Posters are a worldwide favorite. They’re creative, bold, groovy and can provoke so many emotions too. Some posters get you excited, such as music or event posters. Posters have the power to create a buzz, motivate action, promote events, and spread information. Some may contain much more information than others. The key is finding the right balance with headline, copy, images, and logos. When you’ve achieved that, you’ve got one sweet poster. Knowing your audience and product/service/event is the first bit of critical information when making a poster. After that, the mood, emotion or reaction will lead to colors, fonts, and graphics that complement the information. Below are some poster ideas and tips for finding the perfect design theme to convey the message. Use color to create energy, elicit a mood and attract the eye. What is the first thing that attracts your attention/ It's color , then the design of the object. Colors will create energy, elicit a mood and attract the eye. Depending on the poster subject, the colors will be bold, subtle or romantic. You can really go all out with color. The 1st image below, a poster of Brian Stauffer's design for the Savannah Music Festival poster uses soft, springtime colors. This makes sure the viewer knows it’s an outdoor concert with charming music and not a rock concert. Another idea is to use blocks of solid colors. Ensure that the colors you choose work well together, and you’ll be able to achieve a striking background like the design by Allan Peters. (2nd Image) The Colorful Illustrated Music Festival Poster template grabs attention with its bright colors and bold lines. (3rd image) Or, limit your color palette. Note how this event poster by Graphic Plan achieves an eye-catching contrast using just black and red. (4th image) Bring your creations to life Whereas contrast, is the key to making your posters stand out by using contrasting colors. Pairing complementary colors or use two completely opposing colors creates the visual attraction. By using some really bright colors, combine black, white, and bright colors, or just go classic black and white! Show seriousness with a bold sans serif, enhance elegance with an italic serif or express playfulness or fun with a loose handwritten font. When selecting fonts, choose at least two — One for the headline. One for body copy. To create greater impact, experiment with typography. See below, how these two beautiful event posters by Kittaya Treseangrat and Drew Melton and Neil Hubert Photography have drawn inspiration from their subject: food! This is an example where an experimental composition really succeeds in giving an audience a taste of what’s to come. If you’re going to experiment with typography like this, make sure your accompanying fonts are clean and simple. The 3rd image is another clever example where the subject has been taken into consideration to influence the type (a poster by Will Miller promoting an annual typography event). What better opportunity to get creative and inspire budding designers who plan to attend? How you use type helps in the message you want to send. Check out the Music Fest Student Council Poster template.( 4th image) Create visual hierarchy Posters should grab attention and be a quick read. Rank information in order of importance. If you’re working with little copy, go for a bold, simple graphic or like the photo below of the Columbus Creative poster by Mike Jones. If you have lots of information, have the type be your focus. Think about a big headline and group information into chunks. How you place and arrange the words on your design helps create an impact. Use negative or white space to form a clever composition Creating an image from another image is something like magic. When it finally pops out at you, it’s amazing. Here’s a great example, it’s great how the Melbourne Food & Wine poster by Kaushik Design (image 1) creates wine glasses from the fork prongs. Another way to use negative space is to draw the eye into a small object of focus with lots of negative space around it to let the viewer’s eye breathe. Drop your copy into the open space to draw the eye but don’t fill it. Don't be afraid of empty spaces in your design. Check out The Lumineers template, and how it leaves an area on the sides. (Image 2). Remove unnecessary elements. Say more with less. Sometimes, less is more. It intrigues the viewer. A single word or dramatic image can communicate so much more than lots of words or intricate photos or illustrations. Don’t add extra graphics or words just for the sake of adding more. This 1st image below by Chloe Morris is a perfect example. Notice the similarities between the poster, 1st image and the 2nd image, a poster, by Null Artless below. They both feature one dominant word to draw in the attention of the viewer, a lack of color and clean and simple type. Minimalistic elegance we’re sure continued at the actual event. Do more with less. Check out the simplicity of the Blue Modern Simple Coffee Poster template -3rd image. Create a point of focus Use photography that’s in or out of focus to give more weight to the text. Or crop a photo tight to show the most important feature. This will create drama or lead the eye around the page. The poster (1st image) for the Theatre National de Chaillot by Michal Batory could’ve used a photo of a woman’s entire face but by using just the lips, it creates passion and intrigue. Notice the bonus result of the lips forming a heart? Use shapes to create visual interest Shapes create other shapes. They