HIRE A MARKETING DESIGNER TO CREATE A DESIGN THAT TELLS A STORY

In 2020, football fans celebrated Lionel Messi’s 644th goal for a single club. Meanwhile, Budweiser and Copa90 advertising agency focused on those who challenged the forward along his way — the goalkeepers.

The ‘Messi x Budweiser 644’ campaign created a customized Budweiser for each scored goal. Additionally, they invited all 160 goalkeepers that Messi scored against and shifted onto their stories.

As a result, this campaign gained coverage in 84 countries, achieved 1 million engagements, doubled Budweiser’s online search results, and earned $20M in social media value.

If you want to replicate their success, the first step is to hire a marketing designer. In this article, we’ll show you where to find a perfect candidate, how to access their skills, and what you can add as a business owner. Ready?

Market and design trends: what’s the connection?

Remember the vintage design revival in 2010, when every coffee shop or brewery used to have a stamp-like logo with the “Established in.” tagline? 

Today, marketing design trends are mainly influenced by clip thinking. Modern users move swiftly, scan website pages within seconds, and leave if they don’t see what they are looking for. If you think that an average time spent on the website is around 2 minutes, you’re terribly wrong: it’s less than 15 seconds.

Having such a small timeframe to catch the user’s attention, companies go out of their way to make a positive first impression. For instance, more and more marketers now focus on attention-grabbing videos. 

The 2021 Wyzowl Video Marketing Statistics Survey shows that marketers feel overwhelmingly positive about using video ads in their creative campaigns. 83% of respondents say that videos increased the time spent on the website, and 78% say that video ads directly contributed to sales.

Another pretty wholesome trend among modern advertising campaigns is promoting mindfulness and positive self-talk. Brands don’t try to sell your insecurities anymore. Instead, they uplift your mood and support you as your mom or close friend would.

Dove’s 2019 #ShowUs campaign gave a nice touch to this trend. They partnered with Getty Images and Girlgaze and created the largest library of photos that showcase a woman’s beauty in any shape. 

Additionally, they launched the #ShowUs hashtag on social media and asked women all over the world to share their contributions. As a result, the campaign earned over 7 million engagements on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook in total.

The bottom line is: a marketing designer will help you build and cement your brand’s reputation. This expert can analyze users’ data, identify their triggers, and create a product that speaks to them directly.

So, what does a digital marketing
designer do?

Knowing about current marketing trends is just one branch of the creative marketing designer’s skill tree. They also can help you work on the following aspects of your brand’s identity:

• Increase brand awareness on social media

Statista reports that Facebook hit 2.89 billion active users in the second quarter of 2021. What does it mean for business owners? Almost 3 billion potential customers. By working with a digital marketing designer, you can access the target audience and increase the brand’s presence in social media, positively reflecting on the revenue.

• Improve team productivity

Different departments of your team might have a different vision of the final product. On the one hand, diversity of opinions is always great. On the other hand, it can stun the growth and development of your brand. 

By working with a creative marketing designer, you’ll introduce a universal mediator for your team: they can weed out any imperfections and compose a well-tuned final concept.

• Work on mobile optimization

A 2019 research conducted by ThinkWithGoogle shows that 50% of users are more likely to use a mobile version of the website when shopping. This means that any small business now simply won’t survive without cross-platform optimization of its website.

Digital marketing designers can help you optimize mobile interfaces and make them user-friendly, so your customers will stay longer.

• Deliver quality print and offline media

It’s a bit early to ditch offline marketing campaigns and move entirely into digital. According to the 2018 Quantcast review, 39% of businesses worldwide still rely on offline marketing. A marketing designer can create flyers, posters, and banners: this might significantly improve your brand awareness and attract more customers.

• Create a design that engages with users

Our brain is more likely to remember information when it has something to hook onto.  And creating stories to associate your brand with something positive and appealing is one of the key marketing designer skills. 

‍Coca-Cola campaigns, for instance, feature themes of human connections and shared experiences. These associations cemented the friendly and entertaining brand’s image and earned a lot of users’ engagement.

Why do you need a marketing designer, not a UX or graphic one?

You might be wondering: why do you need to hire a marketing designer specifically? You already have a graphic and a UX designer in your team, and they can work on visuals, right?

Well, a creative marketing designer is really proficient in the market trends, and if you want to create an advertising campaign that attracts customers, you need their guidance. Also, this specialist can effectively collaborate with your marketing and design departments and improve the overall outcome.

