Marketing is about refinement, not immediate success

For small business owners, every dollar counts. As such, we need our marketing efforts to be successful. But how are you measuring success? How do you know what parts of the design are working and what are not?

As a graphic designer I use my experience and expertise to design marketing materials that are easy for the user and work towards your business goals. That’s only step one in the process. I am not the end user. I do not have their experiences or biases. Nor do I have the same needs and life goals as them. I am an educated proxy.

Maximizing your marketing efforts requires refinement. Refinement takes time and patience. Design, test, refine, repeat. That’s how we make the most successful marketing materials.

Getting feedback on your marketing materials

One way to refine is to ask questions of people in your target audience. Get their feedback and incorporate it into the next revision. To do this well requires care. Here are some points to consider:

Get feedback from a diverse audience

Ask people of different ages, genders, ethnicities, education levels, etc. The more diverse the group you collect feedback from, the wider the audience you can optimize for.

Ask about experience, not opinions

When asked to give an opinion on something people often jump into analysis mode. They start thinking about how it should be done rather than how their experience was. So, rather than “What do you think of this design?” ask “How easy was it for you to find X piece of information?”

Don’t ask leading questions

It can be easy to accidentally phrase out questions in a way that leads the person towards your own opinions. We do this without even noticing it. To get really effective feedback, though, we need to avoid leading. So, rather than asking “Do you think this red is too brings?” or “Do you think this photo is too small?” ask “What worked well for you?” or “What struggles did you run into?”

Designing marketing materials is an art. Experienced graphic designers are good at putting themselves in the audiences shoes, but nobody can do that perfectly, so let your mantra be Design, test, refine, repeat!

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