We’re Hiring! 

We’re looking for a Graphic Designer/Content Marketer to join our team

If you’re a creative graphic designer with a mindset for business, then keep reading…

We’re a small team who love to work together to get the best out of each other. How we work together and get on throughout the day is very important to us, so a new member to the mix who will jump into our culture would be great. We work on brands from small local businesses, to those on the path to world domination, like Fox, UFO, RNLI and Kate Humble, and we’d love to recruit someone to get involved with these projects.

The role:

We’re looking to bring on board a graphic designer/content marketer to work on the services provided by The Graphics Department and to build our internal brands.

You will:

• Create images and content for social media and web

• Design illustrations, icons and graphics for websites

• Logo design

• Create info-graphics

• Produce print media (flyers/leaflets etc)

• Assist the Marketing Project Manager with content for email campaigns

• Assist the Web Developers with design and UX/UI decisions and wire-framing

You will have a solid and confident understanding of the design process, from concept to completion, and understand what content causes people to take action. We have clients that we provide ongoing design, web and marketing services to, as well as one-off and large budget projects. You will often work to a brief and, when required, follow brand guidelines to assist the team in developing show-stopping end results. As we’re a small team, the role will see you wearing multiple hats, so this is an opportunity to grow your wider skill-set as well as your specialised qualifications and experience.

Essential Skills:

• A relevant degree and at least 1 years’ experience in a similar role (we’re open to candidates with no degree, and more experience)

• Confidence with Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign are priorities)

• A keen eye for design and detail

• An understanding of design for marketing (what makes people tick)

• You must be comfortable building solid relationships with ongoing and new clients

• Ability to organise yourself and meet tight deadlines, whilst still meeting ongoing clients’ needs

• A positive attitude to work and enthusiasm to take on new challenges

• An ability to switch between projects with different styles at the drop of a hat

• Ability to read, understand, and work to briefs and strict timelines

• To be able to confidently justify your design decisions, whilst being open to opinions and criticisms

Desirable:

• An interest or basic understanding of motion graphics and animation

• An understanding of CMS (mainly WordPress and Magento)

• An understanding of HTML and CSS

• An interest or understanding of the DTG design and printing processes

• An interest in photography / video would be a real bonus

Work Perks:

• Competitive Salary

• A relaxed office environment

• Unlimited tea and great coffee (you must make a good cuppa)

• Fat Fridays

• A small team who get on like a house on fire

• Potentially an office dog (we’re working on it)

• A  really comfy desk chair

If you think you’re up for the job, then send your CV, covering letter and portfolio to hello@thegraphicsdepartment.co.uk. This is a creative role, so don’t be scared to do something out of the box to get noticed.

Many business owners may have heard of the sales funnel or buyer journey before. Both are very similar, just looked at from different perspectives. 

The buyer journey has changed in today’s digital landscape, and we should be accommodating to that. At its basic level, the buyer journey is the process that people traditionally have been thought to go on, when transforming from strangers to customers.

The traditional journey starts at awareness, where a person is exposed to your brand and it is no longer unknown. Awareness has been achieved through billboards, leaflets, or creative PR campaigns. Ending at retention, the traditional buyer journey model of marketing has had proven results when businesses guide people along it and utilise each stage through specific and targeted marketing.

 

Today, the buyer journey isn’t as linear as it once was. People could be approaching their journey with many variants of knowledge, needs and competencies. The foundations remain, but the way that each person is targeted and communicated with must be tailored specifically to each chapter of the journey. Building trust and (more importantly) not abusing that trust is at the core of guiding potential customers down a path that ends in retention. The new buyer journey follows a model as follows:

Attention –

Gone are the days of a person simply being exposed to a brand via a billboard. Today, people are aware of their needs, and are searching for ways to fulfil them. The first stage of the digital buyer journey is to gain their attention in this search. This can be done with clear messages and realistic representations of your offerings. The objective of your marketing here should be to assist in this search, not to dominate it.

Interest –

Once you have gained a person’s interest in your products or services, you need to impress them. More often than not, people are looking for reasons not to choose you, they will be looking at reviews, forums, your website, and any other customer feedback (Twitter’s a big one). It’s important here to ensure that any negative feedback you may receive (nobody’s perfect) is dealt with positively and appropriately.

