How to Avoid this Costly Mistake Other Catholic Companies Make

When embarking on a new design project, many Catholic companies fall into a similar trap.

For example, let’s say you’re a startup in need of a logo.

Fueled by intense enthusiasm, you immediately begin sketching something or putting together something on Canva. Perhaps you even turn to AI to do the design work for you. You punch in your prompts and let AI spit out a moderately decent-looking, yet weirdly shiny, logo for you.

The design looks good to you. So you hit publish and print your shiny new logo on all of your assets. Flyers, products, signs, billboards, your website, your social media…

It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough, right?

After all, didn’t G.K. Chesterton say that “a thing worth doing is worth doing poorly?” (Ugh! I hate this quote with a passion, not because it’s a bad quote, but because it’s taken out of context and thus abused.)

But soon there’s a problem. Somehow, your brand isn’t appealing to the people who should be buying into your mission, but you’re not exactly sure why.

This happens with many small companies. Inspiration strikes and immediately you bring it to life. While I certainly appreciate and understand the enthusiasm to jump in and start creating right away, this approach completely misses the most crucial step of the design process and can lead to problems later. 

It’s called “design strategy.”

Having a solid foundation of design strategy in place before you even put pencil to paper or mouse to screen is the one thing that can make all the difference between a positive return on investment for your Catholic company or a project that completely misses the mark. It’s very rare for the first idea that pops into your head to perfectly align with your design strategy.

Unfortunately, whether because of tight budgets or simple ignorance, design strategy is something that most Catholic companies severely neglect.

But neglecting design strategy is like leaving on a road trip from St. Paul, MN, to Cleveland, OH, without consulting a map and determining the route for reaching your destination. You might get there if you’re lucky, but more often than not, you’ll take a few wrong turns and end up in a completely different place than you had intended, instead.

Furthermore, embarking on any marketing asset, especially a logo, without design strategy is like building a skyscraper on sand. It’ll stand for a while, but it’s probably going to fall dramatically later.

Not only does design strategy give you an efficient road map that gets you to your destination, but it also enables you to do some spectacular sightseeing along the way. Hashing out the “why”s and “what”s of your design before you start creating can be the difference between effectively forwarding your mission or wasting your valuable time and resources.

Design Strategy 101 for Effective Catholic Companies

Below are my top five "to-dos" for working out a basic but effective design strategy for Catholic companies.

Effective Catholic Companies Know Their Goal

First, you need to establish what goal you want the design asset you’re working on to achieve. Articulating your goal can help you discern if you need a massive brand redesign or just a flyer.

Are you hoping to drive brand awareness? New signups to your email list? Higher sales for your new merch drop?

A logo serves a different function than a new merch promo, which will also look very different from a newsletter signup. Why? Because each of these assets is meant to accomplish a very different goal.

After you determine what asset you need, knowing the goal of the asset and clarifying the messaging will help eliminate any potential confusion that your audience may experience that would then cause them not to take your desired action. When confusion is eliminated, sales go up, signups increase, and your brand becomes more recognizable and trusted.

When confusion is present, however, no one knows what to do with the piece of content you place in front of them. 

And so they do the only logical thing: nothing.

Effective Catholic Companies Know What They’re Selling

Your customers aren’t shopping for a power drill. They’re shopping for a hole in the wall.

Typically, they aren’t church shopping for just a pretty building or fun ministry either. They’re searching for a deeper encounter with Christ.

What do I mean?

We all have problems. Lots of them. And there are a lot of people who have invented or crafted solutions to those problems. Sickness? The solution isn’t truly a band-aid. It’s healing. Hungry? The solution at its core is curbing that hunger, usually by eating or perhaps suppressing that feeling. Bored? Well… We have an overabundance of options to cure that, if you ask me.

When you have spent so much time crafting a product, like a gala, book, clinic, or water bottle, it can be easy to focus your messaging around the thing itself. For example, “This power drill comes with a full selection of bits!”

While that strategy can work, there are other angles that are more effective at driving conversions.

So, when crafting your brand strategy and marketing message, an effective approach identifies the problems your customer faces and how your brand solves those problems. 

For example, someone focused on customer “pain-points” selling power drills might say, “This power drill comes with the perfect amount of torque control, securing screws without stripping them. It also comes with magnetized bits so you never drop a screw ever again!”

Furthermore, there is a “difference between selling a product and selling a brand.”

People like to associate with things and people they love and value. That’s why we wear t-shirts with our favorite brand names, celebrities, video games, cartoons, etc. on them. Apple’s tagline is “Think Different.” This speaks strongly to customers looking for a tech product that is cutting-edge, thinking outside the box, and a conversation starter.

This all speaks to the difference between selling just a product versus speaking to problems, solutions, and values.

If this abstract thinking is breaking your brain right now, don’t worry! I can help you pinpoint all of these things for your ministries, products, and more (see below!).

Effective Catholic Companies Know Their Target Audience

Almost every time I interview a new potential client, I ask what should be a very easy question to answer: Who is your target audience?

Unfortunately, most Catholic companies are unable to answer this basic question.

Or, if they are able to answer it, many respond saying, “Well, everyone!”

They reason that the Gospel is meant for all. And they’re not wrong! After all, Christ commanded the Apostles to go out and make disciples of and baptize all nations (Mt 28:19-20). Since the missions of most Catholic companies and apostolates are so intimately tied to the Gospel, they reason that what they have to offer is for everyone.

In my experience, parishes do this the most.