Finally, a wholesale marketing designer is skilled in data visualization and storytelling, so they will deliver the mission of your product to the average customer. If you need a design that entrances people and makes them explore your product, that’s the specialist you should hire.

Still have some questions? Here’s a table that conveniently wraps up all the differences between these three types of designers:

Crucial marketing designer skills

Having learned how to tell different types of designers apart, let’s see what skills you should look for if you need to pick a skilled marketing designer for your team.

• Proficiency in design software

Being comfortable with Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign is a standard requirement if you need a digital marketing designer who can deliver various types of brand media. Also, it’s good to know if your prospect expands their skills beyond the standard program and upgrades them, so that you can count on their expertise.

• Creation of design guidelines

This is especially critical for those who work with mobile products or startups. Both Apple and Google have entire workbooks that describe how their interface and apps should look. A good marketing designer not only acknowledges these principles but also sets their own guidelines for products.

• Knowledge of social media marketing

Ad spending in the social media advertising segment is expected to exceed $44 billion by the end of 2021 and breach the $50 billion mark by 2023. 

Ignoring such a vast market is at the very least unreasonable. That’s why you need to hire a marketing designer: they will increase the social media presence of your brand and help it grow.

• Storytelling & visual communication

Your customers want to see not only a pretty picture but also a product that speaks directly to them. The primary hybrid marketing designer's role is to make it possible by telling a story. Plus, they can collaborate with illustrators, VFX designers, AR designers, and other creators to bring their unique vision to life.

• Lead generation

Generating a steady stream of customers is vital for the growth and prosperity of any business. A creative marketing designer will guide your brand’s ship through this stream.

They will perform customer research and identify what users want to see in a final product. So, working with them will help you find and grow your audience.

How do you participate as a business owner?

Now, you can’t simply hire a marketing designer and expect wonders for your product. As an owner, you need to ensure the designer won’t move away from your desired vision and create a product that you will also like and enjoy using. Here’s what you can do to achieve maximum effectiveness together:

• Make a mood board

Browse the competitors and find design solutions that you like. Pick your favorite colors and fonts, add a couple of images that illustrate the vibe you want to get from the final product. 

Don’t worry if they look strange together: a mood board is used rather as a compass to show the trade marketing designer the right direction, not a strict manual with rules.

• Don’t be afraid to experiment and stay flexible

As a business owner, you need to understand that creating a perfect design is a fine-tuned collaborative effort. And sometimes, the things you want to see in the visuals might not work anymore. An experienced marketing designer will tell you this, so be prepared to change some things along the way to make the final result more appealing.

• Avoid emotional decisions

Picking a sparkling background for a banking service just because you like it is a bit weird. The same goes for drawing cartoon dogs all over your brand’s identity kit — unless it’s a grooming salon. 

You’re creating the brand’s visuals for your customers, and they might feel the opposite about sparkles and dogs. So trust the judgment of your digital marketing designer and leave emotional choices for your personal social media profiles.

• Give detailed feedback

The more detailed feedback you give, the fewer revisions you will get through. When reviewing a design of an email flow or a flyer layout, try to look at it from the perspective of a regular user that sees your product for the first time. Or, you can show a design to your friends and see what they think.

Where to hire a perfect candidate?

Now, you can’t simply hire a marketing designer and expect wonders for your product. As an owner, you need to ensure the designer won’t move away from your desired vision and create a product that you will also like and enjoy using. Here’s what you can do to achieve maximum effectiveness together:

Networking

✅ Pros. CNBC research shows that up to 80% of positions are filled through personal connections. Posting about your job on social media or asking a guy who knows a guy among friends might significantly increase the possibility of hiring a freelance marketing designer. After all, recommendations are one of the most valid proofs that a designer is good at their job.

❌ Cons. One of the potential biggest drawbacks is to be recommended by some friends or relatives who are objectively bad at doing their job. Or, you might end up looking for the desired candidate for months because all the good ones already have projects.

Job Websites

✅ Pros. Taking a traditional route and browsing through job sites like Glassdoor, Flexjobs, or LinkedIn is another sure way to hire a marketing flyer designer. First, you can pick candidates from the large talent pool. Plus, you will have a scope of the candidate’s experience and skills without asking for a CV.

❌ Cons. However, sometimes you require a designer quickly, preferably for yesterday. And if you have ever hired someone through job sites, you know that it’s a very time-consuming process. 
It requires an additional specialist to monitor responses, browse through resumes, and select the perfect candidate. And we haven’t even started on the interview part yet.

