The Critical Role of Graphic Design in Digital Marketing Success
Reading Time: ~7 Mins | Written By: Luigi Macías & Juliana Bermudez
In Digital Marketing various factors can contribute to the success of a project; images or videos, infographics, illustrations, physical brand collateral, and the message behind them.
The online world is filled with distractions, making it challenging to stand out. With so much content vying for users’ attention, strong visuals are vital to grabbing eyes by communicating a message and feeling through colour, imagery and typography, and building brand recognition. Graphic design elevates a brand's vision and messaging to be more than just an idea. It blends striking visuals with strategic messaging at the heart of every successful digital strategy. In essence, graphic design creates that crucial first impression for potential customers. It communicates your brand's personality, values, and offerings through unforgettable visuals.
Eye-catching brand identities created by graphic designers for your brand can include social graphics, website interfaces, physical collateral, posters, billboards, and multimedia content that shape perceptions and drive viewer interest—every touchpoint matters in this visual narrative.
Here are some key points to consider when it comes to the relationship of graphic design and digital marketing:
Brand Identity:
Brand identity is arguably the most important part of marketing your business. It is the first touchpoint from your business to your potential customers with graphic elements such as your logo, colour scheme, font and supporting graphics (such as illustrations and icons) that will automatically incite feelings and communicate an impression of who your business is.
A great example of good graphic design execution with a strong brand identity is Coca-Cola. It is known everywhere for its logo, signature red, and famous text style. Which also helps optimize digital marketing campaigns. This makes people see the Coca-Cola brand as strong; even before reading the words, people instantly connect the visuals to Coca-Cola's tasty drinks.
What are some of the most important points to consider when it comes to the relationship between your brand identity and marketing campaign?
Consistency:
Consistent graphic design across all marketing channels helps reinforce brand identity and brand recognition. As a result, it builds trust and credibility among potential customers. You can ensure your brand graphics are consistent across all disciplines by ensuring your business has a brand guideline that you and your team can check to establish rules that must be followed in the creation stage of your collateral.
For instance, Nike makes sure its marketing stays the same across all channels. The iconic swoosh logo is shown, and the bold types and images with athletes are used. This follows Nike's brand rules in every ad. Being consistent builds trust, and it reinforces Nike's leading brand status for athletic wear.
Differentiation:
Unique and innovative visualizations that a brand creates can contribute to a brand's ability to stand out from competitors. It helps to create a distinct personality and perception that folks can quickly identify and connect with the target audience. A great example is MailChimp, which stands out by using its special and unique brand style across Facebook ads. This helps MailChimp’s ads feel different from other companies. By doing this, MailChimp leaves a lasting impression on the people it wants to reach.
Visual appeal:
The visual appeal of your graphics often communicates the professionalism of your company. Not only that, it showcases the detail and effort you put into what you do. The better your graphics look visually, the better your brand is going to come across to your audience.
Visual appeal can have a huge impact on digital marketing campaigns. For example, Airbnb shares beautiful pictures of cool places to stay and travel to in their Facebook Ads. The ads are very well-designed and classy looking, which creates a feeling of both “want”, and a “fear of missing out” (FOMO). So, the viewer is tempted to click and find out more about these destinations.
Visual appeal is important to consider because:
First Impressions: Visuals are often the first thing the audience sees; therefore, a great graphic that is well laid out and easy to understand can catch the audience's attention and create a positive impression while scrolling through hundreds of posts and pages online. First impressions are extremely important for marketing campaigns. GoPro does a great job of this with well-laid-out graphics that instantly catch the audience's attention while scrolling through their feed, creating a positive impression of the brand as being synonymous with adventure and excitement.
Brand Recognition: As mentioned above it is extremely important that your graphics are consistent and visually appealing to help establish brand recognition when your audience is viewing hundreds of other companies' communications throughout the day. Logos, colour schemes, photography, and other design elements are all factors that contribute to creating a memorable brand image. McDonald's signature golden arches, red and yellow colours, and pictures of tasty foods are really eye-catching and make them easily recognizable at a glance. This helps McDonald's ads to be recognized instantly without having to think about it.
Communication:
Copy on its own can only go so far. Graphic design helps bring in that oomph to establish the message you are trying to convey, using more than just words.
Why is this?
Storytelling: Graphics can speak louder than words alone. They may touch our feelings, share big thoughts, and engage the audience on a deeper level, often touching on emotions through visuals. Moreover, Storytelling has a huge impact on Digital Ads; for instance, Dove's Facebook ads are known for their powerful storytelling through graphics. Through visually compelling images and videos, Dove campaigns often convey messages of self-acceptance, empowerment, and inclusivity.
Clarity: Clear and well-designed graphics can help communicate your message efficiently using comprehensible and easy-to-read headings, icons and images - often in the form of infographics using these elements when content is fairly convoluted. As a result, complex ideas can be easier to digest through the visualization of content. Graphics play an important role in digital ads, and a great example is Google. Google effectively uses clear and well-designed graphics on different platforms, to communicate complex ideas. Whether explaining the features of a new product or showcasing data trends, they are consistently using images to make information easily digestible, ensuring clarity in its messaging, and enhancing audience understanding and engagement.
Engagement:
Effective graphic design is often what stops thumbs from scrolling, catching someone's attention and engaging with your content. Whether it be by liking, sharing, commenting, or clicking through.
Where is this effect most seen?
Social media impact: In the social media era, catching the audience’s attention and standing out in a viewer’s feed is crucial. Visual content can increase engagement, drive more traffic, increase click-through rates (CTR), and help achieve digital marketing goals by standing out in someone's feed and catching someone's attention in a matter of seconds. One example is Red Bull's Facebook ads are known for their impactful visual content that catches the audience's attention on the busy social media platform. Adrenaline pumping activities make the visuals dynamic. People like and share Red Bull's posts, and therefore, engagement is high with Facebook marketing. This is why great graphics design can have a huge impact on digital marketing.
Call-to-Action: Having strong visual content can help give your audience an objective and encourage them to take action, which is one of the main objectives in digital marketing. Whether encouraging people to click on a link, sign up, complete a purchase, or any type of conversion a company has. For instance, Amazon utilizes strong image content in its Facebook ads to encourage users to take action. Whether it's inviting users to click on a product link, sign up for a Prime membership, or complete a purchase.
With endless stimulation within reach on our mobile devices through infinite scrolling, strong graphics are an essential part of your marketing strategy to grab the audience's eyes. Moreover, it serves as the ultimate attention magnet to encourage them to complete an action and engage with your brand.
Useful graphic design means more than just looking nice. It aligns visuals with goals, considers the user experience, and how to approach your target audience to optimize the customer journey, the results, or conversions at every touchpoint.
