Most companies, organisations and clubs use marketing material to let people know they exist; let people know what they do; entice people to find out more about them and to provide their contact details so that people can find out more about them.

Marketing material comes in various guises. It can be online material such as websites, banner ads, articles, press releases, news bulletins, blog entries, advertising space and You Tube videos. It can also be off line material such as flyers, brochures, leaflets, posters, radio broadcasts, pamphlets, articles, adverts and even TV commercials. When it comes to marketing material the possibilities are fairly endless.

One of the biggest difficulties with marketing material is making it accessible to your desired audience. There are just so many means of marketing and advertising out there that it can be tricky to choose which one will work best for you. In addition, because of the range of marketing options available, marketing and advertising as a means of securing business or custom is much more readily accessible to most individuals or companies which means that there is just so many different marketing messages floating around out there. It is impossible for anyone to digest all of the marketing and advertising campaigns they are subjected to on a daily basis, and this in turn makes it much harder for companies, organisations and clubs who are putting their marketing material out there to secure the readership they're after.

So, if you are a business or organisation, how do you overcome this challenge?

Well, the first step is to understand who your ideal audience are. That way you can ensure that any marketing material you produce is sufficiently tailored towards that audience. The second step is to then find out everything you can about your ideal audience, i.e. are they more likely to see and take in a marketing message that they see online as opposed to offline? How do they normally interact with advertising? What are the best ways to reach them and to keep them interested as they read through your marketing material? Once you have established these key facts, you can go on to designing your marketing material. As you carry out the design of your marketing material, remember that you need to make it as accessible as possible. This can be achieved by:

• Thinking about the branding of your company / organisation and reflecting this branding in your marketing material. Do you for example have a particular colour scheme or font type that you always use? If so, ensure that you use it on the marketing material so that it is recognisable to current clients or members.

• Try to create documentation that can be used for both on and off line marketing ideas.

• Include a snappy title to draw readers into the material.

• Make sure you include some colour or images to excite and entice the reader.

• Keep text easy to read; which means keeping the font size above a size 10 and making sure you don't use too many bright and overwhelming background colours.

So there you have it, hopefully you can now avoid the pitfalls of marketing and produce successful materials.