With Valentine's Day over and done with we thought we'd tell you of our favourite love story - creativity and content.
As brand design specialists and an inbound marketing agency, our number passion is entwining such subjects into a beautiful brand.
We understand the critical importance of what great content can do to a beautiful design. As two former agencies, we have collaborated to provide everything for you under one roof, this is where the benefits of merging creativity and content really come to light.
Our stunning, eye-catching and relevant visuals - whether it's a website, brochure or letterhead - "pull" your reader / visitor / customer in (this is the inbound way), then your content "keeps" them attracted. The writing and language you use is what 'sells' your product / company - if you can't get the right words to make your product as beautiful as the graphics, the customer will walk away.
To ensure your creativity and content can form the beautiful love story here are our 5 steps to make your content tip-top:
1. Content works better when it’s put into an aesthetically appealing design
People’s eyes are drawn to strong design, colour and high quality graphics – it’s natural that we look and are attracted to beautiful things. If you want a website visitor / brochure reader to read that great content which will sell your product / business, then you must make the format it’s on visually appealing. Whether it’s standing out from the zillion other websites or striking them upon first glance from a news stand.
2. A strong design doesn’t mean your content should be bland
Keep your customer engaged with smooth, interesting, attention-keeping language. The design is an “attention-grabber”, the content is the “attention-keeper”. Whether you have in-house facilities capable of creating fantastic text or you have to outsource, make sure it’s done correctly. As an inbound marketing agency we’d recommend building a great relationship with another local business who can help you do this (we did it before we joined together to form Thrive), or hire someone as an in-house Content Creator.
3. Know what the content will be, before looking for a design
Clients can get caught up in the excitement of re-branding or getting graphics designed and often forget – or don’t know how to focus and write their content. As a former creative agency and marketing agency we cannot be solely responsible for creating your content and/or brand – instead, we can guide you through our Branding Process, which leads you through defining key messages and brand identity. If you’re looking for graphics or a website, then know what your messages are and how you want them to look in the positioning of your graphics / layout, then ensure your graphics fits this idea.
4. Consider your key messages – do the content AND branding reflect them?
This is critical to your audience gaining a clear understanding of your brand messages. What do you want them to take away from your content and branding? Being very creative with deep brand messages in your branding is one thing, but then steering off the point in your content will disappoint. Ensure you’ve been through a consistent thought process when coming up with a design and the focus of each page’s content. Never “wing it” when it comes to either element, but consider both separately, then put them together and check that they still make sense.
5. Never try to compromise
A lot of the time, deadlines and clients can put pressure on you to rush the job and ultimately compromise either the creative or content elements of your work. Never, ever compromise one for the other. Creating the balance we are talking about takes a lot of strategic effort and time, so plan ahead for each project about what content is needed, where and how this will affect your design plans. We’d also suggest that your in-house / outsourced Content Creator handles every single word that is written – don’t just put some text in because you “need to get something in there”. As an inbound marketing agency who specialise in content and creation, we can do both, having spent years as separate forces we now have the experience and specialist team to put together amazing designs and strong language.
As a "joint force" of marketing and brand development, our inbound marketing agency believes in the strength of a three-pronged approach - creative, strategic and communication. Content and creativity are crucial to any strategy, but we must strike a balance - this is a skill we have honed with our combined 40+ years of experience as creatives and content strategists.
