Design is critical to successful marketing campaigns, yet it’s often an afterthought or delegated to junior staff. But with the right design partner, you can elevate your marketing efforts and see real ROI.

Why go with an outsourced design shop

Going with an outsourced design shop offers organizations myriad benefits and cost savings. Outsourced design shops can leverage larger pools of experience, creativity, and specialized technologies to produce output more efficiently than in-house teams. This allows organizations to stay on budget, save resources and time, reduce risk and accelerate innovation — allowing them to meet their goals faster.

In addition, being able to staff up or down month-by-month will save your organization tons of headaches and budget. Besides, do you want to pore through design portfolios and figure out if UX designer A is better than UI designer B? Do you have an expert in UX design, UI design, print design, copywriting, and content marketing? Don't believe the hype, no one is good at all of these. (And if they are, they're expensive.) Do you have someone with enough design experience to oversee their work and ensure cohesion and quality?

With an experienced, collaborative design partner, you can focus on what matters most: your marketing goals.

Define your marketing goals and objectives to focus your design efforts

Having well-defined marketing goals and objectives can make all the difference in collaborating with any design team to create effective marketing materials. It’s not enough to throw together some attractive images and words. After all, this isn’t art.

Every design effort must be tailored toward your purpose and specific goals. Perhaps you’re aiming to improve customer engagement, increase website traffic, or warm leads from a specific persona.

Design can increase website conversions by up to 220%
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Taking the time to carefully outline what you hope to achieve with a particular design project will allow your design team to determine which approaches will work best to net the greatest results. By defining your marketing goals and objectives, you’ll be able to focus your design efforts for maximum impact.

Develop a style guide that reflects your brand personality and voice (or outsource it!)

Crafting a style guide that accurately reflects your brand’s personality is one of the smartest ways to ensure consistent communication throughout marketing materials and customer interactions. Without such a reference, you risk delivering inconsistent messaging, eroding trust, and ultimately losing out on potential customers.

Consistent design elements can increase revenue by 33%
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If you’re unsure how to create a styleguide, or don’t have the capacity to do so, consider outsourcing the task. An external design team can help you build something that accurately encapsulates your brand’s identity and easily develops consistency in your communication strategy. And their outside perspective is perfect for a reference meant to bring consistency to myriad design efforts.

Set realistic timelines and budgets (and stick to them!)

Before you start any design project, it’s important that you set realistic timelines and budgets. This will help your design partner better understand the project’s scope and ensure expectations are met on both ends. Setting a timeline also forces everyone involved to prioritize tasks — an invaluable tool for keeping projects on track.

Need help? Lean on your partner’s process and project management. With their applicable experience, you’re in good hands.

On average, companies allocated 42% of their marketing budget to design
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Remember that changing direction or trying to squeeze in additional tasks mid-project can quickly lead to delays and budget overruns — both of which can ruin your marketing efforts.

Work with a professional design agency that specializes in marketing design

Working with a professional designer or an agency specializing in marketing design can be an incredibly rewarding experience when done right. With the right expertise, experience, and empathy, such professionals can provide valuable insight into the process of designing marketing materials.

Not only do they keep up with the latest design trends, but as a dedicated team, they are also driven by understanding your unique needs and processes. Specialists ensure you get a unique product tailored to your specifications.  

Aesthetically pleasing design can increase customer loyalty by up to 25%
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Ultimately, the right design partner can help you create effective content that resonates with your target audience. With their assistance, you can focus on refining and optimizing the process of creating marketing materials without worrying about getting bogged down in technical details.

Get feedback from customers, employees, and other stakeholders to improve your designs

Effective data-driven design is nearly synonymous with marketing. Both aim to use company collateral to achieve measurable corporate goals by changing user behavior.

To feed this process it's vital to tap into the customer, employee, and stakeholder perspectives. Getting feedback from these three key groups provides a comprehensive understanding of data that can be applied to enhance the success of your designs and marketing campaigns.

With user research, companies can increase their conversion rates by up to 400%
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Such data-driven insights are essential in marketing projects because they equip brands with actionable data points for making accurate decisions about the direction design elements should take. Leaning on data streamlines efforts by reducing reliance on the subjective human element in decision-making. No more “I like purple!" “Well, I like green!”. Let the number decide!

User research can increase customer retention rates by up to 90%
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There are many benefits to working with an outsourced design team that specializes in marketing and communications design. When you partner with us, we’ll help you focus your efforts, develop a style guide that reflects your brand personality, and create designs built on feedback from customers and employees. We love to work closely with marketing teams that need design support, so please don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to learn more about what we do.