The fonts that you choose in your marketing can have an influence on how people connect with your content on an emotional level.
(In this post, am using the term “fonts” to describe fonts in general, including typefaces. However, technically typefaces are the letters, numbers, and symbols that share a certain design. Fonts are the different set of glyphs within a typeface. A typeface can have many font families within it.)
Why are fonts important? Think about the last ad that you saw. What caught your eye? Probably the colors, images, and words. But were the words easy to read? Were different fonts used in the same visual element? Did the font styles flow together, or did they contrast each other? You may not have consciously thought about these questions, but your subconscious mind was noticing. If you look at the history of font usage in marketing, you will notice a trend towards more simplistic, cleaner fonts. Gone are the days of complex, ornate fonts used in branding and visual content. Consider the difference between these three fonts:
Which of these is easiest for you to read? If you are like most of the general population, the first or second fonts are probably the easiest for your brain to understand. According to a study by MDG Advertising, decorative fonts are harder for people to read, particularly in large amounts. There is a reason that most word processing systems have Arial or Calibri as their default fonts. That does not mean that decorative fonts don’t have their place in marketing, but they should be used sparingly and not in large text areas.
How do you choose the right font for your purposes? You want to consider several factors when choosing the font (or fonts) to select for your creative:
Brand – refer to your brand guidelines and make sure you are incorporating your brand font appropriately. In most cases, you are not going to want to introduce many new fonts into your creative if you already have primary and secondary fonts as part of your brand guidelines.
Form – if you are creating an infographic, you may want the simplest font that is easier for the eye to read. If you are creating a website banner, you might want a bolder font that is in the same font family as your logo font.
Function – are you developing a creative piece that is meant for your audience to click on? You will want to make sure that font is large enough for people to read and click on with their mouse or finger (on mobile devices).
Intent – are you looking to make a splash with your creative? Perhaps an over-emphasized or unusual font style would be appropriate. (But do so sparingly.)
Channel – this is another area where accessibility standards are important. If you are creating a piece of content to be used on a digital platform such as your website, you will want to choose a font that can be interpreted correctly by most devices. If you are creating something for print, make sure that your fonts can withstand the print process without blurring or adjustments.
Environment – put together, different fonts can appear more or less cohesive. It is also important to pay attention to the other visual elements around the fonts.
It can take time to figure out the best font pairings for your marketing efforts. And it is another good reason why you should hire an experienced graphic designer. If your font pairings are not cohesive to the eye, it will interrupt the message getting through to the audience’s brains.
As a marketer, you have a plethora of data at your fingertips. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is great because it helps you make better decisions. But it can also be overwhelming. Data from your website, from you social media posts, from your emails – what do you do with it all?
The first step: breathe.
The second step: make a plan.
Before you can understand what to do with the data, you need to know what data you have. Different distribution methods will produce different data. And not all data is created equal. Every metric tells a different story and will help you answer different questions. If you are looking for a way to collate all of that data, there are several ways you can do it. It could be as simple as a spreadsheet or as complex as a platform like Datorama or Domo to connect all your data in one view.
If you are just beginning to work with your data, here are some common metrics and what story they tell:
CHANNEL
DATA POINT
WHAT IT TELLS YOU
Web
Acquisition
How did the people who visit your website find it? Acquisition can tell you where those visitors were before the landed on your website? Did they click on a link in a paid ad? Did they come from a social media site? Or did they come from organic search?
Web
Bounce rate
A high bounce rate indicates that a large number of people who found themselves on your website did not find what they were looking for and left your site quickly. This means your content was not what they were expecting to find or not appealing to them.
Web
Conversion rate
Depending on what type of conversion you are measuring (web form completions, purchase, newsletter subscriptions, etc), this metric will tell you what percentage of people who land on your website complete that action.
Social media
Engagement
This is an umbrella term that covers several different metrics. In general, engagement measured how involved your followers are with your content. It encompasses likes, comments, shares, and clicks.
Social media
Awareness
Impressions and reach are both included in determining awareness. These both tell the story of how many people were shown your content, either in their feed or through someone sharing it, as well as the potential that their connections might also see it.
Email
Open rate
Must as it sounds, this is the number of people who actually open your email. This data point might indicate that your subject line is not enticing enough for a subscriber to want to read the contents.
Paid search
CPC (cost per click)
The cost that you paid from your planned budget based on the number of times your ad was actually clicked. You generally want a lower CPC.
Various
CTR (click thru rate)
This metric is measured on several different channels and will tell you how frequently or how many times people have clicked a link that you have provided. You can publish all the content you want, but if people don’t eventually take action, you are not going to move them down the funnel towards purchase.
Once you have mastered the basics of collecting, reviewing, and understanding your data, you can get into more advanced measurement that will give you even more insights into your audience, how they interact with your content, and how that leads to sales.
Learn more about data points that that are not based in numbers here.
Whether you have a large marketing team and create a lot of content or a single person who does all of the work and has to prioritize content creation, there are several ways that you can use all of that great content in new ways. Be sure that the content you choose to repurpose is evergreen (timeless) and was well-received the first time your shared it.
Break it up. Do you have white papers or long form presentations that can be broken up to social media size nuggets? People often have short attention spans on social media and breaking up your larger content can be an easy way to create a lot of different social media posts.
Visualize differently. There are so many different ways to visualize content. Infographics, text blocks, video, GIFs, lists and more. Find the right ways to show your content (not all content works with all visual styles), pair with your ‘break it up’ method and you have a whole week or month’s worth of content.
Change the channel. Have you traditionally posted on Facebook and Twitter? How about trying a podcast? Or start a blog. Take some of that great content that you have created in the past and post it in a place or in a way that people may not have seen before.
Bundle it. Just like you can take long form content and break it up, you can take short form content and bundle it to create a new experience for your followers. Create a whitepaper from a group of social media posts that have a similar theme. (And don’t forget to collect user data before letting them download your paper!)
Spread the love. Stretch the life of your content by asking your employees or loyal customers to share on their personal social media accounts. Sometimes you just need to push your posts directly to people who would be willing to share it. You can’t rely on them seeing it natively on social media.
No matter how you use your content remember to never use it only once!
When it comes to customer loyalty programs, there are two schools of thought. The first is that providing enticements to customers should not be necessary and is a cost without great reward for the company. The second is that offering rewards to your customers is just good business and inspires, well….loyalty.
Over the past few years, rewards program companies have cropped up. Some are better than others. Some understand the nature of customer loyalty and some are just going through the motions. If you will be looking to start a customer loyalty, be sure to do your research before choosing a vendor. Once you start, you are stuck with what you purchased unless you want to give your customers whiplash and degrade customer loyalty.
So should you employ this type of customer engagement? That depends. You first need to ask yourself some questions:
Are you customers repeat customers? If you sell something that people don’t buy very often, having a customer loyalty program probably won’t change that.
What reward could you offer that will get your customers to come back? If you own a restaurant with a very high price point, getting a $5 credit after 5 visits is not most likely going to be a reason to come back.
Can you use a loyalty program to encourage customer referrals? These types of programs aren’t just to bring current customers back, but can be used to garner new customers as well.
Do you have a customer loyalty program? How is it going? Have you had growing pains? Let us know about in the comments or on social media!
