To choose the best marketing design for a promotion, many organizations refer to their marketing plan and may use a marketing consultant for guidance. The design should be evaluated in terms of the goals it should achieve. Goals might include enhancing brand awareness in consumers’ minds or encouraging specific responses, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. Cost, the ability to determine its success, and testing results may also play a part in choosing the best design.
The demographics and psychographics of the target audience will play a part in choosing the best marketing design. Designs should appeal to the target audiences. For example, marketing concept for motorcycle enthusiasts will be very different from a design for gourmet cooks.
Another factor is the media that the marketing design will be used on. The designs that are chosen must work well in the selected media. Some of the types of media that may display the design are print, billboards, or electronic media, such as websites, mobile devices, and social networking sites.
Within each type of media, other factors may also affect the choice. For print media, a design that is effective on business cards will need to be expanded to be effective as a retail point-of-sale display that should encourage impulse buying. Designs that work well on promotional items such as t-shirts may need to be modified to work well on coffee mugs.
Electronic media may include websites, mobile platforms, social networking, and CDs or DVDs that are developed for marketing uses. Designs for mobile platforms must be effective on a small screen, whereas designs for websites and social media can utilize larger screens but may still need to take into account the user’s Internet bandwidth limitations. The design on CDs and DVDs is often richer than any of these because bandwidth is not a concern.
An organization’s marketing budget will play a role in the decision. The cost of the design itself should be reasonable. In addition, the design’s value to the advertiser must be in proportion to its cost.
Another factor that may affect the choice is whether the design uses marketing techniques that facilitate evaluating its success. This may include using an element for tracking response. For example, coupons usually have scannable bar codes, which allow advertising organizations to determine customer response to the coupons.
For larger and more expensive marketing pieces, the advertising firm may test the marketing design before rolling it out to its entire audience. Focus groups or pilot campaigns are two methods of testing. Testing the designs can prevent expensive mistakes if the design is ineffective.
