What You Need to Know About Color in Design

In a recent study conducted by KissMetrics.com, visual appearance and color ranked more important to consumers than just about everything else when viewing marketing materials. In fact, ninety-three percent of people who responded to the survey said that visual appearance (which color is a part of) was the most important factor they used when making a purchasing decision. Only six percent said texture, while on percent placed a heavy value on sound and smell.

Color and Marketing: Breaking it Down

Along these same lines, an incredible eighty-five percent of consumers said that color was THE primary reason why they chose to buy a particular product or service. It goes without saying that the right color design is the perfect place to start with your marketing materials.

In terms of your long-term success, one of the most valuable resources that you have available to you is and will always be your brand. It's something that lives on long after a purchase is made. It's the narrative and the set of strong, relatable values that are at the heart of your business. Additional studies have shown that the careful use of color can increase brand recognition by up to eighty percent, which, in turn, goes a long way towards increasing consumer confidence at the same time.

But What Do Colors Mean?

However, none of this is to say that your marketing materials should be jam-packed with as many colors as possible. Quite the contrary, in fact. Different colors have all been known to affect people on an emotional and psychological level in a variety of ways. Consider the following:

• Yellow is often associated with optimism and youthful enthusiasm. This is why it's often used to grab the attention of people like window shoppers.
• Red is almost always associated with a sense of energy and excitement. In fact, red is a great way to create a sense of urgency in your readers (and when used right can even increase their heart rate, too!)
• Black is considered to be very powerful and very sleek, which is why it is usually used to market luxury products.
• Green is normally associated with wealth - which makes perfect sense because money is green. It also happens to be the easiest color for the human eyes to process, which is why green is often used to underline important information in marketing copy.

To that end, it's important to use different colors depending on exactly what it is you're trying to accomplish. Are you trying to highlight an upcoming clearance sale and want to create a sense of urgency? Make sure those fliers and posters have as much red on them as possible. Are you trying to attract the attention of a more sophisticated level of clientele, or do you want to positively influence the overall impression that people get when they see your products? Try using as much black as you can.

Color is a powerful tool when used correctly, but it's important to remember that it is just one of many. But, provided your use of color matches up with both your audience and your long-term objectives, you'll find that it can be a terrific way to put your campaigns over the top and start generating the types of results you deserve.


To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.


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Avoid These Common Print Marketing Mistakes for Visually Compelling Content

Compelling images are the perfect way to attract attention and create an emotional connection with your customers and prospects. Avoid these common mistakes as you design newer and richer content moving forward.

Mistake #1: You Didn't Keep It Simple

Why do you think audiences have gravitated towards visual print marketing content over the last few years? If you thought "because people are bombarded with information these days from nearly every angle," you'd be right! From the moment people wake up in the morning, their smartphones are sending them emails and push notifications. They're wading through dozens of blog posts. They're reading massive reports at work all day long. Information is everywhere, and it can often feel overwhelming.

Solution: Make your print marketing visually impactful, and easy to read and interpret.

Visual print marketing is an excellent way to relieve people from these stresses - or at least; it's supposed to be. It can allow you to take your message and wrap it up in a way that is easy to understand and a refreshing change of pace from everything else.

Think about it in terms of infographics. Infographics are an incredibly popular form of visual content because they take complicated ideas and break them down to just what you need to know and nothing more. Apply this same concept to your print marketing designs.

Mistake #2: You Failed to Account For Light

When you're leaning so heavily on your visuals, you MUST account for the number one factor that can destroy the feeling you were going for - light.

How that gorgeous new flyer or banner you're creating looks on a computer screen and how it looks in a store window in your neighborhood can be very, very different depending on the lighting quality of the area, the direction of the sun, and more.

Solution: Ask yourself how light will affect every decision you make, from the richness of the colors you're choosing to the specific type of paper (and finish) you'll be using.

Accounting for these simple mistakes will put you ahead of the game and on your way to stunning and compelling visual print marketing.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.


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Craft More Compelling, More Emotional Presentations Today

The major goal of any piece of marketing collateral is to connect with your audience in a deep, meaningful way. This is true regardless of the specific type of marketing you're talking about - from that terrific new flyer you just designed, to a banner, and beyond. Presentations are a particularly valuable format in this regard as they give you a nice opportunity to really dive a little deeper into certain subjects in a way that other mediums don't allow.

However, the format is only a means to an end. If you really want to make sure that you're crafting the most compelling, emotional presentations possible, there are a few key things you'll want to keep in mind.

Find That Theme

Because presentations tend to be long form documents (at least in comparison to something like a flyer), you always want to make an effort to keep your "eye on the prize," so to speak. Every presentation has a topic. That topic should be reinforced again and again by your primary theme. This is the main idea you're trying to get across or the idea that you're trying to help someone understand.

Once you've settled on your theme, EVERY component of your presentation needs to feed back into it. This will form the basic spine of your piece. Anything that isn't directly related to that theme or the topic at hand has to go - no exceptions.

It's a Visual World; We're Just Living In It

Another essential step you want to take in your quest to craft more compelling, more emotional presentations involves including as many visual elements as possible. Remember that a presentation is not a white paper or a blog post - it is a medium that is perfect for relevant images and other visual content.

