This ONE Thing = 3 Big Results
Do you care about the following:
Bringing value to your business?
Reaching your goals of making money?
Attracting customers?
Building community around your business and your brand?
If so, then custom illustration work should be something you’re thinking about.
Last week, we started a 3-part series spotlighting what I feel are the top 3 reasons that custom illustrations benefit your business.
Part 1 - They’re memorable to your customers.
Part 2 - They create a unique visual story.
Part 3 - They’re relatable, desirable, and shareable.
‘Ok sure,’ you think. ‘But why should I care? My business already has a logo, after all. What else do I need?’
Custom illustrations bring value to your business and help you reach your goals of:
Making money
Attracting customers
Building community around your business and your brand
Today, we’re talking about the power of storytelling.
Ready to connect with customers and supercharge your brand?
Let’s move into part 2!
Visuals > Words
Most of us are just looking at the pictures—you know it’s true!
How many times have you flipped through a magazine in the grocery store checkout and only looked at the pictures?
Visuals are quick to process, easy to understand, entertaining and powerful.
Sometimes they’re even more informative than the words around them.
Start meeting your customers where they are - short on time, distracted, and doing too many things at once - by telling them your story with custom illustrations.
Here are 3 reasons you should tell your story visually:
1. People Connect Through Visual Stories
My Side Hustler’s Coaching Program classmate, Greg Jackson (aka @anthemdsgnco on Instagram), recently shared a bit of his story with our group.
Greg described growing up in a poor neighborhood, and the dynamics he had to navigate as a mixed-race kid.
He talked about bringing the things he loved growing up - movies, skateboarding, comedy - into his work. The ideal scenario, for him, is that his work would be an encouragement to others going through the same things as him.
His ideal scenario is to connect with other people. And it should be yours too.
Your customers want to be part of the family and part of the story. They want more than to simply make a transaction.
Bringing them into the family starts with telling them your story.
2. Pictures AREN’T Just for Kids.
Think about children or your own experience as a child.
Kids can’t read, but they still know their favorite stories by heart, in part because of the illustrations.
Your customers are the same way. Even though they could read or listen to your company’s story, pictures and visuals enhance the experience.
Custom illustrations grab people’s attention.
Have you ever been to a bookstore and noticed a book because of its cover design?
You don’t have to know anything about the book’s content of the book in order to relate to it.
That’s the power of visuals.
In the same way, you don’t have to know anything about a restaurant or a brewery in order to enjoy their branding.
Just by having memorable visuals in your space or on your social media feed, you’re going to get folks in the door because you’ve piqued their interest.
NOTE 🚨 If you want to read more on why memorable matters, check out the first blog post of this series.
3. Expanddd Your Brand
When you worked on your brand with a designer, you probably realized you have a lot to say about the story and the “why” behind your business.
You may have been disappointed when every aspect of your company didn’t appear baked into your logo.
It’s time to use that pent-up vision in custom illustrations!
While strategy will remain a key part of the process, there is ample opportunity to express various parts of your story visually using illustrations.
When you open up your marketing plan to custom illustrations, there’s an opportunity to express your personality and incorporate your goals.
For example, you want your brewery to be the number one spot for football fans on the weekends…
Of course, you’d use custom illustrations geared toward beer and football in your next social media campaign and on your menus to cater to football fans.
HOWEVER...What if your bar had its own gameday mascot, tailored to fit into your brand flawlessly?
You can also use custom illustrations to pay homage to your company’s history.
Are there signature elements from your original space that have to be left behind with the move to a new, expanded space?
Illustrating those iconic symbols is a perfect way to keep them in the brand family even when things change.
Pictorial Power
As we’ve learned, custom illustrations are a way to tell a story, and that’s a really powerful thing!
Your customers connect with stories and are more likely to look at pictures of a story than read it.
And for you, custom illustrations are a way to strategically expand your brand to reach certain audiences, hit certain goals, or show your customers things that simply couldn’t be fit into your logo, but are still important to you and your brand.
There are so many ways to use custom illustrations, and the fun really begins when you understand their almost limitless opportunities.
Next week, we’ll get into the minds of your customers again to talk about how illustrations are relatable, shareable, and desirable, and why that’s really good news for your business!
Until then, stay hungry! 🍩