create guidelines that lead the reader’s eye around the poster. Whether used to contain text, create an interesting composition or lead the viewer’s eyes in a particular direction – below in the images see the use of shapes in these event poster designs by Emilio José Bernard, James Rivas, Malissa Smith, and Joey Ellis are versatile and undeniably effective. You can create interesting areas in your design by using shapes. Break it up by using rectangles that can act as frames, as with the Vintage Yard Sale - Poster template. Be clever with your composition Once you have your information, photos or illustration, think about how to break it up and put it back together so it reads easily to the viewer. Put pieces of information together like a puzzle. YOU decide how the viewer will read the poster and get the message. Pay attention to how graphics interact with words or letters. Below , the images of the event poster for the Malaga Festival by Calamargraphic cleverly creates a focus towards the text in the top right of the composition by picturing several colorful figures running in that direction. Play with layering to create depth and dimension Layering images, colors and words create depth and dimension. It sucks you into the little world created on the board. Below is a good example of this - the Cultivate Festival by Invisible Creature poster layers a city with farm life. Words and images overlap each other. The Valentines event poster (2nd image above) by Andersdenkend also features a nice sense of depth, using strong shadows to make the composition seem 3D. Also, note how the designer has placed the text in the layout next to objects that relate to their meaning. Clever. Emphasize elements to create energy and drama. |
When you use exciting, exhilarating photos, illustration and even fonts, like Kaarel Vahtramäe's poster design below, you’ll create a serious impact and most definitely get a reaction from the viewer. They’ll be drawn in by the emotion and energy. Drama can usually be accomplished using fewer words too. |
Life isn’t always lived on a straight line. Different angles and points of view can make for a more exciting poster such as Eric Nyffeler below. Change the point of view of a photo. Take it from up high or down low. Use words on a diagonal instead of straight line. These Phish posters lead the eye either up or down across the page instead of just being straight and boring.
Or take this film festival event poster by Andrew Pfund, which draws your eyes right “out there” with cleverly hidden type.
Be silly. Have fun. Create a play on words. Use unexpected imagery, unless, of course, you have a serious subject. This poster below designed by Alistair Palmer for the Bicycle Film Festival could’ve been designed a hundred different ways from intriguing to exciting but they chose to be humorous and that piques the viewer curiosity as to what kind of fun they’ll have at the festival.
Humor attracts attention. Check out the Light Brown Dog Animal Rescue Poster. 2nd image.
Using symmetry, centering, and repetition creates balance for the eye. You can balance colors, the weight of graphics, amount of text or a mix of them. Balance doesn’t mean the poster has to be perfectly centered. It doesn’t mean that to be symmetrical it has to be the same on each half. It means that one side isn’t heavier, it doesn’t contain all of the information or all of the graphics. The poster design by DKNG below is a great example of balance.
Photography may not always suit your needs or you may not have the budget for photography. Instead you can create your own drama or characters. You can open up an entire world designed specifically for your purpose. Illustration can be flat or have layers and depth such as these poster designs below by Aaron Kim and Design Sponge.
Illustrations offer a different perspective for your poster. On the far right image the Charcoal and Yellow Rocketship Business Launch Poster is an inspiration.
Use an odd color or a unique photo. Go for unusual fonts. Put contrasting images together. Or align images and information to create something else altogether. The Bologna Festival poster below does just that. Do you see the violins first or the man with the bowtie?
Know how you want the reader to get the information. Achieve that with use of color, lines, size and weight of text. Create a path for them to follow. Below, the Salida Winefest poster by Sunday Lounge literally does that. The viewer follows the path of text like wine flowing in the glass to consume the information.
Being legible doesn’t just mean that the viewer can actually read the poster. Make sure the viewer knows what you’re advertising, selling or promoting. That it’s easy to read and understand. Make sure you can see it from a distance too.
This gallery event poster by Ali Gray contains a large amount of information, but has been designed to make sense to viewers from a distance and up close. Given the dense amount of text – this creative layout achieves legibility in a difficult context.
It's sometimes unavoidable to have a lot of information in your poster, but it is possible to make it easy to read. Take a look at a good example : the Navy Blue Red Medicine Kit Natural Disaster Poster. (right image)
Not all posters are designed the same, nor should they all be the same size. Vary the actual size of the poster if you know space will allow it. And it doesn’t always have to be vertical. Try horizontal or even square. Go big, bold, different.
This will make people more likely to share and engage with it.
