Simplicity has been the goal in marketing for decades. Using slogans, jingles and simple images, marketing professionals have worked hard to capture the attention of audiences with as few words and images as possible. Due to changes in technology and consumer expectations, that goal is now more important than ever. Simplicity is now a critical component in nearly all marketing and advertising.
Finding a memorable message that is noticeable, attractive and impactful can be a great challenge. Understanding the need for simplicity and knowing the tricks that make this possible can help you cater your marketing strategy to today's audience.
Catering to Small Screens, Short Attention Spans
In today's world of social media, likes, dislikes and delete buttons, the average consumer will only glance at advertisements, images and slogans. To complicate matters, more people now view advertisements on their smartphones and other mobile devices. As a result, formatting your advertisements to small screens is important. Audiences don't like scrolling, so each image must fit neatly on a smartphone screen. It is this reality that forces marketing professionals to trim the fat and resort to a simple, straightforward design.
Simplifying Your Marketing Message
Achieving simplicity is not as easy as it may sound. Below are some tips that can help.
- Cut back on clutter. Reduce images to the most necessary components. Cut back on anything extra unless it adds meaning to the message.
- Boil it down to one sentence. Every marketing campaign and every advertisement should be easy to condense into one sentence. Advertising messages that require more than one sentence are simply too complex. Meaning is lost on consumers who don't have time for complex ideas.
- Leave in the white space. White space gives breathing room to ideas and images, and brings the most important points to the forefront. White space allows audiences to focus on the main idea, and enables them to derive layers of meaning in an instant.
- Reduce with each draft. Subtract more than you add with each new draft, until your advertisements, websites and other marketing campaigns are as simple as possible.
- Limit the number of colors. Too many colors can detract from meaning and leave the eye wandering, looking for a place to rest. Limiting the colors in an image will free up brain power for processing the message.
Contact a Professional
John Maeda said, "Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful." Knowing what to eliminate and what to keep is one of the most difficult lessons that business professionals must learn when developing an effective marketing strategy.
If you're struggling to produce simple marketing content, now is the time to reach out to a professional marketing service. At ProFromGo, we help businesses produce powerful and effective Internet marketing strategies. We're your local Internet marketing experts. We'll help you reach your Internet marketing goals using smart SEO, strategic thinking and beautiful design. Contact us today to get started.
