If there’s one thing anyone who has ever worked in marketing is familiar with, it’s a blank screen. That’s the birthplace of all our high-performing marketing content. Unfortunately, it’s also the reason we’re mentally exhausted most of the time.
Staring at a blank page with no ideas in sight when it’s time to craft marketing materials is every marketer’s nightmare. And, even if you do have an idea, it takes time to refine it until it becomes eye-catching and engaging enough to appeal to customers.
Not to mention the fact that you still have to tweak it for different channels. As a business owner handling other aspects of your brand, you barely have any time for all this back-breaking work.
That’s why it makes sense to take advantage of templates for designing marketing materials. Templates give you a structure to follow for your posters, flyers, and ads—so you don’t have to kickstart the creative process from scratch.
In this blog post, we make a case for design templates and why business owners should consider using them for marketing:
Templates Save You Time
Staring at the finished draft of marketing visuals is a delight. Nothing beats seeing the magic you’ve created to engage your target audience.
But going from a blank page to a masterpiece? That’s where the real work is. Creating marketing material takes time, a ton of effort, and a truckload of creative juices. As a small business owner juggling multiple roles in your startup, time is a scarce commodity.
The last thing you want is to spend countless hours working on different designs from scratch. With templates, you don’t have to.
Design templates already have a layout to work with. So, all you need to do is include the copy and tweak a few elements to align with your brand or improve the visual appeal.
Amazingly, templates aren’t only a lifesaver for your posters and flyers. You can take advantage of them to save time and effort across other marketing-related aspects of the business, such as your website, for instance.
By using website templates, you can get your business site up and running within the shortest possible time rather than waiting weeks to launch the platform.
Templates Give You Consistent Brand Visuals
Consistency is one of the most important factors when it comes to building a brand image. You want all aspects of the business to align with your brand identity—and that includes your visual elements like logos and color schemes.
Customers should instantly recognize your brand when they encounter it. However, it becomes difficult to do this when your marketing materials feature different visuals whenever they pop up on social media.
Imagine how disorganized your Instagram account would be if your carousels, flyers, and ads always had different color schemes. You’re creating confusion rather than cohesion with your brand identity. With templates, you can avoid this scenario.
Templates bring uniformity to your marketing materials, ensuring every poster and banner aligns with your brand image, making it easier for your audience to single you out from the competition.
Open Up More Time for Creative Brainstorming
Building a business is no mean feat, especially at the beginning when it’s basically a one-man show. You’re the marketing, customer support, HR, and sales team all rolled into one.
Juggling these duties means you have to think on your feet most times because there’s barely any free second in your schedule. But it can be difficult to come up with any creative ideas when you’re constantly moving a mile a minute.
That’s why it helps to find ways to work smarter rather than harder. Taking advantage of marketing templates can help with this. With templates, you reduce the time spent designing marketing materials. This opens up extra space for productivity as a business owner.
When you’re not spending hours in front of a laptop tweaking fonts and text boxes, you have more time for some creative thinking on how to enhance your marketing efforts and grow the brand.
Reduce Your Marketing Budget
Unless you have some expertise in graphic design, you’ll likely hire an agency or freelance designers to create your brand’s marketing materials. Outsourcing this responsibility is an additional expense in your budget.
If you’re a small business, it’s likely not something you can afford at the moment. A more budget-friendly alternative would be using templates.
source: Unsplash
Since most of the heavy lifting has been done with design templates, you don’t need in-depth expertise to work with them. Some tweaks here and there alongside inputting the marketing copy, and you have an Instagram ad ready for upload.
Anyone on your team, even those with limited graphic design skills, can also use your marketing templates to create materials for a campaign quickly and easily.
Eliminate Errors in the Content Creation Process
Creating marketing materials from scratch requires attention to detail. After the creation process, you still have to go over the final draft for any errors.
However, when you’re on a tight deadline, it’s easy to skim through that final edit or skip it altogether. But then, the flyer for your digital product is up on social media, and it takes a random comment from a follower to realize you’ve spelt “your” as “you’re.”
Templates can eliminate this possibility. Since they provide a layout for your marketing materials, you can focus more on the copy and other critical details to avoid errors.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve been struggling with the deadlines for your brand’s marketing campaigns, templates might be the lifesaver you need. They can help you craft marketing materials fast and with minimal hassles. Plus, they give you a consistent brand image and eliminate the costs of hiring designers.
