Please may you evaluate my marketing materials

[D-pearce92]

For college i have had to create a marketing campaign and marketing materials. For my business i will mainly be doing circuit racing and track days so have targeted my materials to this audience. If you have a spare 5 minutes please may you answer my questions. Please be honest as possible


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1: Do you think i am reaching my target audience with my marketing material?

2: What do you see as the most effective part of my marketing material

3: What do you think is the weakest part of my marketing material?

4: If you were to redesign my materials what would you change and why?

5: Does the colour scheme work and if not which colour scheme would you choose?

6: If you was doing this yourself what would you do differently to what i have done.


Many thanks
Dex

 

[Alastair]

From experience with business cards.. increase the minimum font size you're using. White text on a darker background always looks smaller than the other way round. I'd also break-up the telephone number to make it easier to use (01843 583 476 or 01843 58 34 76).

Pens are more useful than mugs (but make sure it's a good pen that writes well).. I'm forever dropping pens on people's desks, on tables at conferences/meetings, etc. Most people already have plenty of mugs and new ones disapear home. A desk tidy with useful information (calendar with race meeting dates marked?) tends to stay on someones desk for a long time (again from personal experience and observation).

I'd tighten the copy on the pinboard image.

"Maximum Revs Photography provides high quality track action images to suite all levels of motorsport, from track days to top level European competition events"​

Pick a font and stick with it, ideally one that is available for all your marketing channels (giveaways, Facebook, website, etc). You've got three of four in use at the moment, stick with one for the "branded" copy, and a maximum of one other for the likes of the pinboard. The heading on on the pinboard should be the same font as the mugs and the business cards.

 

[D-pearce92]

Thanks Alastair,really like the idea of a desk tidy with a calender of race dates and will use what you said about the business card on my evaluation.

 

[JonathanRyan]

6: I'd hire a designer.

Sorry, but I really would.

On a (possibly) more helpful note....I looked at all those materials and couldn't figure out what you were selling and to whom. That's kind of important.

 

[WilliamC]

I looked at all those materials and couldn't figure out what you were selling and to whom. That's kind of important.

Excellent point that one! Think: "what is it I am selling, who to and why me?". The message in the material currently just says "I take pictures of motorsport" but what you're really selling to people is (along the lines of):
a) A photographer for your club's track day or
b) Pictures of that driving experience you just bought your partner or
c) Publicity shots of your new race car in action or
d) I could be your racing team's official photographer or
e) Whatever it is you're actually selling!

The above is not suggested wording, just ideas for what it might be you're selling.

EDIT: Btw, the above point about consistent font usage is also excellent, as is consistent style to the business name - some places you capitalised the P in Photography and some places you didn't. You're also mixing white on blue and black on blue. Think "consistent".

 

[Shine On]

As above, get a designer involved. I quite like the style you have on the mugs, but I'm not sure if you're putting these all forward as different ideas, or if you're suggesting to have a mishmash of styles on different media. If its the latter, stop now before you spend any money. And really, don't waste cash on stuff like pens and mugs, at best it'll be used and forgotten, realistically it'll just get left and forgotten. If anything, the best thing I've seen is a little plastic key ring tag with your logo and web address on, a bit like the Tesco Clubcard things they give you instead of the credit card sized one.

The business cards, I'd suggest having the image full size on the reverse, and your details larger and clearer on the front. As it stands, it's not working with the landscape picture squashed into a 'portrait' shape box, with the white blocks. And the flyer design looks very amateur, the font in the box looks like it has been shaken out of line. The images don't really grab me either, the picture of bikes on the business card is miles more appealing than a brown Mini.

Who is your market? Who are those flyers going to? Are you trying to sell your services to the event organisers to be their official photographer, or are you just turning up, taking pictures, and trying to sell them to on the side to participants of a track day, aside from anyone the organiser has there in an official capacity. It's not clear to me.

Full circle, give a brief to a decent graphic designer and let them produce some ideas for you.

 

[Triggaaar]

First things first:

For college i have had to create a marketing campaign and marketing materials. For my business i will mainly be doing circuit racing and track days

When you say 'for my business', do you simply mean for my course, or are you wanting this to be your business?

If the latter, get out of bed (students eh) and register the domain names you want

 

[onona]

To the guys suggesting he hire a designer - read the post carefully. He says this is a project for college; I'd assume therefore that he has to design these materials himself.

Having studied and qualified as a graphic designer many years ago myself, here are my tips:

- Consistency. You currently don't have any. Choose fonts, colour schemes, etc and stick with them throughout all your different items. On a related note, watch your typing in your copy - you've written European without the appropriate capitalisation. This looks unprofessional.

- Avoid serif style fonts for a business like this. They're old fashioned and aren't really suitable for a motorsport photography business.

- Text case. You're using a combination of upper and lower case text in your title "Maximum Revs photography" in some of your designs. If you're going to write Maximum Revs with capitalised letters, you should also write Photography with one, as together these form a name. If, for design purposes, you wish to use lower case, then have the entire name in lower case.

- Originality. You're using a Mac desktop wallpaper image in some of your stuff - don't. Not only is that image probably protected by some copyright, it's also very recognisable and if I were to come across someone using that in their own corporate identity, I'd never work with them because essentially you've stolen someone else's work and presented it as your own. Not a good tactic in a creative field.

