Marketing

03
Jan
2024

Five tips for making the transformation from graphic designer to digital marketer

You’re a graphic designer, and want to be a digital marketing pro. This involves a transition from traditional marketing to digital marketing. I know, because I mastered the move through exploration, research, and course work.

Moving from analog to digital requires thought and planning

I did not just wake up one day, and poof—I was a digital marketing pro!

Moving from traditional to digital marketing took some thought and planning. I had done traditional marketing communications in past job positions and was self-taught in certain aspects of digital marketing when I founded a management consulting firm more than twenty years ago. I knew how to use a few Adobe creative apps and learned enough HTML/CSS to manage my Website.

At some point, I knew that I needed more formal training and found a course of study that would take me where I wanted to go. Then I continued to explore new technologies and apps to provide digital marketing services.

Five tips for making the transformation from graphic designer to digital marketer

  1. First, decide on the digital marketing services you will provide—social media marketing, content design, web design, web development, web analytics, user interface/user experience (UI/UX) design, advertising, analytics, and more.
  2. Assess your software, IT, business, sales, marketing, and people skills. Yes—whether you work for an employer or are a freelancer, you need to use “soft” people skills to identify clients’ needs and provide the appropriate digital marketing solution.
  3. Network, network, network! Find local digital marketing firms and identify professional organizations. Speak with people in the digital marketing industry about the required skill sets and job opportunities. Find a mentor if you can.
  4. Make a plan to fill skills gaps between where you are currently, and where you want to go. This can entail classroom and/or online training, as well as formal and informal internships.
  5. Finally, work your plan. Acquire new skills. Learn new technologies and software apps. Build your digital portfolio to demonstrate your capabilities, and market to potential employers or clients.

Take your path to success in this exciting creative industry that hardly existed twenty years ago! You can become a digital marketer by shaping and working a thoughtful plan, through networking, and developing a solid digital portfolio.

Posted by Jill B Gilbert in Best Practices, Design, Education, Graphics, Guidelines, Marketing
15
Dec
2023

Animals are social, too: Oklahoma animal rescue group uses social media to publicize upcoming training webinar

Grace Animal Rehabilitation Center in Sapulpa, Oklahoma rescues, fosters, and places dogs and cats in loving homes. The nonprofit engaged Jill B Gilbert to create graphic designs to publicize an upcoming webinar on social media, and also to prepare a brief presentation for use during the webinar.

Grace Animal Rehabilitation Center, Facebook Post
Grace Animal Rehabilitation Center, Facebook Post
Grace Animal Rehabillitation Center, Instagram Post
Grace Animal Rehabillitation Center, Instagram Post

The webinar presentation followed the colorful theme with images of various breeds of cats used in the social media posts.

Posted by Jill B Gilbert in Design, Education, Graphics, Marketing
02
Mar
2023

Multilingual graphic design matters

When asked to do a project for a repeat client, naturally, I said, “Yes!” My pro bono graphic design skills would allow my client–and the original author–to more widely distribute an important training manual. Welcome to multilingual graphic design!

Multilingual graphic design | English layout and translation of a Spanish training manual
Multilingual graphic design | English layout and translation of a Spanish training manual

The non-profit philanthropic organization in Melbourne, Australia came across an 80-page training manual written in Argentina and had it translated from Spanish into English. They wanted me to create the English manual with the same typesetting and layout as the Spanish version.

 

This introduced several challenges, also known as localization issues:

  • English sentences are shorter than Spanish sentences. This creates pages with less text and more “white space.”
  • Some typefaces/fonts are multilingual; others are not.
  • Graphic design and style naming conventions differ among languages.
  • The translation required the designer to recognize differences in spelling and word usage between Australian English and U.S. English.
  • The English translation required rewriting in a few areas to make the words sound more natural.
  • The original, Spanish manual looked good to those who are not trained in graphic design. Behind the scenes, the document needed to be set up with consistent typographic styles and colors.

Luckily, I have a working knowledge of Spanish and have written hundreds of English articles. I enjoy layout and typography. I was up to the challenge.

In this case, my mission was to make the English translation look like the original manual, published in Argentina. But what if my client originally envisioned a document that worked well in multiple languages?

Multilingual graphic design considers several localization issues:

  • Language differences—the translation and the use of common phrases.
  • Cultural differences—the use of acceptable images, colors and words.
  • Sentence length in different languages.
  • Languages that read from left to right vs. from right to left.
  • Multibyte languages with complex characters, e.g., Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
  • Multilingual fonts—fonts that have all the characters, glyphs, and accent marks found in each language you want to use.
  • White space—embrace the use of white space when designing a document to be written in multiple languages; one line of text can look as elegant as two.

If you are not well-versed in multilingual graphic design, you can find a design firm that is. This was an enjoyable project with great results. My clients and the author of the original, Spanish training manual were pleased, and I learned a few new things as a bonus.