A single word or image can evoke great emotion – love, anger, sadness. A photo of a woman crying. A man crossing a finish line. The word “fire.” The viewer gets emotional and needs to know more. This poster by
This poster by Helmo uses a fragmented composition made up of different facial expressions to mimic the feeling of the jazz event – beautifully capturing the vibe.
Get people to help by appealing to their emotions. Check out the Black and White with Red Text Homelessness
Poster design for The Black Keys is sure to attract their rock fans for a beach-side concert.
Achieve contrast in a variety of ways. Choose opposing colors such as blue and orange or go for black and white instead of color. Partner bold, dramatic fonts with thin ones. Or use loud pictures with soft colors. Below are poster designs by MadeByStudioJQ, Sam Wood, and Ugar Sayan all use composition beautifully.
To make it interesting, try a variety of materials and fonts. Use some illustration over photography like in this poster by Veljko Zajc. Try romantic fonts with a gripping photo. Even combine any of the above tips since at all posters fit into one category.
Don't be afraid to play with your design elements.
Once you know the rules, push the limits like Non-Verbal Club did with their poster design. Experiment with colors, sizes, fonts you’ve never used or a couple that you think doesn’t go together. Try something new.
Once you know your event, service or product (a leadership retreat, an indie movie or a cool, new car) knowing your audience is key (yuppie, Gen Xer or middle-aged executive). From there, finding images, colors and fonts that embrace the message will lead to a great design. Should it be just words, a large photo or a one-of-a-kind illustration? Maybe bright and bold, or simple and elegant? The field is wide open.
Now it’s time to get creative!
Despite giving your best customer service, your business is bound to see its reputation take a hit once in a while.
A customer posts an angry review for the whole internet to see. Or a less-than-flattering media story spreads far beyond what you expected. That’s where online reputation management comes in.
By actively managing your reputation, you can minimize negative customer feedback and keep your online presence as positive as possible.
For example, you might release a public statement addressing the content of the story or publish a social media post in response to a negative review.
Managing your online reputation is critical for businesses to maintain a positive brand identity in the eyes of consumers. Growing businesses choose to devote more time and energy toward monitoring their brand online.
A good reputation management can easily help a business to gain trust. Hence, positive reviews can lead potential customers to trust the business even more. A good reputation means that the business is more credible than their competitors.
The hits a brand takes online can be numerous, but they’re often small attacks—a negative comment here, a low star rating there.
You need O R M to take care of each of these little “fires” before they amount to serious damage.
O R M is also important for maintaining transparency—a vital ingredient of brand loyalty in 2020.
While there is certainly still a place for orchestrated PR campaigns, consumers today are also looking for organic interactions with companies. They want to hear directly from businesses in personalized conversations, such as a direct message or an Instagram comment.
With online reputation management, your business combats negative claims by addressing them directly and openly.
Here are some sound strategies that will help you in managing your brand’s online reputation
Answer Promptly and With Empathy.
When customers ask questions, whether by messaging you directly or posting on social media, you should respond right away.
Prompt responses prevent frustrated users from posting negative feedback and show the customer you place a high value on helping them.
Equally important is answering with empathy.
Let the customer know you are invested in solving their problem and that, ultimately, you are there to help.
If you don’t respond to customer questions quickly, it can cause a private message to turn into a negative public statement.
An example : This is what happened to the clothing company American Eagle.
With careful online reputation management, American Eagle could have avoided an unhappy customer—and a very negative piece of public feedback.
Fortunately, it’s easy to prevent this kind of publicity. A well informed/experienced dedicated staff should be appointed to handle such matters.
Responding quickly and with empathy to questions is a simple way to satisfy customers and build a positive online reputation.
It can be tempting to discount negative comments and reviews from customers. After all, why would you want to draw attention to them by responding? But the truth is that you’re doing your company a disservice by ignoring unhappy customers. By responding correctly to negative comments could put the company in a better light.
Addressing negative reviews is a way to show customers that even if they have an issue with your company, you will be there to take care of it.
So when customers leave negative comments and reviews, always respond. Address their issue with patience and determination.
(Of the 82% of consumers who read online reviews, 97% also read the business’s responses.)
Peloton, an exercise-equipment company, follows this mind-set by consistently responding to negative reviews posted on their website. See below.
Lack of response on your part can come across as a confirmation of bad press.
Everlane, a clothing company, received numerous questions and comments regarding a news story about the unionization of their workers, and the company never responded.