Freelance websites

✅ Pros. If you need something quicker and more representative than job sites, try reaching out to freelance marketing designers on websites like Fiverr or Upwork. 
‍
The great thing about these websites is that the candidate’s skill set, portfolio, and recommendations are at a glance, so you can quickly access them and pick the right designer for your project.

❌ Cons. However, those freelance websites have a low entry threshold, meaning that everyone can create an illusion that they’re an experienced marketing designer. You never really know if those snippets at the freelancer’s portfolio are made by them or stolen from another website. And double-checking the reviews and recommendations takes time you might not have at hand.

Design subscription platforms

✅ Pros. Finally, you can find a freelance marketing designer through a subscription platform with a flat rate, such as Awesomic. This is fairly easy: you create an account and choose one of the three subscription plans. Then you place your job listing, and the platform will match you with a skilled candidate using AI.

The advantages of using a subscription service include:

• unlimited revisions for the flat price;
• access to all the materials and versions of the visual;
• 24/7 chat with the candidate.

❌ Cons. However, if you’re looking for an in-house marketing designer, Awesomic might not work for you, as it only offers remote candidates.

How much does hiring a marketing designer cost?

There’s no universal answer to “how much do I need to pay for marketing designer services?”. You can hire an anonymous designer on Fiverr for as low as $5 per hour or reach out to a professional agency and spend $5,000 or more per project.

The main factors that impact the marketing designer’s salary include the candidate’s expertise and location. Plus, the approach you take, whether it’s hiring full-time, picking a freelancer with an hourly rate, or turning to design subscription platforms, might drastically vary your spending.

Full-time work

Hiring a full-time marketing designer has several benefits:

• Fixed price per month.
• The specialist can dedicate all their time to your project.
• Typically, those who look for full-time occupations have a couple of years of relevant experience, so that you can expect high-quality design.
  

The drawback is that you need to reach out to the candidates to learn more about their rates to tweak your budget. Plus, spending 9-to-5 at work doesn’t always mean working, and you will often end up paying for other activities that aren’t related to work. 

Finally, insurance, sick leaves, and other benefits are typically not included in digital marketing designer salaries and might add up an extra couple of thousands to them.

You might want to estimate their rates by looking at the salary expectations from companies, which we listed below. However, these are typically based on annual market estimates, so that the pay might differ.

Pay per hour

Another approach you can take is to hire a marketing designer with an hourly rate. Many websites, including Fiverr and Upwork, have numerous candidates with a reasonable hourly rate.

Upwork allows you to find marketing designers starting from $40 per hour. For this price, you’ll get visuals for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or any other social media, as well as market research and guidelines for a Google Ads campaign.

Suppose you need full-fledged brand identity visuals, as well as email marketing optimization, outreach strategy, and lifecycle marketing strategy. In that case, you might need an email marketing designer who charges $100 per hour.

Fiverr doesn’t offer a marketing designer category in its search, but you can hire specialists who can work on different aspects of your branding. The price will depend on the job difficulty, starting from $5 for a simple flyer to $140 for personalized email flows.

Design subscription platforms

Finally, you can turn to design subscription platforms with a flat rate per month. Awesomic, for instance, has three package options: 

• Light ($699/month) — includes graphic design kit, presentation materials, and case studies;
• Pro ($1,995/month) — gives you access to design essentials: logo, brand identity, UI/UX design, mobile and app optimization, illustrations, and interactive elements;
• Ultimate ($2,490/month) — all the benefits of the Product pack plus Slack integration and second dedicated designer to work twice as quickly. 
  

Regardless of the price, you’ll get daily updates on your project, unlimited revisions, and access to source files. Awesomic selects only the best creative marketing designers for their team, so that you can be sure about the quality of the final product. 

Plus, its All-in-One subscription helps you stay in touch with employees thanks to embedded Slack integration and 24/7 chat, so you can always direct them and clear all the questions.

Wrapping Up

Let us guess: you want your brand to be as recognizable as Adidas or Starbucks. 99% that you do. Yes, this goal might seem as impossible as eating an elephant. However, you know there’s a way to do so: eat one bite at a time. And hiring a skilled marketing designer is the one you have to eat at first.

Surely, you can browse job or portfolio websites or pick a candidate from a freelance pool. But time is modern currency, and spending weeks browsing resumes and appointing job interviews that won’t have any outcome seems unreasonable.

Alternatively, you can try subscription platforms, such as Awesomic, that offer an easier solution. Just create an account and post a job. Awesomic algorithm will connect you with one of their pre-screened candidates, so you can start working right away and see the first results in 24 hours. 

And who knows, maybe the next award-winning ad campaign will be yours?