While a picture may be worth a thousand words, graphic design can be worth thousands of dollars in any business.
Graphic design is more than just aesthetics — it’s a form of communication between your business and your audience. Businesses use graphics in every stage of the marketing funnel to inform, engage, and eventually persuade prospective customers to make a purchase or take a desired action.
A flyer design can inform local audiences about an upcoming workshop. An attractive email series can upsell new services to current customers. A well-crafted sales page can effectively announce your new product release.
If you’re in a business, you’re in the business of graphic design.
Let’s explore five reasons why graphic design is important for any business (including yours!) to expand brand reach and turn more profit.
1. First Impressions Matter
Graphic design is an important tool to help any business make a positive, lasting impression. The first time a visitor interacts with your brand will set the tone for the rest of your business relationship.
And usually, that first interaction comes in the form of visual marketing materials. It could be a business card, a new landing page on your website, a poster, a flyer, a social media post, or even your product packaging.
Capitalize on the first step of the buyer’s journey by implementing relevant, updated graphics that tell the story of your brand. (Hint: Check out our design samples to inspire your creativity.)
When a customer hears about your brand for the first time, they are most likely going to do some preliminary research on your website before making a purchase. What does your website or your landing pages say about your brand? Are there bright, cheery colors with whimsical fonts? Or did you use sleek, professional design elements with gray and silver hues?
Take a tour of your company’s website, landing pages, and social media pages. Then, update any graphics that no longer accurately represent your brand or brand message.
2. Consistency Equals Credibility
No matter what industry or field you’re in, graphic design will help your business create credibility. When your creative content helps solve problems and relieve pain points, your customers are more likely to view you as a trustworthy authority in your field.
Let’s say you create valuable social media content that viewers really do appreciate — but each post looks different from the last, without adhering to a brand guide. Your existing audience may know about your content gold mine, but newcomers will most likely be turned off by the graphic mishmash that is your social media profile.
Creating a unified aesthetic will help your brand look truly authoritative and believable. Consistency creates credibility.
The same principle applies to marketing and branding: If you create a piece of content that helps someone solve a problem or relieve a pain point in their own life, they will most likely turn to you for advice again when facing a similar situation in the future.
Consistent content creation is the key to building a dedicated following of people who trust your brand and believe in your product or service.
3. Efficient Communication of Ideas
Infographics are a great way to summarize information that your audience would otherwise skim over (or skip reading completely). Studies show that infographics — which combine visuals with text — are three times more engaging than text-only content. Because humans are heavily influenced by visuals, adding relevant graphics to text can deepen our understanding and recollection of complex information.
If you’ve ever tried learning a new language with a highly visual platform like Rosetta Stone, you’ve experienced heightened learning through graphic design. This language-learning software rarely offers explicit definitions to foreign words; instead, students are tasked to infer meanings using visual context clues.
Similarly, try incorporating infographics anywhere you currently use large blocks of text to explain information. Have a “how-to” page? Turn it into an easy-to-follow infographic. Posting an article about social media statistics on your blog? Add an infographic summarizing the important stats.
4. Creativity Kills Competition
Increasing your company’s competitive advantage is more important than ever, as competition continues to increase.
With so many free online design tools available today, it’s never been easier to create personalized, quality content. But in order to truly stay ahead of competitors in the marketplace, you’ve got to get creative with your brand direction.
Create content that puts forward new ideas, solves existing problems, or relieves customer pain points in innovative ways. Graphics can be used to empathize with your audience by literally showing them what life would look and feel like with their pain points solved by your product, service, or advice.
For some creative ways to strengthen your brand’s visuals, learn about 10 types of graphic design that will help you create cohesion and stand out among the competition.
5. Your Message Matters
Your business has a story worth telling. Whether you’re a solopreneur selling homemade jewelry online or a serial entrepreneur starting your next venture, there are people out there who will be happy to know about what your business offers.
Graphic design is about communicating that unique brand story to your current and future customers. Simple design decisions like font choice and color scheme can help you deliver your messages with both feeling and clarity in a way that supports your brand message.
There’s no doubt that you will produce a wide range of marketing materials in your business journey. While each item has a different purpose, and therefore a different look, it’s best to have all your creative content conform to a unified brand. A branding guide can help you and your team achieve this.
Does your business have an official brand guide? If not, check out our free resource for creating a complete branding guide to start building consistency across your brand. Because it’s crucial that people can recognize your brand at a glance, we’ll walk you through the brand guide creation process step by step.
Need some help getting graphic design for your business?
As the ultimate creative solution for entrepreneurs, Design Pickle offers unlimited graphic design requests and revisions. You can subscribe to our services like Graphic Design, Custom Illustrations, Presentation Design, and Motion Graphics (and even mix and match them!) with no risk. How? We offer no contracts and a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
Beyond these five tips, outsourcing graphic design to a capable partner can actually help you scale and profitably grow your business. Learn powerful business growth strategies by downloading The High Growth Playbook for CEOs.