Everlane’s silence led to public speculation that the company fired their customer service employees. Simply addressing the negative feedback would have helped diffuse the negative comments and protect Everlane’s reputation.
If your company faces scrutiny for a real or perceived scandal, it always helps to apologize.
Showing remorse diffuses tense customer situations and strengthens relationships with consumers. It also shows shoppers that your company is honest and transparent.
Craft your apology with a genuine intention to own up to and resolve the issue. Directly address the main concerns raised by consumers and the media, and describe what you are going to do to resolve the situation.
Consider the medium for your apology as well. If the bulk of negative feedback is through a social media platform, for example, then that channel would be the appropriate space to post your statement.
Coffee giant Starbucks released a public apology on Twitter after two African American men were arrested in a Philadelphia store.
Unlike Starbucks, Pepsi delivered a public apology that only hurt their reputation further. It started when the soft-drink brand received tons of negative feedback about their 2017 ad.
In the ad, Kendall Jenner diffused a standoff between police and protesters by handing the police officers cans of Pepsi. Consumers were outraged by what they felt was a belittling of protesters who had been arrested, particularly since the ad directly evoked an image from a protest against police brutality in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Everyone makes mistakes—even companies. Stating what you will do to fix the issue or prevent it from happening again shows consumers you are an honest company that will own up to its mistakes.
Stay on Top of Your Search Results.
Most marketers think of SEO as a way to keep their brand visible. But it’s also an essential tool for minimizing visibility of negative press and content associated with your brand.
Ideally, you want your company’s page to show up first when your company’s name is searched. After all, the number one result on SERPs gets more than 31% of all clicks, and customers are 10 times more likely to click on the first search result than on a page 10 spots down.
Use an incognito window to monitor your brand’s search results so you see what customers see. Competitors can bid on your branded keywords to make their information show up first, so you may have to bid on your own keywords to retain the top spot.
For example, when you Google Taskade, the top results are all directly related to the company, including their business page, main page, social media, and positive reviews.
Another way to improve search results is by encouraging happy customers to submit positive feedback on ranking review sites. This improves your average rating, which is what potential customers see before clicking in to look at individual reviews.
Automate Online Reputation Management.
Instead of manually combing through websites and social media on your own, save time by using software that automates ORM tasks.
One of the simplest monitoring tools is Google Alerts. Simply enter your brand name in the tool, and receive notifications of media and news stories that talk about your company. That way, you will know right away when your company is being talked about, and you can quickly respond if necessary.
The tool Brand24 goes one step further. Instead of just crawling news stories, it also monitors social media for mentions of your brand. It can even perform a “sentiment analysis,” looking at key emotion words in reviews to let you know how people feel about your brand.
SEMrush helps with search ranking analysis by tracking the SERP positions of your brand and competitors. It goes beyond simply crawling sites and compiling mentions of your brand by performing site audits to show you how to make your company-managed pages rank higher.
Uphold Your Brand’s Image with Online Reputation Management
Shoppers judge your brand by what they hear and see about it on the internet.
Use online reputation management to strengthen the positive image of your brand that you have worked so hard to build. Respond to questions and negative feedback and you’ll show current and potential customers that your company is there to resolve any problems they might have. By implementing O R M strategies, you’ll have more control over how consumers view your company.
Before any implementation of any digital marketing solutions, there’s one, but very important question you need to answer is that are they going to align with your customer personas, the right audience for your business?
Marketing and sales efforts without personas are a hit or miss. The more tailored your communication is, the better, and the only way to adjust it is to research your customers thoroughly. After all, you need to know who you’re talking to in order to communicate effectively and reap the rewards afterwards.
You need to know what kind of customers you want to sell your products or services to and in order to find out, you should create customer personas.
You can create amazing content, but it might as well go to waste if it’s not SEO-optimised. Thorough keyword research and meticulous link building should get your blogs in front of the eyes of your target audience. Furthermore, high-quality content and link building are actually the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search.
Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are two of the most important tools available to the modern marketer. An SEO content marketing strategy can really help take your brand’s marketing to the next level.
The ultimate goal of your content marketing is to build relationships with leads and customers. Your content helps build relationships by demonstrating your expertise and providing valuable information that helps the consumer make a smarter purchasing decision. It’s important to create content that appeals to buyers in each step of their journey – from those who are just starting to research to the consumers who are ready to buy.
When today’s consumer has a question about a product or service, they turn to search engines like Google to find the information they need. If you want to reach consumers during their time of need, you’ll need to provide them with the right content at the right time. That’s where SEO and content marketing become the ultimate team.
