Advertising design is what brands use to sell and promote their products and services. This kind of design is highly focused on how to sell, what the brand offers to the audience. Yes, it has many similarities with Graphic Design, but they work side-by-side, chasing the same goal, the brand’s success. Keep reading to understand more about Advertising Design!
Importance of advertising design
First, let’s talk about what is advertising design. It’s the child of marketing and design, together they created ad design, as they are also known to do a better promotion of products or services, presenting a quality design. Why are they different from graphic design? Simple, ad design is focused only on selling, that’s all! Graphic design is focused more on representing the brand image and its values, while advertising design is the main part of a marketing strategy.
A strategy without a good and quality advertising design is a dying strategy. Every marketer knows this; a good ad design can do wonders for the brand, especially because selling is their primary goal. Audience nowadays is more visual than ever, so every strategy needs to exploit this.
There are several types of advertising designs to reach a wide audience, especially using digital channels. However, the classical channels are still strong places for ads, like magazines, newspapers, and billboard ads. Check them out!
Video ads
Videos are the best way to do an ad and an incredible way to portray a message, especially if it includes the brand’s values. Companies like Nike and Doritos understand this power, and many of their ads are in video format. Of course, the investment is higher, but the results are more of what the company can expect.
Display ads
This can be found in the digital channels like websites and social media, and vary from different formats; they can be videos, audio, text, images, or even a mix of these. But the goal here is to make the user attracted to the ad. Winning views and clicks is the ultimate goal of these ads, but to reach this, the design must be catching using strong colors and following the brand’s image.
Social media ads
Social media is like one of the best fields to sell a product or service and attract leads. But at the same time, it’s one of the toughest fields out there, for any marketing campaign. Users like to scroll through their timelines and feeds without paying that much attention; for that reason, the ads here need to be extremely catching, all this through good design.
Direct mail ads
This is a traditional channel and the oldest one, but here designers and marketers need to be extremely meticulous because the design will be on paper, and after print, there is no turning back. This method is the best to offer discounts, rewarding loyalty to the brand, news about a new product or service, and one of the best ways cross-selling.
Outdoor ads
Every user can find this type by looking at a billboard, a transit ad, and even a poster. Nowadays, people are always on their phones, so outdoor ads need to be attractive enough to catch the attention of a passerby, just by using their peripheral vision. And what’s more important, these ads need to push them to fulfill de call-to-action, and a great way to do this is with a promo QR Code, that not only unite digital and printed ads but also allows the marketing team to have a solid track of these ads.
Email marketing advertising
This is still one of the stronger channels for any marketing campaign; with an amazing ROI for every $1 spend, you can expect a return of $42. But because many brands know this, a person’s inbox can be full of different emails with promotions and advertisements, so how do you get to catch the user’s attention? Easy, with excellent text and incredible design.
Event advertising
Events are a great way to promote any brand, but this can vary from sponsoring one to hosting and planning one. But here the most important is to be creative, and help the design team with ideas, to create crazy things that will sell the brand and its products or services, to every attendee. This can goes from photo booths to branded items that will be useful for everyone.
Newspapers and magazines ads
This is like the classical way to advertise a product or service, not just because they are like one of the oldest channels in marketing. However, also people still like to read a newspaper or a magazine without their digital devices. And that’s the main reason that you will find lots of ads there, so how do you get the attention of their readers? Easy, be original and creative, but stick to the brand’s image and values. Of course, just like outdoors ads, they can be tracked with a QR code placed on the ad.
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Advertising design tips
With these tips, we hope to help give a better understatement of advertising design and how to apply them!
-Emotional response: emotions play an essential role in marketing nowadays. Many brands and companies are trying to portrait a human and more emotional approach to their audiences to create an ad with the four primary emotions in mind: happiness, sadness, afraid or surprised, angry or disgusted.
-Simplicity: many users observe ads for like 3 seconds, no matter the channel where the ad is displayed, so in order to convey all the information, the best is a simple design that catches the attention of the consumers, that way, they will understand better the information. But simple designs are the hardest to pull off.
-Figures: the human brain is a fascinated organ, many times it will understand easier iconic figures than words or phrases, so why not using some of those figures, especially if the brand has one of those as part of its image.
-Brain teasers: continuing with the interesting way on how the brain works, why not using brain teasers that will challenge customers, to find the correct answer, and it will make them interested in your brand.
-Proportions: playing with sizes is an incredible way to give more punch to an ad. Just not playing with the product size, but also changing the written parts, and even combine different formats under the same ad, from huge billboards to small ads like posters.
-Movement: even when ads are static, many design tricks will evoke movements, given the ad a new sensation, and catching the attention of passerby that will be interested in the «moving ad.»
-Space: use the space of the ad wisely, especially the negative space playing with the positive, making users to try to decipher the ad even when focusing only on one part of the ad.
-Optical illusions: the illusions are a great way to challenge designers, to have a new and fun way to promote products and services, and to surprise users and consumers with just one single ad.
-Typography: Fonts greatly enhance the power of an ad, but what about custom typography. There are many types of fonts out there for use, but creating one just for your brand can give more identity to it and become iconic.
-Call-to-action: ads must be clear in what they are selling or offering; that is the main reason for using a simple design. A good call-to-action in every ad must be short, no more than five words, and giving the users that urgency to do something about what they read on the ad.
-Target audience: any marketer knows the importance of a niche for a good campaign and strategy. So pick a target audience and focus every campaign on it, especially ads that will be an investment.
-Short text: forget the long text and use so many words, keep it simple even with the copies. If the call-to-action is no more than five words, well, the rest should be equal. Every copy needs to be clever, straight to the point, but most importantly, pair up with the brand image.
-Colors: this can be tricky, not just because it is recommended to use the brand colors, but also because a person’s psyche can change only with one color or even hues. So the designer must understand how the color psychology works.
-Focal point: every designer knows what is a focal point and how to exploit it. Be careful with your ads, try to give the designer or their team all the information to place a correct focal point.
-Clear offer: don’t play games with offers, just get to the point and present the best on the ads, that is their main objective to offer the best and give the brand a good image out there.
Advertising design is important for every company and brand; ads are the key; every marketing campaign and strategy need the best to be successful. Check out more information about design and marketing within the magazine, and don’t forget to follow us on our social media!
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