If you have a business, you’re going to need to market it. Yes, you can leave it to chance and luck if you want to, but it’s really not wise – you’ll be missing out on very many opportunities to grow and become successful, not to mention the fact that if your competitors do their marketing well (which they’ll at least try to do), you’re going to get left behind and forgotten; you might never be noticed at all.
It’s clear that marketing is vital so that you can make sales and, ultimately, a profit, and there are lots of things you’ll need to take into account when you think about the kind of marketing you want to do. Knowing where to market your business and who your target market is, for example, is vital information to know. However, there’s another thing that it would be useful to know if you want to ensure your marketing is the best it can be and does the right job for you; you’ll need to think about the font you use for your marketing materials.
Perhaps this isn’t something that’s come to mind before, and you’ve never given it much thought, but if you’re about to embark on a marketing campaign and you need to design some materials, now is the right time to get help choosing your font. Read on to find out more.
Know Your Brand
The first thing you’ll want to consider when you’re thinking about which font to use is your own brand. Your chosen font has to match up to what your brand is like, and choosing something that’s wildly different is only going to confuse people. For example, if you run a daycare but you choose a Gothic, creepy kind of font, that’s going to give people the wrong impression and make it hard to work out what you do. Equally, if you’re an accountant and you choose something like Comic Sans, it’s going to be hard for people to take you seriously.
There will be a font that matches what you do and how you do it just right – there are thousands of different fonts available – which is why it’s wise to spend some time searching for the right one. However, do bear in mind that because there are so many, you’ll have to draw the line at some point – once you find something you like, look for a couple more just to compare them and make sure you’ve chosen well, but then stop your search of you might find it never really ends.
Ensure Consistency
One thing that’s massively important when it comes to your marketing is consistency. The more consistent you can be across your different marketing materials, from your quality business cards to your website and vehicle signage, the more people will trust you and be sure they’re making a good choice by picking you over and above someone else.
If you have a different font on everything you use to market your business, it’s going to be hard for potential customers to be one hundred percent sure that they’ve found the right company. Even if they’ve used you before, if the font on your website doesn’t match the paperwork they have from their previous purchase, they might not think you’re the right choice and move on instead. Or they might think that you don’t take your business seriously because how can you if you can’t even commit to a single font?
Once you’ve made your choice of font, make sure you stick to it and use it on everything – that’s the best way to make a good impression, and it will help your business and branding become a lot more memorable.
Think About Readability
A font can look lovely, even beautiful, but if it’s not legible, it’s no good. So readability has to be a major concern when you’re choosing your marketing font. Once you’ve found one that you like, use it to write an email or to type up your shopping list or anything else – what you type doesn’t really matter because the aim is to determine whether or not the words are easy to read.
Once you’ve got a chunk of text written in the potential marketing font you’ve picked, get other people to look at it – you might not be completely objective if it’s a font you’ve fallen in love with and spent many hours searching for. Ask the people you choose to read your text and give an honest opinion about how easy it was. Some fonts are easier than others to read, so this is important. Don’t just have them hold a piece of paper or look at a screen, either; get them to read the font from different distances to get a real overview of it and a full picture of the readability aspect. If it turns out that the font isn’t any good, move on to another, and don’t try to make that one fit; your business is too important to hope for the best when it comes to your marketing.
Look At Industry Trends
As we’ve said, there are many – many – different fonts, and it might be that you just can’t choose something that you like best. Maybe there are too many choices, or perhaps you just don’t know what you’re looking for. If that’s the case, looking at industry trends in your sector to see what’s popular and what works in terms of fonts for marketing could be a good idea.
We’re not saying you should use the same font as a competitor (in fact, this would be a bad idea because customers will get confused and perhaps bypass you altogether or think that you’re copying – which you are – and decide you’re not a trustworthy business to buy from. However, what we are saying is that finding a font that’s similar in style to what other people are using could be a good starting point. You’ll need to make sure it’s different enough to stand out, but it’s certainly an option if you’re having trouble.