Content marketing is the best way to improve your search engine optimization. By creating content that’s focused around targeted keywords and phrases that your leads are looking for online, you can improve your visibility on the search engines.
That way, when a consumer searches for a topic that is relevant to your brand, they will find your content on Google. This helps you start to build a connection that can lead to a customer relationship.
When your content ranks well on the search engines, you are getting free exposure online. Not only does this boost brand awareness, but it can also drive more relevant traffic to your website. The more relevant traffic you drive to your site, the more opportunities you have to convert.
You cannot improve your search engine optimization without creating great content. And it’s all but impossible to effectively find an audience for your content without SEO. SEO should be applied into every content marketing task you do. That’s the only way to make sure that your content marketing strategy will be successful.
- Optimize for Rich Answers.
- Re-imagine and restructure your content.
- Use conversational language for content.
- Use targeted long-tail keyword phrases.
- Improve loading time of your website.
- Pay attention to mobile - responsiveness to mobile devices.
- Leverage Google My Business listings.
- Optimize for page speed.
- Secure your website with SSL
- Create an FAQ page for your website.
- Use simple words and short sentences.
- Be active on Social Media.
Video marketing is using videos to promote and market your product or service, increase engagement on your digital and social channels, educate your consumers and customers, and reach your audience with a this medium.
While convenient and efficient for the consumer, video marketing provides marketers with an attractive, versatile, and extremely shareable medium to reach their audiences.
Consumers like it because it's easy to digest, entertaining and engaging, and marketers like it because it can give a potentially huge return on investment (ROI) through many channels.
Google ads/Facebook ads help improve one’s business.
They can better build brand awareness.
Increase the spread of information about your products or services.
They can drive buyer behavior and provide reminders to curious buyers.
Repetitive use of these ads improve sales and in addition provide multiple purchase pathways.
As far as analyzing your marketing channels is concerned, there’s no better way then to use Google Analytics. While I think I know this tool quite well, there’s probably so much more I could extract from it. It’s the tool to use whenever I need to report on the results of my work, and to see how the marketing channels are performing.
Everyone these days is doing social media marketing, both online and offline businesses.
Conduct a social media audit
What kind of posts tend to perform the best for you? What are the posts that generate zero to little engagement? Do you use a lot of visual content? If yes, does it improve the level of interactions you have with your followers?
You can conduct a social media audit on your own — analyse the amount of content posted online, try to calculate social media reach, or analyse the sentiment around the brand.
To conduct a through social media competitor analysis, try a social media monitoring tool, for example, Brand24. Brand24 collects all publicly available social media mentions containing your predefined keyword and analyses the results in-depth.
In the dashboard, you’ll find pieces of information about:
the volume of mentions
sentiment around a brand or product
the total number and type of interactions
the social media reach
top public profiles talking about a brand
There are a number of questions like those above that you should ask yourself, and such audit helps you plan the next steps of your social media marketing strategy.
Also, don’t forget about social media competitor analysis. Keep an eye on how your competitors deal with their social media channels. Their activities might teach you a valuable lesson in terms of what they’re good at, but you could also learn what to avoid not to replicate their mistakes.
Set your social media marketing goals
Your goals should be SMART.
Once you have them written down based on those criteria, it should be much easier to execute them.
Decide whether you’re on social media to increase sales, build a community, increase brand awarenes, and try to put the biggest emphasis on what’s the most important for you.
Don’t spread yourself too thin
What I mean here is not to be on every platform you can think of. Some social media might not even be worth your attention simply because your target audience isn’t there, or is too little to care compared to other sources.
A good way of finding out where a majority of your target audience hangs out is to use a social media monitoring tool. Such tools help you track brand mentions but also pretty much any keywords that are related to your industry.
- Build credibility: Building relationships. You can build trust and recognition among your subscribers by sending helpful and educational information.
- Build visibility: Irrespective of their geographic location, you will be able to send emails to your target audience with just an email ID and this will help improve the visibility of your business.
- Cheaper than advertising as emails are the most profitable marketing channel.
- Increase traffic (Offline & Online)
- Market with a personal touch: By tracking the customer journey, you can personalize the email copy to building a meaningful relationship.
- Turn one-time sale into a repeat order / Stay connected to patrons
Author
Nicholas Joseph Lim and guest writers contribute the latest on internet marketing strategies.
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