Human beings tend to be visual learners.  We can't help it; it's just the way our brains work. One study revealed that once someone had heard a piece of information, they usually only remembered about 10% of that content three days later. When that same information is paired with a relevant image, however, that number jumps to 65%.

In terms of presentation success, it's hard to find a tip more valuable than relying on visuals. Visuals give people something to latch onto, something to break up big blocks of text and (more importantly) are naturally engaging. People even follow directions better when the content they're reading is filled with pictures, so this is one of those major tips that you definitely don't want to avoid.

These are just a couple of the major tips that you can use to craft more compelling, more emotional presentations. Remember that one of your top priorities as a marketer is always to get the right content in front of the right people at the right time. However, doing that is only half the battle. Making sure that the content is as striking and as engaging as you can is another major component when it comes to getting people to make that ever-important sale.


To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.


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Learning to Listen: The Hard Way

In the 70s, Italian aid worker Ernesto Serelli learned to listen to clients the hard way. His amusing tale of how he "helped" a village in Africa grow tomatoes, only to see the harvest consumed in a single night by the local hippos, is a powerful and popular TED talk. While you won’t want to miss this dynamic speaker, some key takeaways are outlined below:

Hippos and Tomatoes

Italian aid worker Ernesto Serelli tells the tale of one of his first experiences working in famine-plagued Africa in the 1970s. Bustling with good intentions and plenty of energy, he and his team arrived in the village they were to help and promptly began planting familiar varieties of vegetables in the fertile soil.

The local residents watched the process and despite efforts to engage and teach, did not take the aid workers agriculture lessons seriously or commit to growing. As the plants blossomed and bore amazing fruit, the workers celebrated the harvest and looked forward to showing the native people how much agriculture could do for them.

The night before the harvest, a herd of hippos swept ashore and ate every plant that had been so lovingly cultivated. The locals then revealed to the aid team that hippos had always eaten the crops planted in the verdant, riverside soil. When asked why they had not given the aid team this information weeks before, the answer was “No one asked us.”

By rushing ahead and putting a plan in motion that they thought would solve the villager's problem instead of asking questions and discovering what had been tried in the past, the well-meaning aid workers totally missed the point. They also wasted weeks of time and plenty of resources that could have been dedicated elsewhere.

The Power of Listening

You may not be helping a hungry village in Africa, but the lesson of asking your prospect or clients the right questions to truly meet their needs applies to every interaction you have.  Learning to listen is an important component for anyone in business. Fail to ask the right questions, and you could face a disaster.

Take the time to remember the hippos and tomatoes next time you speak with a new client about their needs, and make sure you take the time to ask the right questions before you charge ahead.

This TED Talk is an enduring favorite and an excellent reminder of why we need to stop and listen to what our clients are saying and why we need to take the time to understand what they’ve tried and what they need.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.


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The Art of Humor Marketing #LOL

Did you enjoy some April Fools' Day marketing jokes this year? Make no mistake about it: coming from a business, April Fools' Day jokes are every bit as much an art as they are a science. It's an opportunity to inject a breath of fresh air into your marketing efforts, as the day is one that has quickly become synonymous with pranks and practical jokes. If you do it properly, adding humor to your marketing campaigns can also be an excellent conversation starter - it's a unique way to add new members to your audience and engage with existing ones at the same time. As with most modern day marketing, however, it's often best to learn from example.

April Fools' Day, 2017: The Good

The clear winner of April Fools Day 2017 has to be Netflix, who released the elaborate prank "Netflix Live." Capitalizing on the wave of live streaming video spearheaded by services like Facebook, "Netflix Live" was supposedly a 24-hour live video feed of actor Will Arnett watching a different live video feed and commenting on whatever he saw, including people in an office using a microwave, an empty supply closet, and more.

"Netflix Live" had all the markings of a classic (and successful) April Fools' prank. It was timely because live video online is getting more popular all the time. It also honed right in on what Netflix's audience would find funny. "Arrested Development," the comedy classic in which Will Arnett stars, is one of the most popular shows on the platform.

Rule of Thumb: if you're going to play around on April Fools' Day or with humor marketing, know your audience.

The Bad

Again: the best April Fools' Day jokes are born from surprise. If your audience can see the joke coming a mile away, you probably shouldn't be making it. Or at least, you should try a little harder. This is a lesson that Google just spent several thousand dollars learning by way of the Google Gnome, an Amazon Alexa-like device you can talk to that takes the form of a lawn gnome that is connected to the internet.

This isn't a particularly bad joke in that it's offensive, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Not only is it immediately obvious that it's a joke from the moment you read the title, but the accompanying video is little more than the same basic joke ("a Google Gnome would be worthless to everyone") over and over again. It's a lot of effort for almost no payoff, especially considering the Gnome is a product few in Google's own audience would actually want to buy.

Rule of Thumb: Remember what April Fools' Day and humor marketing is all about. It's not supposed to be a day of obvious jokes. Theoretically, people shouldn't fall for your prank for at least a couple of minutes.