But there’s a problem with this approach.

When you market to everyone, you end up marketing to no one.

There are actually very few products that everyone is looking to purchase.

For example, even universally consumed products like water and food have a wide variety of qualities and price points that appeal to different categories of people. Apples and cheetos are both foods, but they serve different purposes and thus are marketed to different audiences. There’s even a different audience for conventional apples VS organic apples!

Let’s examine SmartWater and Liquid Death as an in-depth example.

When you look at the SmartWater brand, you automatically think of middle-aged, on-the-go, health-conscious adults. Liquid Death, on the other hand, brings to mind a younger, edgier demographic heavily influenced by drinking culture.

Both companies are selling water. A basic necessity for life that everyone needs.

And yet both companies are marketing their water very differently to very specific demographics… and they’re highly successful because of that!

So, before you start designing anything, you have to ask yourself, “What is the target demographic I want to appeal to through this design? What visuals (and messaging) would convince this audience to purchase, donate, or subscribe?”

In the case of marketing your product or ministry, it is okay to exclude certain groups from your messaging. This doesn’t make you bigoted. It makes you efficient.

For extra credit, create a user persona or two to humanize your target audience further.

Effective Catholic Companies Know Their Brand

The next step in developing an effective design strategy is to work out your brand.

What is your brand?

It’s not your company’s vision or mission. It’s not your company culture. It’s not even the products, videos, retreats, or other things that your company or parish offers.

Your brand is how your company presents itself to your audience through visuals, words, and more. It’s the “feeling” these things elicit when people think about you.

Word on Fire is an excellent example.

Through their use of color, imagery, fonts, and words, Word on Fire elicits feelings of warmth, trust, and confidence. I go to their website, click on their emails, or read one of their books and immediately feel a sense of trust because of the warmth and authority that they project. This is because their messaging and visuals communicate their mission and values. What colors, fonts, tone, and voice to use for the brand are discerned with the help of brand strategy.

Once the brand visuals and messaging are designated, a brand guide ought to be made and distributed to all who will be creating written or visual content for the brand, everyone from Communications Coordinators, Marketing Managers, Graphic Designers, youth ministers… Everyone. Doing this creates a sense of consistency across your marketing.

Why keep your brand consistent?

Keeping your brand consistent builds trust with your audience. Your audience will automatically recognize when something is from you, whether it’s an email, a video, a flyer, a book, or anything else. It could perhaps be likened to getting to know a new friend. Imagine if your new friend’s personality constantly changed. You probably wouldn’t trust them! You’d trust a personality that stay consistent.

Sort of sounds like brand personality, right?

Pair consistency with a beautiful brand system and you have a recipe to build more trust and delight, and thus, sales!

Even more importantly, people will begin talking about you because they’ll recognize you as the go-to Catholic company in your area of expertise because smart brand strategy builds authority.

That’s when the golden goose of all marketing efforts finally kicks in: word-of-mouth marketing.

Without a solid brand strategy, however, you’ll end up creating whatever feels right to you in the moment. Papyrus today, Comic Sans tomorrow. You’ll spend a lot of money on assets that don’t produce results. And when you’re finally ready to buckle down to define and implement a brand strategy, you’ll spend even more money rebranding and replacing all of your old assets.

That’s why it’s best to begin every new endeavor with brand strategy.

Effective Catholic Companies Know Their Medium

Knowing what medium your design asset is intended for before you even create a file is absolutely vital because different media require different technical setups.

Is your new asset intended for print or digital? A billboard or a bulletin? A flyer or a sales page? A YouTube thumbnail or the header of your new homepage? You’ll need a much higher image resolution for the primary asset on your homepage than you will for a small clickable thumbnail or for an event banner as opposed to an event flyer.

When you know your medium and have the proper graphic resolution, your item will look sharper, clearer, and crisper as opposed to blurry and pixilated.

On the flip side, if you haven’t designed with your desired medium in mind, then your colors may turn out weird, your images blurry and pixilated, your fonts too tiny to read, and things might get cropped or skewed in odd ways.

Always know the specs of the medium you’re creating for. And if you don’t know them, reach out to your local printer or your friendly graphic designer and ask for things like accepted file types, file size requirements and limits, and things along those lines.

Benefits of Having a Design Strategy in Place Before You Begin Designing

Working out your design strategy before you begin designing anything for your Catholic business has a lot of benefits that ought not be ignored.

First, and most importantly, it increases the likelihood that your asset will achieve your desired goal.

It also ensures that the assets you create will appeal to your target audience and build familiarity. When you have consistent and high-quality messaging and visuals tailored for your audience’s tastes, you’ll build their trust in you and they will delight in your brand.

A solid design strategy clarifies the roadmap upfront, ensuring you’re using your time and money as efficiently as possible. It lays down a rock-solid foundation that will be dependable to build your brand and marketing on for years.

Lastly, and my personal favorite, having a design strategy established before you begin creating marketing assets sets your marketing team up for success. Future marketers, copywriters, and designers will thank you!

So, what to do when inspiration strikes?

Easy. You write it down and save it for later.

After hashing out your brand strategy and generating a few more concepts, does it still align with your goals, target audience tastes, brand personality, and medium requirements? Is it the best concept? It only takes a few more focused moments to generate more concepts! If so, then go for it!

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Helping you discern your design strategy is a service I offer! If you’re interested in working out or fine-tuning your design strategy, I’d be more than happy to help. Book a free consultation with me today!

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