 

[JonathanRyan]

To the guys suggesting he hire a designer - read the post carefully. He says this is a project for college; I'd assume therefore that he has to design these materials himself.

Oops, yeah. Missed that bit. In that case - I'm out

But read carefully what onona said - some very useful pointers there.

 

[D-pearce92]

Thank you everyone for your help, will defiantely read through and will use the points for my evaluation.

Excellent point that one! Think: "what is it I am selling, who to and why me?". The message in the material currently just says "I take pictures of motorsport" but what you're really selling to people is (along the lines of):
a) A photographer for your club's track day or
b) Pictures of that driving experience you just bought your partner or
c) Publicity shots of your new race car in action or
d) I could be your racing team's official photographer or
e) Whatever it is you're actually selling!

The above is not suggested wording, just ideas for what it might be you're selling.

EDIT: Btw, the above point about consistent font usage is also excellent, as is consistent style to the business name - some places you capitalised the P in Photography and some places you didn't. You're also mixing white on blue and black on blue. Think "consistent".

Thanks William, i didnt really think of who im selling it to as its not something i had thought of and my teacher didnt say that to me. Definately leaves me for food for thought though if i did decide to choose this path of photography and decided to sell it to a live audience.

To the guys suggesting he hire a designer - read the post carefully. He says this is a project for college; I'd assume therefore that he has to design these materials himself.

Having studied and qualified as a graphic designer many years ago myself, here are my tips:

- Consistency. You currently don't have any. Choose fonts, colour schemes, etc and stick with them throughout all your different items. On a related note, watch your typing in your copy - you've written European without the appropriate capitalisation. This looks unprofessional.

- Avoid serif style fonts for a business like this. They're old fashioned and aren't really suitable for a motorsport photography business.

- Text case. You're using a combination of upper and lower case text in your title "Maximum Revs photography" in some of your designs. If you're going to write Maximum Revs with capitalised letters, you should also write Photography with one, as together these form a name. If, for design purposes, you wish to use lower case, then have the entire name in lower case.

- Originality. You're using a Mac desktop wallpaper image in some of your stuff - don't. Not only is that image probably protected by some copyright, it's also very recognisable and if I were to come across someone using that in their own corporate identity, I'd never work with them because essentially you've stolen someone else's work and presented it as your own. Not a good tactic in a creative field.

Thanks Onoa, when i come to doing it again i will defiantely keep in mind what you and others have said about the font and consistancy and also with the colour scheme. I never thought of it like that with the poster but when i do it again i will definatel create my own rather than use a template, because of i only had a short deadline to do the work i decided to use a template as i did try to design my own but it was very slow process and something i didnt have unfortuantely was time.

Many thanks for your imput and i will definately include it in my evaluation

 

[Darkroom]

Couple of minor points as the others above have covered a lot but consider putting some spaces in the phone number as it makes it much easier to read: "01843 583 476" as opposed to "01843583476"

Choose a smaller email address for contact with your own domain (looks more professional) rather than a free one. It's also slightly confusing with your business name as "Maximum Revs Photography" and "maxrevsphotography@" as the email address. You'll get no end of clients trying to contact you at maximumrevsphotography@... and wonder why the email bounces.

Maybe something along the lines of info@ mrp.co.uk for example (even though it's not available!), - much nicer to type from a phone keypad!

 

[D-pearce92]

Couple of minor points as the others above have covered a lot but consider putting some spaces in the phone number as it makes it much easier to read: "01843 583 476" as opposed to "01843583476"

Choose a smaller email address for contact with your own domain (looks more professional) rather than a free one. It's also slightly confusing with your business name as "Maximum Revs Photography" and "maxrevsphotography@" as the email address. You'll get no end of clients trying to contact you at maximumrevsphotography@... and wonder why the email bounces.

Maybe something along the lines of info@ mrp.co.uk for example (even though it's not available!), - much nicer to type from a phone keypad!

Thanks Darkroom, from memory i think it wouldnt let me do maximum due to it being to long, will definately include that as well in my evaluation.

 

[Simon photo]

I learned something yesterday in fact that i will share with you.
Its A I D A keep that in mind for marketing. Attract. Interest. Desire. Action. You need to attract your audience otherwise they will just skim past. You need to hold their interest once they are on board. You need to make your service/product desirable. And you need the client to be able to act immediately with no fuss.

 

[photo-em]

1: Do you think i am reaching my target audience with my marketing material?

2: What do you see as the most effective part of my marketing material

3: What do you think is the weakest part of my marketing material?

4: If you were to redesign my materials what would you change and why?

5: Does the colour scheme work and if not which colour scheme would you choose?

6: If you was doing this yourself what would you do differently to what i have done.

On first look, this reminds me of a 90's solicitor's or legal practice logo.
I've designed a few, and the blue and pattern is very similar to something I've seen before. Although I tend to steer them in the "exciting font and colour" direction, some of them like this old school look.

- Play around with different fonts - certain fonts can make business cards stand out when standard fonts like arial can look flat.
(see example : http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hN-RNLUCt...PAMBuIUw/s1600/conor+nolan+Business+cards.jpg)

- The name needs to stand out - either by using a different font than the contact details or change the colour

- (Like others said) small things like spaces between the contact number is important, especially on land lines.

- It's not very clear what you are selling. I see the images of motorsport, and description on the pin board but if I saw this hung up none of those words are standing out for me.

Get started with the font and colours first I'd suggest!