstrate What You Can Do
If your company is successful, it likely is different from the competition in some way. Perhaps your services are more reliable, your staff members are friendly, your products are more effective or your company has different benefits that other companies cannot offer. You can highlight these differences with photographic evidence, consumer reviews and comments, videos, graphs or statistics. People are fascinated with comparisons, and they always want to think they are getting a better deal. Think about the things that make your company's products or services differently, and highlight those differences.
Show Your Audience How to Solve a Problem
The best products and services are often used to solve a problem that a consumer is facing. For example, they may be struggling with an interior design decision, trying hard to keep their windows clean or dealing with a broken car engine. You can use your marketing messages to showcase how your company can help them resolve their problem. Include animated graphics, color photos or other visually appealing elements to define the problem and to show your company assisting with the resolution.
Visualize Statistics
If you have great statistics available that you want your customers to know about, you should visualize these statistics on your website and marketing material. Keep in mind that your audience may be more likely to view the statistics and to get excited about them if they have a graphic or visual appeal to them rather than if they are show in plain text. It is easy to skim over black and white text, but you want your astounding statistics to be showcased and brought to life. Consider the statistics that you want your customers to know about, and showcase them in a visually appealing way.
Make an Announcement
Another great idea is to create a news-like announcement that your consumers will be excited about. This may be related to new features that are available with your products and services, the opening of a new location or another special event. There are times when our company has something exciting to say, and a news-like headline or announcement can instantly demand the attention of your target audience. You can use graphics, a news-like headline or even a reporting-style of video imbedded in your marketing material to make an announcement.
Share Consumer Reviews and Comments
Consumers love to hear what other people have to say about products and services. You can request reviews and comments from your satisfied customers, and you can publish those comments on your website, email marketing messages and other promotional material. Keep in mind that you can publish portions of comments, so pick and choose the most eye-catching comments that highlight your company in the best possible light. If you want these comments to get noticed, consider displaying them in a different type of font or with a color photo of the consumer next to the reviews or comments.
Give Your Customers a Peek
If your company is currently working on a big change, you can give your customers a peek at what you have in store for your target audience. Your customers will love an insider's look at what you are working on, and this may be a mock plan, graphics for a new restaurant location or some other plans. If you are working on a new product or service, highlight features and benefits and how these may help your customers in some way. If you want to create more intrigue, you may release a photo or video that reveals only part of the product. For example, only the hood of a newly remodeled car may be show in a sneak peek ad, but this may be enough to generate a buzz.
Show Your Customers What You Are Talking About
It is relatively easy to type out a few words to convey the minimal message that you want to relay to your target audience, but a lot can be lost in translation through text. You can more easily communicate the features, benefits and other advantages from a visual approach. Show your customers what you are talking about with a visual demonstration through charts, graphs or other elements. You can also use color photos, cartoon-like images or a video. These may have a tag line or write-up to accompany them, but the images or graphics themselves may actively communicate your message.
Create a Slide Show
A slide show is an interesting option to use because of its unique benefits. This gives you the benefits of multiple color photos or other types of graphics, and you can also add tag lines or other educational tidbits to add meaning to your photos. In addition, you are encouraging your audience to interact by clicking through the slide show. For added benefit, include a call to action at the end of the display. A slide show is a great idea if you have multiple products that you want to showcase or if you are telling an emotional story about how your products or services helped a customer. You can also use a slide show to show a before, during and after process. This may be effective for a home remodeling project, a weight loss company or another type of company.
Show Hot Items
Consumers generally have a desire to stay at the forefront of fashion and trends, and you can create instant desire for your products or services when you show hot items that other consumers are actively interested in. These may be seasonal items, newly released items or items that appeal to consumers in a broad and far-reaching way. You may consider announcing hot seasonal items and accompanying them with a special discount that encourages your target audience to try them out. You may also incorporate consumer reviews that tell about the amazing product features that people are raving about.
Create a Consumer Poll
Customers love to know that their voice is being heard, and you can create a consumer poll to listen to what your target audience wants. For example you can ask about the desired next flavor of ice cream for your ice cream shop, or you can ask which products they want to have a coupon created for. Your customers can actively vote for a period of time. Then, you can show them that you care about their opinion by working hard to bring the results of the poll to life. For example, you can have a customer appreciation day that gives a discount on the favorite type of coffee beverage at your coffee shop.
Highlight a Staff Favorite
You can create a human aspect to your marketing message when you introduce a specific staff member and highlight that person's favorite items. This can work great for clothing stores, restaurants, coffee shops and more. You may even run a special on a staff favorite from time to time so that customers can be encouraged to try a product that may not be selling well currently. It may be effective to have a blurb from the staff member that explains the special features or benefits that he or she loves about the products. This is a personalized testimonial approach that can generate interest in your products.
Tout Your Successes
If your company has a special milestone event coming up or has made a special contribution in some way, include this in your marketing messages. This may be a 15th anniversary of your company, the 20th anniversary of your most popular product or a group of your employees who took time to help a charitable organization. You can create a news-like write-up, highlight the event with pictures, invite your audience to attend a celebratory event or announce the event in some other way. Think about how your target audience may be able to benefit from the special event that your company wants to highlight, or simply highlight the event as a human interest piece that builds goodwill with your target audience
Dull, boring marketing messages may unfortunately go unnoticed by many individuals, and this means that your marketing is not as effective as it could be. More than that, a banal marketing message can reflect poorly on your brand and on your company image. While you could spend your valuable time trying to come up with a fresh and exciting way to liven up your messages, an easier option is to infuse your next marketing efforts with some of these great ideas. These ideas can help your messages to get noticed, and they can get your audience excited about your products and services. Consider how you can implement some of these ideas in your upcoming marketing efforts.
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