Consideration –

At this stage, the person has decided that after their research, their preference is you (hopefully). The deal isn’t done yet, though. Now, they’ll be looking at your delivery/refund policies and prices. You must build trust through clarity here about your refund costs and delivery times and prices. If a customer is given any surprises later on their journey, they’ll be leaving negative feedback, which will make future potential customers drop off before they reach this stage.

Purchase –

At this point, you still haven’t sealed the deal. Online payments can still be a drop-off point. Secure payments and a professional image are absolutely crucial here. It’s also important at this stage to make your usage of information policies clear and give people the option to opt-in to you holding any of their information (GDPR).

Retention –

This is the modern equivalent to re-purchase. They now must receive what they have paid for, on time, and with no damages. You can build brand loyalty here by following up and keeping up good (but not spammy) communications with your customers. Today, brand loyalty and engagement is as important as repeat purchase.

 

Your marketing strategy must include tactics that work for each stage of the buyer journey, and it must guide users down a gradual path with quality information, quality services, and management of expectations.

If you’d like us to help with your marketing, website or branding, give us a call and we’ll have a chat.

 

Any infographics and copy in this blog belong to The Graphics Department. Any re-use of this should be pre-approved by The Graphics Department.

Email marketing campaigns have been around since the dawn of the internet, and as many different marketing trends have come and gone over the years, email has stood the test of time. When developing your marketing strategy, it’s important to consider that it’s estimated that people send and receive 281 million emails per day throughout 2018, and 95% of professionals use email as their central communication tool.

The power of email is not to be mistaken, but getting your email opened is another beast to tackle. Looking at the numbers, over half of an average consumers emails are marketing related, so you’ll be heading into a crowded sea. In a study, 53% of users tested said they’d either unsubscribe or delete their email address altogether because of receiving too many irrelevant emails, you don’t want to be a part of that.

Putting together an email campaign that is personal, relevant, and offers genuine benefits for opening can gain your business return on investment greater than any other tool. Here are some of our top tips for a successful email campaign that won’t leave your unread email in the trash:

Personalise without over personalising

– It’s important that your subscribers feel valued, but they’re not stupid. Address them personally without showering them with clichés.

Get rid of any spam words

– Because there are so many emails that have viruses or are attempts to hack, there are certain trigger words that will send your email straight to a users spam file. The list of these words is endless, and once you’re in the spam file, you can pretty much guarantee your email isn’t getting opened.

Keep it relevant

– Your customers will appreciate being provided information that is relevant to them, sending them junk will eventually result in the dreaded ‘unsubscribe’ button being furiously clicked.

In today’s age, email is still as successful as it has ever been, but to achieve this success you have to be much more strategic in your communications via email.

If you’d like some help with developing your email strategy and defining your objectives, get in touch and we can get the ball rolling.

Hello, and welcome to The Graphics Department’s first blog post! We thought it’d be nice to give you a little run down of who we are, what we do, and why we do it.

You can think of The Graphics Department as your new partner for pushing your business forward through marketing strategies, creative branding, and an attractive website that communicates your brand values to your exact needs and more.

The Graphics Department has been born out of PC1 Limited, a long-standing IT and digital agency that has delivered digital solutions for over 18 years. This experience and knowledge is what has allowed a new division to be created, that focuses on a combination of strategy and creativity to not only deliver marketing solutions that meet and exceed our clients’ objectives, but to provide continued support to ensure you don’t get lost in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

PC1 Ltd is still here and is continuing to grow as a company delivering IT and CCTV solutions to its ever-growing client list. This evolution is simply a way for our brands to match our service offerings.

Building, nurturing, and growing your brand is a process that takes creativity, strategy and a lot of coffee. Our team have the perfect combination of tactical thinking and creative flow to do just that, plus a great coffee machine. That’s why our clients don’t treat us as just a one-stop shop, but as a team of experts that they can put their trust in.

Have a look around, see how we can help you, and get in touch to have a chat about what sort of solutions you could benefit from.