Designing with Multiple Channels in Mind

By Rob Maxwell on 02/19/2021

We live in a fast-paced world. A world dominated by news and media exposure, where high-quality content is currency, and only organizations that can ensure effective cross-channel marketing make an impact.

How do you capture a potential consumer’s attention when the window is only a few seconds long before bouncing to a different platform? How do you translate impressions to clicks to conversions? Today, there has never been a bigger need for a consistent message across different touchpoints.

But how do you keep your messaging effective, well-designed, and cohesive without spending all your resources? By designing with multiple channels in mind, you not only create the brand identity and recognition you need, but you save yourself time and money as well.

The Importance of Being Noticed

Traditional marketing channels were pretty simple and often linear. You create a design—like a flyer or brochure—the design is seen by a consumer, and the consumer either follows up and seeks you out or goes about their day. Before the average consumer was inundated with frequent notifications and constant content, this process worked pretty well.

However, the process to engage today’s consumer is much more complex and non-linear. There is no single channel that can access a consumer in an effective way. People need to be met where they are, which means many different arenas.

Over 90% of millennials are active social media users, and users typically spend an average of 3 hours a day on social media or messaging. The consumers you are trying to reach are spending their time on different social media channels, and it’s critical to reach them where they are.

Social media, while massively important, offers only a few of the necessary channels organizations need to reach to be effective. Email marketing, traditional marketing materials, and blogs, and infographics are all great ways to reach consumers. When attempting to reach consumers across these different channels, the brand identity needs to remain constant enough to recognize and make an impact.

Save Yourself Time and Resources

Alongside the marketing value designing with multiple channels in mind offers, the amount of time and money saved can really make an impact for any organization.

If you are a business trying to grow your audience, you either work on designs in-house or go to a marketing agency. Both are great options but come with their individual prices.

If you do the work in-house, you either have to bring on a marketing professional or task a current employee (or several) with the work. Keeping the work in-house allows organizations the opportunity to take as much time with it as needed and monitor the process the whole time. However, the cost adds up. Designing in-house means you add an additional salary or allocate man-hours that could be used on other projects, not to mention risking the quality suffering if resources have to be reallocated mid-project or you can only afford to bring on inexperienced designers.

Working with a marketing agency provides an array of advantages and, depending on your budget, can create an impressive amount of work. You can get high-quality work without sacrificing internal man-hours or bringing on an extra employee, but the price varies widely across different agencies. It’s necessary to understand your budget and if you can afford to hire an outside agency. While the investment can be large, it can also have a high return.

Whether in-house or through a marketing agency, creating a cohesive design that works across a variety of platforms saves everyone time and resources. It saves your team time to work on other projects while saving you money. It’s a win-win all around!

How to Get the Most Use Out of a Design

Now that we all agree on the importance and value of designing with multiple channels in mind, it is time to see how it works in practice and how to get the most use out of a design.

Smart 3rd Party

Let’s take Smart 3rd Party, a third-party maintenance company that specialized in IT maintenance and hardware lifecycle extension.

S3P exists in a smaller industry pool but still deals with plenty of competition they need to differentiate themselves from. They needed a robust marketing profile without breaking the bank. They decided to hire a marketing agency, Black Bear Design, to focus on refreshing their website and then creating a marketing portfolio with the new designs.

A single graphic designed by Black Bear was featured on social media, then used as a supporting infographic on the S3P blog, a standalone flyer in their sales material, and most recently as a full wall decal for their recently expanded office! What started as a post on social media blossomed into so much more all because the graphic was designed with multiple channels in mind. By utilizing the graphic across different platforms, they saved time, money, and resources while creating a piece of art their employees and potential clients love to talk about.

The Marketing Revolution Will Not Only be Televised

At the end of the day, marketing and advertising are a blend of creative, eye-catching designs and smart, thorough strategies to target the right consumers in the right way.

Today, finding and engaging an audience looks a lot different than it did even 10 years ago. With consumers getting media and content through more and more channels, organizations need to adapt in order to reach them. This means a cohesive identity and constant branding across a variety of touchpoints.

In order to maximize your reach and minimize cost and time, it is critical to design with multiple channels in mind. Having an in-house marketer or agency creating content that is multi-purposed saves resources and helps you continue to grow your business to new heights.

Black Bear Design creates high-quality graphic design that can be used across an array of different marketing channels. Our team works hard to deliver the best results to deliver new customers and create conversions for our clients. If you are looking for a team to help you stand out in the forest, contact us today.