Posted by Jill B Gilbert in Best Practices, Consulting, Design, Graphics, Guidelines, Marketing, Typography
11
Jan
2023

Jill B Gilbert reaches a milestone with pro bono projects impact

Volunteer work benefits a range of educational, environmental, professional development, and philanthropic non-profits in the U.S. and abroad

JIll B Gilbert has provided more than 800 hours of pro bono graphic and web design services for non-profit organizations

JIll B Gilbert recently reached a milestone: she has provided over 800 hours of volunteer work, saving non-profit organizations more than $USD 100,000. And she’s not slowing down—currently working on her next project!

Gilbert provided marketing communications, graphic design, and web design services on two dozen projects—many were multiple projects for the same client. The projects ranged from a highly-customized presentation for a sister organization to a U.S. National Park, to branding and logo design for childhood education and Head Start programs and a new high school, to custom presentations and brand guidelines for healthcare organizations.

Gilbert began working with volunteer matching organization Catchafire in 2021, during the height of the pandemic. Technology advances in the past 5 years made it possible to complete all of this volunteer work remotely—even for clients in the Houston area—with client meetings via Zoom or Google Meetings.  She provided project deliverables in electronic format, using Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Acrobat; Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Apple’s Keynote slide software.

Gilbert remarked, “I have enjoyed working on projects with these non-profits. I am open to paid commissions and plan to continue volunteering marketing, graphic design, and web design services to worthy non-profits so they can spend their budgets to further their missions.”

You can read more about several of the pro bono projects in our blog.

"Jill is extremely organized and creative. Her commitment to advancing causes is genuine and inspiring. Jill goes above and beyond! It was a pleasure working with her."
Rosa
Bridges to Science
"I highly recommend anyone to work with Jill. She has a wealth of knowledge, is very kind, responsive, and did a wonderful job on our visual brand guide."
Heather
Wisconsin Association of Free & Charitable Clinics
"Jill knows design! She understands principles of good design and has in-depth knowledge of professional tools to make your designs look great!"
Kerry
Many Hands
Posted by Jill B Gilbert in Branding, Consulting, Corporate Identity, Design, Education, Graphics, Guidelines, Illustration, Logo Design, Marketing, Standards, Typography, Web Design
20
Dec
2022

Case study: social media ad campaign for children’s book “P is for Pterodactyl

P IS FOR PTERODACTYL is the perfect product for a social media ad campaign. The English language is difficult to learn because of the many exceptions to spelling, grammar and pronunciation rules. This silly, fun read-aloud book by Rapper Lushlife (Raj Haldar) and Chris Carpenter teaches kids the ins and outs of spelling and phonetics. Adults love it, too!

 

P is for Pterodactyl
P is for Pterodactyl | The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

Buyer demographics

Who would buy this book? P IS FOR PTERODACTYL is attractive to parents with young children, parents with school-age children learning to read, and to grandparents, aunts, and uncles. More females than males would buy the book. Relatives would buy this book as a gift.  Buyers are more likely to be college-educated, often with advanced degrees.

P is for Pterodactyl inner pages
P is for Pterodactyl | inner pages

Buyer persona

Digital marketing technology lets us target specific buyers, or personas. My marketing campaign targets a buyer called “90th Percentile Nana.” She is 55-65 years old, married or widowed, with two or more grandchildren. Her household income is in the 90th percentile of U.S. Households. She has an Amazon Prime account, a college degree, drives a luxury SUV, and has a designer Doodle dog. 90th Percentile Nana is in a book club and is tech-savvy, but prefers physical books to Kindle books. She is a foodie and an amateur chef who walks or exercises to stay fit.

Grandparents love P is for Pterodactyl

Buyer's goals and challenges

Buyer’s goals:

  • Entertain grandchildren
  • Visually appealing book
  • Durable book, can be read over and over
  • Teach grandchildren the alphabet
  • Teach grandchildren to read
  • A New York Times Bestseller and/or award-winning book.
Buyer’s challenges:
  • Tired of the standard bedtime books
  • Finding a unique and interesting book
  • Finding a funny book with educational value.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

Goals and social media platform

The ad campaign goals are to create product awareness through advertising and generate sales leads. Facebook is a good fit for these goals, as it is the leading social platform with 2.7 billion monthly users; 54% Female, 46% Male. Facebook hits the sweet spot for 90th Percentile Nana’s demographics. Facebook has more users, and a greater percentage of users, in the target age and income groups than TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, or YouTube.

Social media scheduling

A key element of a social media campaign is timing. SproutSocial shows the highest Facebook engagement times are Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. (Figure 1). The American Marketing Association recommends skipping Saturday posts.

 

I developed a two-week schedule for Facebook posts and News Feed Ads (ads that pop up on your Facebook feed) targeted at peak engagement times. Content and design strategies include:

  • Each Facebook Post will be a Sponsored News Feed with one or more images plus text.
  • Many of the posts will be educational and informative versus “hard sell.”
  • Each Facebook Ad will appear in the user’s News Feed and will use images or graphics and limited text.
  • Using images of the book itself will help to build product awareness.
  • The ads will offer 10% to 15% discounts or free shipping and will ask users to sign up for emails and/or texts. 
P is for Pterodactyl, sponsored Facebook post
P is for Pterodactyl, sponsored Facebook post

Metrics

Of the hundreds of social media metrics available, I selected a few to gauge the success of the P IS FOR PTERODACTYL advertising campaign:

  • engagement
  • impressions
  • mentions
  • tags
  • reposts
  • shares.

