With the rise of stock photos and copyright-free assets, most marketers and graphic designers disregard the power of custom illustrations. While they may be challenging to produce, they create a lasting impression that can help you elevate your marketing campaigns. If you’re someone who’s still looking for a sign to incorporate custom illustrations in your advertisements, then this blog is for you. We’ll explore the benefits of custom illustrations in marketing materials.
Understanding the Use of Custom Illustrations in Marketing
Custom illustrations are original artistic assets used to convey ideas, messages, and brand personality. They are usually custom-made by graphic designers to depict the company’s overall brand identity.
To learn more about brand identity, read: How Professional Graphic Design Enhances Brand Identity for Companies
Because of the inherent uniqueness of custom illustrations, they create a strong visual appeal to your audience. It provides a fresh perspective among all the stock photos and generic marketing materials that are brimming social networking websites. Aside from this, just like comic strips, custom illustrations can be used to elevate your marketing campaign’s storytelling. The use of vibrant colors, distinctive styles, and imaginative designs are excellent ways to better connect with your customers, allowing them to fully visualize their lives with your products.
Benefits of Using Custom Illustrations in Marketing
Leading brands have been using custom illustrations in their marketing campaigns. Here are some of the benefits of using custom illustrations that numerous businesses are now experiencing:
Attracts Attention and Increases Engagement
Custom illustrations naturally attract the attention of internet users. They are visually captivating and distinct, making them stand out in numerous generic stock images. Aside from this, just like any artwork, it inherently creates an emotional connection with viewers. For this reason, it urges people to engage with the content. People become inclined to write comments, react to the content, or even share the post. And as we all know, the more engagement there is, the more successful a marketing campaign is.
Conveying Complex Ideas and Messages
Custom illustrations help marketers transform messages and data into understandable marketing campaigns. It’s a great way to simplify ideas and information in such a way that people can easily comprehend them. Aside from this, illustrations primarily use visual metaphors. By utilizing familiar imagery in your marketing campaigns, you can easily convey abstract ideas without confusing your customers. With this, you can generate a higher recall and retention rate.
Want to learn more about how to transform data into visual assets? Read Creating Effective Infographics: A Powerful Tool for Communication
Versatility Across Marketing Channels
A great marketing asset can be used in numerous marketing channels. It allows business owners to achieve their marketing objectives without the need to use that much time, effort, and brain power. Custom illustrations are inherently flexible. You can use it on your landing pages, social media campaigns, email newsletters, printed materials, and even sales pitches.
Want to learn more about how to spice up your sales pitches and presentations? Read Designing Compelling Presentations for Sales and Client Pitches
The New Yorker’s diverse Instagram feed featuring a steady supply of custom illustrations.
Better Search Engine Optimization
Surprisingly, using custom illustrations actually have a great impact on your search engine visibility. Visual cues allow you to provide an enhanced customer experience on your website, which generates positive engagement signals that help search engines index the websites properly. Custom illustrations also have a greater likelihood of being shared on social media platforms and other websites. Once these illustrations are properly linked to your website, they can generate valuable backlinks that will improve your domain authority.
Most importantly, custom illustrations create diversified content. Leading search engine platforms value diverse content formats and prioritize websites that offer a rich multimedia experience. Furthermore, it helps in retaining users, thus reducing your website’s bounce rate.
Improving Conversion Rates and Sales
Ultimately, custom illustrations can help you increase your revenue generation. Enhanced visual communication allows you to easily showcase your product details, demonstrate use cases, and highlight your unique selling points. Aside from this, they also build trust and credibility. Well-executed custom illustrations enhance the perception of a brand’s professionalism and credibility, increasing your customer loyalty.
To learn more about building trust and credibility, read our article The Importance of Consistency in Graphic Design: Building Trust and Recognition
Brands Utilizing Custom Illustrations Effectively
Now that you know the nature and benefits of using custom illustrations, let’s now go through brands that are utilizing custom illustrations. This way, you can emulate their best practices on how they utilize your custom illustrations.
Duo Lingo
Duo Lingo is a language learning platform that capitalizes on engaging and interactive lessons. According to data from 2021, Duolingo has about 9.6 million users that are using the app actively on a daily basis. The website uses creative illustrations and iconography, establishing the ambiance of friendliness and fun in every content. We bet everyone knows about their owl logo!
Duo Lingo making the most out of their owl mascot. Source: D&Ad
Mint Mobile
Mint Mobile is a prepaid wireless provider that offers affordable connection plants to its users. Recent reports suggest that Mint Mobile and its parent company, Ultra Mobile, have roughly 2-3 million combined subscribers. Throughout its marketing campaigns, the company always shows its mascot, a green fox.
Mint Mobile sample advertisement. Source: Mint Mobile
Asana
Asana is undoubtedly one of the most popular project management software among creatives. As of this writing, Asana reports millions of organizations using their platform across 200 countries. The website always utilizes colorful illustrations across its social media accounts and email newsletters, establishing its creative inclination.
Asana’s sample custom illustrations. Source: Pinterest
The New Yorker
Despite the numerous news portal and lifestyle content websites popping up on the internet today, The New Yorker remains to be one of the most popular online magazines. The website has feature articles, commentaries, essays, poetry pieces, and more. While the website discusses critical issues, they don’t fall short of showing its creative side by using distinctive custom illustrations.
Minimalist custom illustrations of The New Yorker. Source: Pinterest
Blue Apron
Blue Apron is a food delivery service that offers ingredient-and-recipe meal kits. As of the fourth quarter of 2022, Blue Apron had roughly 298,000 customers. The website uses minimalist custom illustrations, which shows a sense of simplicity and homeliness in their meal plans.
Blue Apron’s website. Source: Pinterest
Professional Custom Illustration Creation
Creating custom illustrations require advanced knowledge of graphic design. Since you won’t just be utilizing stock images, you need professional aid in creating custom illustrations that will be appealing to your audience.
The professional graphic designers of Seter Graphic Labs possess the expertise and artistic skills to bring your vision to life. We can understand your requirements, interpret your ideas, and create custom illustrations that effectively convey your desired message or story. Aside from this, our team has a deep understanding of design principles, composition, and color theory. They can create visually appealing and aesthetically pleasing illustrations that engage and captivate your audience. This way, your content will stand out from the competition and leave a lasting impression on viewers
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Most importantly, Seter Graphic Labs grants full rights and ownership to clients. Through this, you can re-use your custom illustrations whenever and wherever you want.
Interested in getting your own custom illustrations? Read the full list of our services through this link.
In Summary
Creating custom illustrations may be challenging, but there’s no denying that it can truly transform a simple marketing campaign into a fun and exciting one. Custom illustrations grab the attention of your audience, simplify abstract ideas, improve search engine visibility, and, most importantly, generate higher conversion rates. So, if you’re looking for a way how to spice up your next digital ads, custom illustrations might be the answer!
