Marketing Design

WHAT IS MARKETING DESIGN AND WHY DO I NEED IT?

A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO A MARKETING DESIGN FOR THE TIME-STRAPPED PROFESSIONAL 

Most start-ups and artisans are busy creating their product, their art, the story, the experience, or fighting for ‘the cause.’ They just want to ‘DO IT!’ and share their joy and excitement for whatever ‘it’ is. They are passionate about experiences and sharing, yet hesitant to take time away to strategize about a plan to talk about the cause.

In practicality though, mapping out how you’re going to tell your story will save time and space for the what – LIVING your best life and sharing it with the world! Make it easy on yourself, you small business owner, start-up non-profit, or digital creator, you . . . make a Marketing Plan!

Yes, there are a few tricks to the trade that those marketing experts use. But guess what? Marketing tools work for everyone regardless of title or education or practice. You just need a little systematic approach – aka Marketing Design – to get a decent return on your content creation investment.

Here are a couple of tricks I’ve learned along the way to maximize my time spent in promotion and brand development . . . 

SAY IT AGAIN ~ THE ‘GENTLE REMINDER’

Statistics show that the average person needs to hear a prompt roughly 7 times before they’ll take action. That’s a lot of touches for anyone’s marketing plan to fulfill!

In practicality though, we can use this human memory characteristic to our advantage and carefully repeat identical content from time to time and no one will be the wiser! Tactic #1 is a major timesaver for busy up-and-comers and permission to repeat content means less time required to generate completely new content. 

So, if the goal is 7 touch points with your audience, go ahead and carefully make touch #2 and touch #5 exactly the same! You’re just gently reminding your would-be-participants of what they wanted to know, right?!?

NOTE – I say to use this tactic ‘carefully’ because no one likes to see the same commercial twice in the same commercial break, right? Yes, it was very memorable, but in an over-the-top-cheesy-salesman kind of way and slightly annoying. Unless that’s the impact your brand is going for, be sure to get a week or more distance between identical content posts.

SAY IT AGAIN A DIFFERENT WAY

How many different ways can you say the same thing? Oh, let me count the ways!

Beyond the sheer volume of touches we hope to achieve with our consumer-base (7 in this example), the width of audience engagement is important to brand growth and sales as well. To engage so very many kinds of people, we need to be sure to use a variety of communication styles to ensure our message makes it through those unique filters designed to process new information when entering the brain. Try Tactic #2 – Different asthetic, words, and tones all will reach different people, so switch it up!

To reach more people on the same platform, repeat your message over and over, but say it in a different way each time. Try . . .

  • A New look: Use a different visual, but keep the exact same narrative.
  • Pointing to the Experts: Share other’s opinions and hard data about your area of expertise.
  • Making it a Question. Encourage engagement by leading with a question. Consider answering it ORleaving it open ended.
  • And more! A short brain storming session will quickly come up with a dozen different ways to say the same thing a different way. 

SAY IT AGAIN IN A DIFFERENT PLACE

Just as there are so very many ways to say the same thing, there are so very many places to be heard these days saying the thing! As marketers, the number of platforms on which a brand is expected to be present is staggering. But, no, you do NOT need to create new and unique content for every platform and media outlet out there to be competitive in the marketplace. Tactic #3 – tailor the same initial piece of content for easy consumption across multiple, different platforms.

SOCIALS: For instance, Pinterest and Instagram are image-heavy platforms while TikTok and YouTube (obviously!) are video-focused. When possible, capture both photo and video content in the moment and you can easily plan posts of the exact same narrative on these four platforms with efficient and effective use of a single event or content. Make sure to capture horizontal and vertical variations whenever possible. Facebook and YouTube work best with horizontally shot videos (imitating the movie or tv show look and orientation) while Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok do best with the Portriat orientation of media. Even within the video-heavy platforms, each is geared to different lengths of context with longer videos hosted best on YouTube and short clips used on TikTok or Facebook and Instagram stories. Yep, don’t forget ‘stories’ on the Zuckerberg platforms where every post can double as a story for even more engagement.

NEWSLETTERS: Another example would be further leveraging an organization’s investment in a physical, mailed newsletter. This kind of content is not for everyone, but this particular physical medium often appeals to a mature supporter base. A newsletter is also conveniently full of ready-made social media posts with no new content creation needed to reach a completely different demographic. The same mailed newsletter can easily be converted into an E-news and each of those articles can double as blog posts. Sharing a blog post to social media is just another way to ‘Say It Again’ three different places. Triple win for the pro-level, marketing multitasker!

7 POINTS OF ENGAGEMENT DESIGN FLOW

If you’re looking for a marketing rhythm, try this design flow and calendar of posts combining the seven days of the week with the 7 Points of Engagement one needs to inspire action in one’s potential customers:

DAY ONE: Say it.

DAY TWO: Say it a different way.

DAY THREE: Say it again in a different place.

DAY FOUR: Say it a different way.

DAY FIVE: Say it again.

DAY SIX: Say it a different way.

DAY SEVEN: Say it again in a different place.

NOTE: This messaging flow is based on the marketing goal of achieving one touchpoint a day for all seven days of the week (7 Points of Engagement = 1 action, right?). If this marketing frequency is too ambitious, never fear! Stretching this seven day marketing design out over an entire month will gain you a very respectable 1-2 touch points a week:)

BOTTOMLINE ~ CONSISTENCY IS KEY

Consistency is key to brand engagement and marketing at whatever volume and width of messaging you can afford to invest in.

Be reasonable with your capacity, but consider at least budgeting a few hours each month to create and schedule at least these 7 Points of Engagement. Automate as much of the process as you can and then sprinkle in some organic, in-the-moment-style content to ensure your audience is authentically engaged.

It’s not cheating to layer and reuse content, I promise. These tools will maximize your limited marketing time with a simple, intentional marketing design and get you back to doing you!

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