When executed properly, humor marketing can check a few different boxes all at once. For starters, it's fun - it's a great opportunity to pull back the curtain of your business and put a little bit of its personality on display. A well-executed humor campaign is also the perfect way to get people talking and generate new levels of awareness at the same time.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.


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How to Take the Lessons Learned in Online Marketing and Apply Them to the World of Print

Over the last few years, people are coming to the realization that digital and print isn't an "either/or" scenario. Many use one to supplement and compliment the other to great effect. Despite this, people still tend to think of them as two different mediums, thinking you have different rules that you use online than those that you follow in print.

Because online marketing has become so prominent, it has taught us some very valuable lessons. One of which is that those lessons aren't reserved only for the digital market. You can apply those lessons to your print collateral and come out all the better for it.

Marketing Is About Intimacy

Perhaps the biggest lesson that various digital and online marketing channels have taught us is that at the end of the day, you're not trying to "sell" to someone at all. You're trying to connect with them. The best marketing reaches out to customers and prospects in an intimate way that establishes the type of bond that turns prospective customers into buyers, and buyers into loyal advocates.

On the internet, this often takes the form of various social media and related techniques - after all, what could be more intimate than contacting someone on a small device that they carry around with them all day? The key takeaway, however, is that you DO have a way to maintain this intimacy in the world of print marketing, too.

According to a study conducted by the United States Postal Service, sixty-nine percent of people who responded said that they felt direct mail was more personal than internet mail. Emails may be great and efficient, but an actual letter (or in the case of a marketer, a flyer or brochure) is something tangible. They can hold it in their hands, pin it up on the refrigerator and share it with their friends and loved ones.

Optimizing Print Campaigns Through a Digital Lens

So how do you take full advantage of this fact and build the type of intimacy and emotional connection you can online? Simple. Take the rules that the internet forced marketers to adopt and apply them back into your print campaign.

Don't just tell the story of a product or service, tell the story of your entire organization. Bring people into the fold and let them see who you are, what you're all about, and why you do what you do. According to Millward Brown, physical materials forge a stronger connection inside the human brain than digital media ever can.

You can also take the valuable data you're gathering about your audience from the digital world and apply that back into your print collateral. Marketing has gotten hyper-specific. By using various software, you now know precisely what type of white paper, blog post, or video to send to someone at just the right point in the customer journey to help nurture that lead and guide them through to the desired outcome. Taking that one step further, you can also use the same insights to know exactly what type of flyer someone needs to receive in the mail, or take a successful visual element from social media and transform it into your next poster.

Print media is a format that people are naturally wired to engage with. If you can provide them with materials that are worth engaging with, similar to and combined with what digital agencies have been doing over the last few years, you're in an incredibly powerful position as a result.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.


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3 Tips for More Emotional Print Marketing Collateral

Despite what you may believe, most people don't rely on information when it comes to making a purchase. While people do love to do research in advance of parting with their hard-earned money, they rely much more heavily on emotions to guide their decisions. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you want to motivate someone to take action, you should work hard to inject as much raw emotion into your print marketing collateral as possible. Luckily, there are a few key tips you can start using today to accomplish exactly that.

It's All About Those Colors

Even if you don't want to fill your marketing collateral with text that drives home emotions, there are a number of subtle steps you can take to instantly provide a richer, fuller experience for your readers. Case in point: depending on the colors that you choose, you could be saying a great deal with your marketing collateral without actually saying anything at all.

Do you want to create a sense of urgency, for example, to really sell how important it is that someone place an order RIGHT NOW before your inventory is gone forever? Rely heavily on the color red to do exactly that. Note that red is also a great way to encourage someone's appetite, which is why it's used so heavily in marketing campaigns for fast food restaurants in particular.

Do you want to leave someone feeling calm, tranquil, and powerful? Green is the perfect way to do that. Black is often associated with authority and stability, while purple is a perfect way to signify wisdom and respect. Even oranges and yellows can be a great way to promote optimism, something that would be ideal if you're sending out marketing materials in advance of a product or service launch to build anticipation.

It's Not About "Me." It's About "You."

If you really want to convey emotion in your print marketing collateral, shift the focus of your copy to place the emphasis squarely on your consumer where it belongs. Don't speak to a large group of people; speak directly to one person for more intimacy. Don't write copy filled with technical specifications about the product; write directly about the experience someone gets and the problem it solves when using it.

At the end of the day, you're conveying all of the same information; you're just doing it in a more emotional way. It's the difference between "this great new product has X, Y, and Z features" and "you have an important problem, which this product solves in X, Y, and Z ways." Both are technically correct, but only one cuts right to the heart of the matter (no pun intended).

Tie Emotion Into Your Call-to-Action

Finally, learn how to insert as much emotion as possible directly into your call-to-action for the best results. Don't just say "Contact us today for more information." Think about the emotions you're trying to play to, first. If you want to create a sense of urgency, say "to find out how you can take advantage of this deal before it's gone, contact us today for more information."

Always try to leave someone with a strong feeling when they get to the end of your copy, be it happy, sad, excited, etc. Exactly what they will feel will vary depending on what you're trying to accomplish, but if you can leave them feeling SOMETHING, they'll be much more likely to take that next step.

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.


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