As Manchester-based specialists in content marketing, we know that content only works if it’s designed to attract and intrigue its target audience.
Research indicates that we are 55% more likely to remember content that includes images or video.
However, visual design without content is limited in what actions it can drive its viewers to take.
Design and content are, therefore, interdependent when it comes to making your marketing count.
Here, we look at how you can best bring design and content together, to ensure they create user-friendly, compelling marketing material.
Know the Purpose of Your Design and Content
You might have a clear idea of how you want something to look, or what messages you want to get across, but how do these elements align when it comes to your overall objectives?
If, for example, the objective is to generate leads to build business revenue, then you must consider how design and content can work together accomplish this.
Content should:
- Engage your audience
- Educate them, and
- Convince them to take action.
Design should:
- Highlight the key points you want to make
- Grab your audience’s attention, and
- Make information easy and quick to digest and understand.
Remember: onscreen, people engage content differently. They scan rather than read, so they’re attuned to things that will stand out for them.
Design and Content: the Chicken or the Egg?
This is a crucial question for when you’re planning your content strategy: which comes first, design or content?
Creating the best kind of user experience involves putting design and content together, but to pair these two things together effectively requires a systematic approach.
Always start with your content.
Content validates the user-friendliness of your design, and it helps in then recognising what design constraints there may be.
It can also help streamline the design process.
However, just because content comes BEFORE design doesn’t make it more important.
As we’ve mentioned earlier, design can enhance content significantly, making it more engaging, and therefore more effective in serving your marketing objectives.
What Are Essential Aspects of Design and Content?
How the design of your content serves the overall objectives comes from considering these essential aspects when putting your content together visually:
- Target audience – who are you aiming your product or service at, will does your combination of design and content appeal to them? What personas do they have?
- Your message – from the outset, understand what your overall message is, and how you can convey this through design and content.
- Amount of content – can you boil your message down to graphics and minimal text, or is it more complex?
- Your call to action – what is it you want your audience to do, and how can your combination of design and content urge and enable them to do it?
Understand Your Audience’s Needs and Abilities
Your content, in its finished form, should make the user experience feel as easy as possible.
The user must be able to navigate their way through your layout of text and images clearly and logically.
You must address your audience’s needs according to their abilities.
Well-designed content can cut to the heart of the matter and convey the essence of its message rapidly and with impact.