Marketing Collateral

Marketing pieces for the social media ad campaign use images optimized for Facebook. Collateral includes ads for desktop and mobile views, considering most people interact with social media accounts on smartphones—though 90th Percentile Nana might be more comfortable using a desktop or laptop computer. Marketing collateral also includes an original Acme Books logo for the ad campaign.

P is for Pterodactyl, mobile ads
P is for Pterodactyl, mobile ads
P is for Pterodactyl, mobile ad with signup form
P is for Pterodactyl, mobile ad with signup form
P is for Pterodactyl, desktop ads
P is for Pterodactyl, desktop ads
Acme Books logo by Jill B Gilbert
Acme Books logo by Jill B Gilbert

For further information on this digital marketing case study or to hire Jill B Gilbert for marketing communications advice or to design social media graphics, illustrations and ads for your company, please contact us.

Posted by Jill B Gilbert in Branding, Consulting, Corporate Identity, Design, Graphics, Illustration, Logo Design, Marketing
10
Dec
2022

New energy drink packaging crushes the competition

My challenge was to design the packaging for a new energy drink and then create social media ads to post via Google Ads. The result is packaging for three flavors of Speed Whiz Energy Drink, a (fictional) energy drink that provides “All the Sugar & Twice the Caffeine” of normal energy drinks. The 500 ml aluminum can might account for the beverage’s high energy levels–most energy drinks come in smaller cans.

Three cans of Speed Whiz Energy Drink, with Mango Blast, Kiwi Slush, and Berry Crush flavors.
Speed Whiz Energy Drink packaging by Jill B Gilbert

The Google Ads focused on the tag line, “All the Sugar & Twice The Caffeine.” That should get someone’s attention!

Posted by Jill B Gilbert in Branding, Corporate Identity, Design, Logo Design, Marketing
23
Sep
2022

17 Amazing Benefits of Using Lip Balm to Restore Dry, Cracked Lips Today

Marketing in the Digital Age

You’re probably wondering why I am interested in lip balm. Since I live in Houston, I need it when the humidity drops below 70% or if I have spicy food for lunch and wipe my lips too often. But seriously… my challenge was to create two marketing pieces for Cheetos Lip Balm. Cheetos introduced the lip balm in 2005—I am not making this up—and it was a marketing flop. Today, I think that  marketing such a product could be a success because of the prevalence of social media marketing channels. After all, pickle- and bacon-flavored lip balms are available, as well as dozens of other sweet, spicy, and savory flavors of lip balm.

 

You can see my Cheetos Lip Balm blog post below. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek in places (pun intended). Enjoy!

 

Posted by Jill B Gilbert in Art, Branding, Corporate Identity, Design, Graphics, Marketing, Typography
20
Jul
2022

How we helped the Wisconsin Association of Free & Charitable Clinics upgrade their branding

The Wisconsin Association of Free & Charitable Clinics (WAFCC) is an advocate for the State’s ninety free & charitable clinics. The organization provides state advocacy, education opportunities, consulting services, and telehealth services to clinics. WAFCC fosters collaboration, networking, and resource-sharing. They selected Jill B Gilbert for two branding initiatives–brand guidelines and a custom presentation template consistent with these new guidelines. 

Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines are the rules an organization–large or small–follows to ensure their brand is consistent across various digital and print communications.  These guidelines typically communicate the organization’s voice, style, logo, type, and colors. 

They show the accepted use of the logo, any color variations, and placement, including  very important “Do’s and Don’ts.” If an organization uses specific graphic styles, icons, or illustrations, the guidelines contain these, too.

Brand Guidelines are meant to be flexible, changing as the organization grows and changes. The WAFCC Brand Guidelines are a living document, soon to be updated with examples from the new slide presentation template. 

Wisconsin Association of Free & Charitable Clinics (WAFCC) Brand Guidelines Mockup
Brand Guidelines | Wisconsin Association of Free & Charitable Clinics
"I HIGHLY RECOMMEND ANYONE TO WORK WITH JILL. SHE HAS A WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE, IS VERY KIND, RESPONSIVE, AND DID A WONDERFUL JOB ON OUR VISUAL BRAND GUIDE."​
Heather Ule
WAFCC

Presentation Template

The most common methods of communication are email,  PowerPoint (/Google Slides/Keynote/Other) presentations, and social media. 

Branding is important in slide presentations, because it sets the tone for your organization’s message. Consistent style and message are key!

Jill B Gilbert designed a template that was a great match for WAFCC’s message and style needs. 

"This was my second project with WAFCC. I enjoyed working with Heather and building a relationship. We plan to work together on more projects in the future."
Jill B Gilbert Graphic Designer
Wisconsin Association of Free & Charitable Clinics Slide Presentation Template
Wisconsin Association of Free & Charitable Clinics | Presentation Template
Posted by Jill B Gilbert in Best Practices, Branding, Color, Consulting, Corporate Identity, Design, Graphics, Guidelines, Logo Design, Marketing, Standards, Typography