I believe that stickers are one of the most underutilized marketing tactics in the offline print world. These days, more businesses than ever are choosing to market their companies online and many have forgotten just how powerful sticker printing can be for their businesses (so long as you hire the right sticker printing company of course).
Now, don’t get me wrong, online marketing tactics certainly have their place. In fact, they can be extremely powerful when they’re used correctly, but I believe offline printed marketing materials still have their place in the marketing mix. If you look at any well-known brand, you’ll notice that their advertising/marketing isn’t limited to the online world; they’re also active in the offline printed world too.
Still though, a lot of companies that have utilized sticker printing in the past have found the tactic to yield relatively mediocre results. I believe that the reason for this is simple; they’re not designing their stickers for maximum effect.
Designing the perfect promotional sticker certainly isn’t an easy task. It’s also a task that even some of the biggest brands struggle with. But, in this article, I’m going to be walking you through the basics of effective promotional sticker design so you can create stunning designs for your businesses (or clients) marketing materials.
1. Always Know Your Audience
This might sound like a bit of a strange point to make when talking about promotional sticker design, but let me explain.
Just like any other marketing material, your promotional stickers should be aimed at your target market. Depending on the industry your company operates in, this could make a massive difference when it comes to the design of your stickers.
For example, take a look at the stickers above. Those of you that have experience in the website design arena might recognize the designs of these stickers as they’re all HTML5 icons and logos.
The thing is, if you’re not a website designer or don’t work within the web development world, these stickers are going to mean literally nothing to you. However, that isn’t a problem.
These stickers are designed for an audience of web designers, coders and developers, so it doesn’t matter if anyone outside this industry cares about the stickers at all.
2. 101 Airborne Stickers
Now take a look at the stickers above. These stickers are designed to promote a game entitled 101 Airborne. As you can see, these stickers are designed with a completely different audience in mind when compared with our original HTML5 stickers.
You can see that these stickers are likely to capture the attention of avid gamers due to their cartoonish design. This is perfect as this is the target audience that the game makers are looking to entice into trying their product.
3. Make It Bold And Colorful
It doesn’t matter what form of marketing material you’re looking to design, it’s often a good idea to ensure that it’s bold and colourful. The reason for this is pretty straightforward; bold and colourful things are much more likely to attract attention in the first place. However, with stickers, it’s more important than ever.
The thing about promotional stickers is that usually, they’re pretty small. Most stickers are just a few centimetres wide/high which gives you a very limited area to capture people’s attention with. If people are quite a distance away from your stickers, they’re not going to notice them at all if they aren’t colourful and/or bold.
To prove this point, take a look at the stickers above. You can see that these are extremely bold and colourful, but without being too overpowering. The use of contrasting colours (orange, black and white) ensure that every aspect of the sticker design stands out.
You can also imagine that you would quite easily be able to see these stickers at a distance. They’d be pretty likely to capture your attention too, despite their relatively small size.
4. Keep It Simple
Unlike a lot of other marketing tactics, the aim of your promotional stickers is usually pretty straightforward. You want them to get your branding and company out there and for people to become familiar with it.
Compare this with a marketing tactic like a leaflet and you’ll start to realize the differences. A leaflet is designed to give people quite a lot of information about your brand, company or product/service. A sticker is much more simple and just needs to attract attention.
Because of this, you need to keep things simple. A lot of brands end up cramming far too much information onto their sticker designs which often makes them illegible and certainly far from eye-catching.
A good example of a simple yet eye-catching sticker design is above. These were created by the well-known website; Dribbble and as you can see, they’re pretty simple. There are actually two stickers, which are essentially just the two parts of the Dribbble logo; that’s all.
5. Fish Bone Prints Stickers
If you really feel the need to add a bit of information to your sticker, the sticker above provides a good example. As you can see, this includes the companies name, industry and Facebook URL.
If you’re going to include information like this, it’s extremely important that you ensure it fits in with the overall design of your sticker and compliments it accordingly.
Conclusion:
The method of designing the perfect promotional sticker is always going to vary somewhat depending on the company and purpose the design is meant for. However, these tips are pretty much universal and should almost always be adhered to when going through the sticker design process.
By following the steps above, you’ll be able to ensure that your sticker is clean, simple and effective rather than a cluttered concoction of unnecessary information that will only confuse potential customers/clients. Simplicity is the key to a successful promotional sticker design, along with a good high quality printing company and a keen eye for design of course.