05 Oct Strategically Seasonal: 3 Reasons Graphic Design is Key to Your Seasonal Marketing Success
1. Seize the Season
Holidays are great opportunities for marketing in every arena. People automatically pay attention to seasonally themed messages. Why? Very simply put, holidays themselves are very powerful brands in and of themselves.
Seasonal Brands
Seasons have their own recognizable colors, images, fonts, logos, and even characters. When people identify these brands, they are immediately primed to respond. This presents amazing opportunities for marketers.
Graphic design can be your most powerful tool for taking advantage of these opportunities. Since holiday brands are highly visual, our seasonal messages must be visually compelling. Wise marketers take advantage of any season’s built-in visual cues.
Marketing to the Mouse
This is especially true in the digital marketplace. Online, customers can now respond instantly to whatever catches their eye. This means we are all marketing to the mouse—working for instant responses. Graphic design allows us to infuse our communication with visually compelling text and imagery that customers will notice and click.
2. Channel the Emotion
Emotion is an important factor in every aspect of marketing. Marketing is all about moving people to act. In order to do this, we need to communicate on a deeper level than that of benefits, facts, or data. We must move people emotionally.
The Power of Visual Cues
No other cues move our emotions as quickly and effectively as visual cues. A picture truly is “worth a thousand words.” Since holiday brands are already associated with positive emotion, they give us the perfect opportunity to craft a message that speaks on that level.
Strategic, Not Just Seasonal
The power of seasonal images is well-known. Therefore, people will see thousands of themed messages during certain times of the year. Unfortunately, most of them will look very similar.
This is why strategic graphic design is so key to seasonal marketing success. A creative design team can work to ensure that your messages are more than just seasonal. Your marketing should take that emotion and channel it towards your brand, your goals, and your message.
3. Boost Your Brand
Why is it important to send Christmas or Chanukah cards to your clients? Of course, you sincerely want to wish them a happy holiday. You may also want to get them thinking about you as the year comes to a close. These are valid reasons, but there is a long-term benefit as well.
Long-term Goodwill
That benefit is to the power of your brand. Every one of those cards associates your brand with the mega-powerful brand of the holiday. The same can be true with a Fall Catalog or a promotion associated with another holiday. The short-term sales or responses they produce are only part of their value. Their real value is in brand awareness and goodwill that lasts long after the season has passed.
Maximizing Visual Power
Graphic design is the most powerful way to maximize this effect. Your designer can effectively incorporate the colors, styles, images, or ideas of the season in a way that highlights who you are. By taking advantage of visual and emotional impact, well-designed holiday marketing tools possess a unique power to boost your brand.
At Relay Creative, we want to maximize every opportunity for your organization and your brand. We enjoy the creative process and continually strive to produce compelling messages that meet and exceed your expectations. We work as a team and would love to work with you. Click here to get started.